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respecting the jurisdiction of the County Courts under this Bill. This question was considered by the Select Committee of the House of Lords, who were unanimously of opinion that the judges of these courts being migratory the latter were impracticable. We are, indeed, clearly and strongly of opinion that the County Courts ought not to have any such jurisdiction. It is true that the Sheriff Court in Scotland has it, although we believe it is only partially exercised in these courts, suspensions being for the most part tried in the Bill Chamber, at Edinburgh. But the Scotch Sheriff Court is a very different tribunal in this respect from our County Court. The latter has none of the requisite machinery for working such a Bill as this, whereas the court of the Sheriff in Scotland has all the machinery, and it is stationary not migratory. It is a Court of Record, has a registry of its own, with unlimited jurisdiction in regard to personal estate, while its judicial constitution secures the most careful consideration of all matters of law brought before it. With these advantages, however, its jurisdiction in regard to summary diligence is, we believe, only partially exercised.

We must now bring to a close the remarks we wished to offer on this very important Bill. It comes before us with all the support and approval which the promoters of any public measure could desire; with, in truth, no serious opposition, if we may except the inadmissible reclamation we have alluded to, and which, rightly or wrongly, is attributed to some attorneys in London. The Bill proposes to give us the benefits of a procedure which has been the practice of Scotland for nearly two hundred years; its principle has been especially sanctioned on three several occasions by the British Parliament; it is a necessary part of that "assimilation" which the government, the legislature, and the country are resolved to accomplish; it has been strongly approved by the House of Lords; the government approve it; the Lord Chancellor and the law peers support it: Lord Brougham advocates it; Lord Campbell warmly defends it; the leading members of the parliamentary opposition support it; lawyers, bankers, merchants, and traders are all for it.

VOL. LIII. NO. CVI.

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And last, though not least, it supports itself. Because it is sound and just in principle-it is founded on the morality of all dealing, and after all only raises the written obligation of the merchant to the level of the word of an honest man. According to the principles of jurisprudence-having regard to the rights of creditors, the safety of trade, the protection of the public, and the interests of justice and good faith, the Bill ought to be made law.

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XPERIENCE speaks loudly and conclusively in favour of

the County Courts, notwithstanding the defects of administration, which might have been foretold from the vile system of transferring old judges to the new office-some of whom had no qualifications for its requirements-and the equally vicious system of making fresh appointments by political influence. Apart, we say, from these blots of administration, and apart from the shortcoming of the powers which have been given to them, the County Courts have worked wonderfully well. They have prevented a vast amount of fraud by making its correction easy; they have adjusted countless rightful claims at little cost, which would either have never been adjusted, or have cost ten or twentyfold the money to settle; and they have done this with a dispatch and ease never before achieved in the annals of jurisprudence. They have also done a vast deal of quiet good in infusing moral notions among the people, and in educating them in the A, B, C of law.

There is another great accomplishment due to these courts: they have given a fatal blow to the historical delusion that juries are indispensable to justice: a notion which has long

formed an item in what we were taught to revere as part and parcel of the constitution. We find that this venerable palladium of all our liberties, as Curran called it, is dispensed with by the very parties it was intended to benefit, as soon as ever it is at their option not to have it. In short, they won't pay a few shillings for the palladium, and hosts of suitors and defendants would, unquestionably, go without it if it were offered them for nothing. This is probably one result of a better appreciation of education. Judges are educated men, and are, at least, more likely to be able to understand and adjudicate on evidence than juries, and this weighs with the people. It is devoutly to be hoped that this good precedent will shortly be extended to all criminal trials, and that having given the accused his option, free of course of any pecuniary or other let, hindrance, or condition, he will no longer be forced to be tried by a jury whether he wishes it or not. It would be easy to take jury cases at Sessions and Assizes in one court by themselves. They would soon be dispatched. There need be no difficulty or delay in doing this: especially if grand juries were also dispensed with, as useless impediments to business.1

