Around the turn of the 18th century, Malta passed, not quite seamlessly, through four changes of sovereignty from a purely administrative point of view. The Order of St John’s over 250-year rule gave way to Napoleon’s fleeting French period, on to the enigmatic interregnum when Malta belonged to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies but was de facto administered by British officials, to Britain’s capture of full sovereignty in 1813.

A revolutionary roller-coaster, all in the lightning space of 15 years. Administrative continuity more or less prevailed throughout these otherwise turbulent years, and this tends to evidence the solidity of the institutions put in place by the Knights and mostly manned by the natives. This should not be taken to mean that nothing changed. Some things did. This article intends to map out how subsidiary legislation (proclamations, regulations, government notices) impacted lawyers. The judiciary, physicians, architects and engineers in the early years of British rule may form the subject of future articles.

Lawyers continued to be churned out by the University of Malta, founded by the Knights in 1769. An 1816 government notice publicised the fact that an irate judge had recently abused the power to suspend an advocate from the exercise of his profession. The government disapproved. It asserted that no judge had the right to suspend lawyers, except for “notorious, manifest and evident acts of corruption or unseemly conduct or for a positive act of contempt of court”. In all other cases, the judge had to report the lawyer to the Governor who would then deal with him as necessary.

There were then new provisions regarding advocates for the poor and Crown counsels. The Knights had in place a good system of free legal aid for those who could not afford litigation costs. In 1823, new legislation was enacted to regulate legal aid, and a government notice specified that the offices of Advocate and Assistant Advocate for the Poor should be for a term of one year, and these should be selected from lawyers eligible “and among the most respected practitioners of these courts” chosen on the recommendation of His Majesty’s judges.

The notice specified that the Advocate for the Poor for the next year was to be Dr Rodolfo Felice Vassallo, and his assistant, Dr Filippo Torregiani. Shortly later, Torregiani became Advocate for the Poor, to replace Dr Filippo Bugeja who had been promoted to the Commercial Court instead of Dr Giovanni Vella. Dr Aloisio/Luigi Bardon was to remain Assistant Advocate for the Poor.

Subsidiary legislation about Crown Advocates appears more copious. The very first government notice targets an obvious conflict of interest. Since time immemorial, the notice states, it had been the custom for the Crown Advocate to act as administrator of intestate property – the estates of those who died without a will – and to refer any controversy on his administration to the Criminal Court, of which he formed part. This appeared to the government to be constitutionally wrong and to defeat the aims of substantial justice.

The notice ordered the immediate cessation of this malpractice and directed that any complaints against the Crown Advocate regarding his administration of intestate property should fall under the competence of the regular (civil) courts. Two subsequent notices appointed Robert Forrest to act as Crown Advocate in 1815, and Dr Claudio Vincenzo Bonnici to replace Marquis Dr Francesco Alessi in 1817 in the same office.

In the British period, I found only one official reference to a Fiscal Advocate, the Order’s designation for the lawyer tasked with criminal prosecutions. A civil employment notice informs the public that Dr Francesco Teodoro Bonanno had been appointed to that post in 1814.  Bonanno is listed as the highest-earning law professional in Malta. In my youth, the word fiskal was still current in Maltese to denote, in a derogatory manner, someone strict, unpardoning, devoted to formalities – kemm hu fiskal!

An important proclamation regarding Crown Advocates was issued in 1832; quite an earthquake in reality: it abolished suddenly, and with immediate effect, the posts of Fiscal Advocate, Crown Advocate, Assistant Crown Advocate, and Co-Crown Advocates, and instituted instead the office of Crown Attorney General, conferring upon him all the functions previously exercised by the holders of the abolished posts.

Those posts had always been held by Maltese lawyers, but the new appointee was British – Robert Langslow. The proclamation threw at Lansgslow various prerogatives. In the ceremonial order of precedence, he ranked immediately after the judges and he also had right of audience in all the courts, before any other advocate.

The office of Crown Attorney General also gave Langslow a total immunity from suit. No one could sue him for acts or omissions in the performance of his functions. He did not have to take any oath of office, except for those oaths prescribed by special laws for the assumption of offices of trust in His Majesty’s service.

The office of Crown Attorney General also gave Langslow a total immunity from suit. No one could sue him for acts or omissions in the performance of his functions

The third prerogative sounds more problematic still. He was allowed private practice and the receipt of private emolument. He could advise and assist private clients and plead for them in any court, provided this was not in matters affecting the interests of the government.

The Crown Attorney General was entitled to avail himself of the services of Maltese lawyers, specially handpicked by the government and to be designated King’s Counsel. These would have right of audience in any court in Malta immediately after the Crown Attorney General, their order of preference established by the date of their appointment. All courts were to acknowledge the King’s Counsel as representatives of the Crown Attorney General. And they were to rank as magistrates of Malta.

The final paragraph of the proclamation ordains that nothing contained in it shall be construed as to render invalid or irregular anything done so far by the holders of the abolished posts, but rather that anything started by them shall be continued by the new holders of office.

A government notice published simultaneously has unusually flattering language. The Lieutenant-Governor acknowledges how zealous and capable Dr Emanuele Caruana and Dr Benedetto Bardon had always been in the discharge of their duties as co-Crown Counsels and was therefore appointing them King’s Advocates in terms of the proclamation. And a ‘civil employment’ notice published on the same day as the proclamation, records the appointment of Dr Emanuele Caruana and Dr Benedetto Bardon as King’s Advocates for Malta, and of Dr Odoardo Dingli King’s Advocate for Gozo.

