ATTORNEY-GENERAL. The at torney-general is a ministerial officer of the crown, specially appointed by letters patent He is the attorney for the king, and stands in precisely the same relation to him that every other attorney does to his employer. The addition of the term " general" to the name of the office proba bly took place in order to distinguish him from attorneys appointed to act for the crown in particular courts, such as the attorney for the Court of Wards, or the master of the Crown Office, whose official name is " coroner and attorney for the king" in the Court of King's Bench. By degrees the office, which has usually been filled by persons of the highest eminence in the profession of the law, has become one of great dignity and importance. The duties of the attorney-general are to exhibit informations and conduct prose cutions for such heinous misdemeanours as tend to disturb or endanger the state ; to advise the heads of the various de partments of goVernment on legal ques tions ; to conduct all suits and prosecu tions relating to the collection of the public revenue of the crown; to file in formations in the Exchequer, in order to obtain satisfaction for any injury com mitted in the lands or other possessions of the crown ; to institute and conduct suits for the protection of charitable en dowments, in which the king is entitled to interfere ; and generally to appear in all legal proceedings and in all courts where the interests of the crown are in question.
The precise rank and precedence of the attorney-general have frequently been the subject of discussion and dispute. In deed the early history and origin of this office, upon which the question of pre cedence in a great measure depends, is matter of great obscurity. There is no doubt that at all times the king must have had an attorney to represent the interests of the crown in the several courts of justice ; but in early times he was probably not an officer of such high rank and importance as the attorney general of the present day. There are
no traces of such an officer till some cen turies after the Conquest ; and it is clear that, until a comparatively late period, the king's serjeant was the chief executive officer for pleas of the crown. (Spelman, Gloss. tit. " Serviens sd legem.") In the old form of proclamation upon the arraign ment of a criminal, the king's serjeant was, till very lately, always named before the attorney-general ; and previously to the Commonwealth he invariably spoke before him iu all criminal prosecutions, and performed the duty of " opening the pleadings," which since the Common wealth has always been done by the junior counsel. In the reign of James I. a curious altercation between Sir Francis Bacon, who was then attorney-general, and a serjeant-at-law, upon this subject, is related in Bulstrode's Reports,' vol. iii. p. 32, upon which occasion Lord Coke, who was then chief justice, said that " no serjeant ought to move before the king's attorney, when he moves for the king; but 1br other motions any ser jeant-at-law is to move before him." He added, that when " he was the king's at torney, he never offered to move before a serjeant, unles sit was for the king." All questions respecting the precedency of the attorney-general and the serjeants were terminated by a special warrant of King George IV., when Prince Regent, in the year 1811, by which it was arranged that the attorney-general and the solicitor general should have place and audience at the head of the English bar.
A discussion arose during the session of parliament 1834, at the hearing of a Scotch appeal in the House of Lords, upon the question of precedency between the attorney-general and the lord advo cate of Scotland, which was finally de cided in favour of the former.