There are many respects in which the actual powers of these courts might be usefully extended. We regret to see that heretofore the chief alteration has had reference to the enlargement of the salaries rather than to the extension of the functions and public usefulness of the judges. It has been determined, instead of increasing the number, and diminishing the size of the districts, to pay certain favoured judges 1,5007., instead of the ample sum of 1,2001. per annum. Apart from the question of the policy of this increase of salary at all, let us point out the extreme unfairness with which it has been made. It was, as we understand the matter, first of all decided that the eight metropolitan judges should be all comprised in the favoured list: on what conceivable ground it is difficult to ascertain. In the first place they have scarcely any distance to travel, their work being all on the spot; and every one knows

1 It is a remarkably foolish objection to this that the magistrates want this addition to their consequence. It adds none whatever; and is thought generally a very silly procedure.

what inconvenience, discomfort, toil, and often what injury to health, arises from the necessity of long journeys in all weathers, at fixed times, in the country. One of the County Court judges, examined by the commissioners, affirmed that 7,000 miles per annum was less than he usually travelled, and he gives this account of the discomforts it entails:

"In my own district, the towns lie distant from each other, and at all seasons of the year, I generally have to rise at six o'clock, in order to get to my work in time. In the winter, of course, the inconvenience is much greater, because there is always darkness at the beginning of my day, and rarely not darkness at the close; sometimes I do not get back till past eleven at night; all of that time, although of course not consumed by sitting in court, is time to be fairly set down as occupied in the work belonging to my office."

No doubt of it. But instead of selecting the men to be best paid who did the most work, the singular system has been resorted to of taking the court fees as a standard; and, accordingly, every judge in the country, who has happened to have causes in which a high amount of money was at stake and which amount exceeded the minimum of the London courts' fees, has had an increase. This list includes Mr. Marshall of Wakefield, whose conduct has had the severest rebuke perhaps ever dealt to so high an officer of justice by the Court of Queen's Bench, and it excludes the Gloucestershire County Court judge, against whose judgments no appeal has ever been decided, and who figures among the very heaviest districts (not excluding London) for number and duration of sittings! This is really much too bad. The amount of fees depends entirely on the commercial enterprise of the district, or of some one or more towns in it. Every child knows that the amount of the sum sued for has no relation whatever to the length or trouble of trying the suit.

The public and their interest seem to be the last consideration in all these changes. It is evident that if there were more districts and more judges a vast deal more work might be done, and the benefit of the institution itself largely extended by the increase of its jurisdiction. If this were done we might have judges doing far more real good than they do now, without any occasion to work from six A.M. till eleven P.M. [Rather

a rare case, we hope], and amply remunerated by 1,2007. a year. In fact, many have at present, comparatively, so little to do that they deserve much less. It would, we think, be useful to introduce a little emulation, so that good judges beginning with a small district might rise to better paid ones. The salaries might then be well fixed at 1,000l., 1,2007., and 1,500., travelling and personal expenses being allowed as at present.

The increase of jurisdiction appears to us to be now a national necessity.

Let us arrange our suggestions on these important points under distinct heads, premising that we shall avail ourselves a good deal of the extremely sensible evidence of Mr. Graham Willmore, Q.C., on this subject, as given by him before the commissioners last year.

1. TORTS.-Why is there any distinction between actions of tort and contract as to jurisdiction? Mr. Willmore puts the absurdity of it well.

"Would it, in your opinion, be convenient that a plaintiff suing in a superior court in an action of contract, and recovering less than 501., should be deprived of costs ?-I do not see the ground for raising the distinction between questions of 207. and 501., either in tort or contract.

Generally speaking, do you see any reason why the County Courts, having jurisdiction in matters of contract up to 50l. should not also have jurisdiction in cases of tort up to that amount?—I cannot suggest any. Suppose a gentleman's carriage is run against, the damages may be 501.; in the case of a costermonger's donkeycart, they may be fifty pence; the facts being identically the same. I think it is the general desire that the jurisdiction should be given."

2. POSSESSION OF TENEMENTS, RECOVERY OF.-We advocate the abolition of any limit as to rental. In the first place it is the poorer class generally who do hold over, but even if it be a more highly-rented person, how does that affect the question, or the propriety of giving easy means of recovery? It seems a manifest advantage to all classes which it is unwise to withhold from any.

3. EQUITABLE JURISDICTION. We have already said, in a former Magazine, that we object to giving an equitable jurisdiction to all judges. There are several who have had no practice

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