In Malta today, Robert Langslow (August 22, 1790 - December 9, 1853) is no more than a footnote in legal publications. In his lifetime he was anything but. He came to Malta in 1832 and instantly attracted the admiration of the Governor, Fredrick Cavendish Ponsonby. Langslow was first cousin of the celebrated Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, author of one of the most immortal English novels, Vanity Fair.

But the next Governor, Sir Henry Bouverie, could not stand him, referring to him as “an enemy of all persons in authority”. Contemporaries regarded him as “very eccentric, with a tendency to oppose all constituted authority”. Bouverie accused Langslow of having protected his son in the commission of a criminal offence.

In a confidential dispatch to London, Bouverie wrote: “The conduct of Mr Langslow since I have been on the island… has been one continued attempt to set himself up as a leader of a discontented and factious party, holding forth on all occasions upon subjects most likely to pervert the minds of the people and to embarrass the government”. Bouverie went as far as to abolish the post of Crown Attorney General just to get rid of him. Lansgslow found himself out of a job in Malta.

While Langslow was on the island, commissions made up of Maltese and British jurists started drafting new codes for Malta. Langslow led the opposition to the stands taken by the Maltese. He wanted the authentic text to be the English one; he opposed the preference of the Maltese jurists to model the codes on the new ones of the Two Sicilies and ridiculed their continental style of drafting. This brought the work of the commissions to a stalemate.

When Langslow left Malta under a heavy cloud, he obtained employment in Ceylon as a judge, and there his legal trajectory mirrored his previous one in Malta. He made enemies everywhere with his turbulent and bizarre behaviour, starting by his advertising in the newspapers shortly after his appointment, the sale of his legal library “solely because the owner has now ascertained that he cannot any longer afford, out of the small salary paid to him as a judge, to keep up a law library” for the service of the government and the public. This advert raised a public uproar.

He was continuously at loggerheads with everyone. He reacted to a disagreement with the Attorney General by locking up all the court files and suspending court sittings indefinitely. The last straw was his public comment when the Supreme Court reversed a criminal sentence of imprisonment he had inflicted on Lieutenant Charles Vaughan Pugh for lashing a native with his whip. In no uncertain terms, he showed his contempt for the Supreme Court judges who, on appeal, had acquitted Pugh. He could not see how the appeal judges could consider consistent with their oath of office their closing an eye on the accused’s conduct. Were he to try Pugh again, he would see to it the accused would serve his term of imprisonment before the appeal was heard.

The Governor of Ceylon took the unprecedented step of suspending Langslow from the judiciary in December 1843, and the Home Office then dismissed him in 1844 on charges of “dilatory justice, and insubordination and contempt towards the government”.

Not surprisingly, Langslow did not take it lying down. He returned to England, canvassed some MPs and wangled the support of leading newspapers, like the Spectator and the Daily News. On July 18, 1847, the House of Commons held a full and heated debate about a motion of disapproval of the government in the matter of Langslow’s dismissal. Various members from both sides of the House took part – The Hon. Bickham Escott, Benjamin Hawes, Sir John Hope, Francis Baring.

Escott revealed that one of the charges against Langslow’s behaviour in Malta was that “Langslow’s eldest son was constantly at issue with the police, whom he annoyed and insulted in every way. In most cases the (Maltese) magistrates did their duty and fined the son”. No, retorted Escott, that was a gross exaggeration – the son had only been arrested once – for smoking in the streets. I was not aware that in the 1840s this was a criminal offence in Malta.

The most interesting intervention was Lord Bentink’s, which contains plenty about Langslow’s behaviour in Malta. The House defeated the motion.

This background explains why Ordinance No. 1 of 1839 was enacted by the Governor in Council following the advice of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, to abolish the posts of Attorney General and Queen’s Advocate and to reinstate the old designation of Crown Advocate.

As from February 1, 1839, the previous proclamation of 1832 was repealed. A government officer was to be appointed as Crown Advocate and he would assume all the functions previously exercised by the Co-Queen Advocates. The Crown Advocate was not to be entitled to any private practice or to give advice or to act as pleader in court in private matters. In case of any just impediment to act as Crown Advocate, any lawyer in Malta could be appointed by the Governor to exercise ad hoc the functions of Crown Advocate. Any proceedings already started by the Attorney General before January 31, would be considered lawful and be taken up and continued by the Crown Advocate.

A civil employment notice informed that the government had appointed Dr Giacomo Pantaleone Bruno as Crown Advocate, and Dr Benedetto Bardon a magistrate for Gozo, instead of Dr Francesco Chappelle, now promoted to judge.

An 1842 ordinance clarified that the prohibition contained in the 1839 ordinance that the Crown Advocate could not carry out any private practice only applied to new clients and to legal work proposed after the appointment of Dr Bruno. He could still continue to service the clients he had before his nomination and appear for them in the court cases already opened.

I will end with the notice of the appointment of Dr Antonio Micallef to the post of Crown Advocate in 1843. Micallef, later Sir Antonio, was the first of a triad of really extraordinary jurists who later became chief justices and raised the prestige of the Maltese bench to unparalleled heights. The others were Sir Adriano Dingli and Sir Arturo Mercieca.