business proposal in 1863, how much more is it a business proposal in 1917! He then proceeds to discuss the position of the Bar. In a pleasant passage he reminds his brethren of the evolution of circuits.

"When the Circuit Bar rode through the country with the Judges, the stately cavalcade was doubtless much admired as it resolutely faced the winds of March, or swept over the green sward in summertime beneath the shade of English oaks. Yet when in process of time highway roads improved and ceased to be impassable half the year, barristers took advantage of them, like other people, for greater ease and facility of locomotion, though they still endeavoured to preserve their exclusive character by avoiding public vehicles and by travelling in private carriages and post chaises. When the rail began to supersede the road another revolution was at hand. Very timidly at first, but from sheer necessity, the Circuit Bars trusted themselves to public conveyances.'"

This last touch is a quaint but forcible picture of the attitude of the Bar towards all new things. Nowadays, with large local Bars at Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and many other centres, the Circuit system has lost all its usefulness. When central legal districts are formed the Courts will be as open to the Bar of England as the High Courts of London and the County Courts of all the country. The necessity of a tiedhouse system for legal advice and advocacy was necessary to attract lawyers to out-of-the-way places when travelling was expensive and hazardous. To-day it is as out of date as turnpikes and highwaymen, and, as a matter of fact, barristers do not 'go Circuit' in the old sense at all, but go to such places where they have briefs or the expectation thereof. The old Circuit days, when a young man travelled religiously round the Circuit twice a year and was one of a hundred at Grand Court, singing the old chorus:

'All round the Circuit I goes without a guinea,

All round the Circuit for two months and a day,
And if anybody axes me the reason why I do it

It's because I don't know how to earn it any other way'; those days are as dead and gone as the merry drunken times at Lancaster, when Eldon and his friends delivered a bogus brief to Boswell, whom they had picked up in the street overnight, and the little man solemnly moved for a writ of quare adhaesit pavimento before the Judge, who enjoyed the jest as much as the members of the Bar.

The suspension of the Grand Jury is to be a war economy, and the abolition of small Assize towns might be carried out on the same excuse. The following analysis of the civil work of twelve Assize towns in five years shows the negligible amount of business that the High Court judges are called upon to do on some of their travels:

AMOUNTS RECOVERED ON CIVIL ASSIZES AT TWELVE
CIRCUIT TOWNS.

In five years at 120 Assizes-or what might be Assizes if there was work to be tried-the judges only assisted litigants to recover £2570 in varying small sums, or, put in another way, a little over £20 an Assize. There is probably no business in the above list that could not have been more speedily, cheaply, and satisfactorily dealt with by the County Courts which are constantly sitting at these towns. Another more important reason for sparing the High Court judges useless travelling and fixing their sittings at certain large towns is that two judges sitting in a central district could not only try the crime and causes of that district worthy of their attention leisurely and amidst proper surroundings, but could also sit as a Divisional Court to hear appeals from all the inferior Courts of the district. To appeal to-day from the decision of a County Court judge or local magistrate in the north or west of England, or in Wales, means a grievous expense to the parties. The counsel and solicitor in the case-often local men-have to come to London and wait about until their case can be heard. Local appeals to a High Court sitting in the district would be

bound to exercise an excellent effect on local decisions and do much to promote efficiency and uniformity of decision.

Having now seen what the High Court actually does in the country and how easily it might be released from useless tasks and enabled to render wider services, let us examine a little in detail the work of the inferior Courts.

The activities of the County Court are remarkable. The legislature seems to have thrust on these Courts a vast amount of miscellaneous work, and since 1865 done little or nothing to improve their equipment and machinery. There are 56 County Court judges holding Courts at 562 places. They dealt with the following matters in 1913:

A large number of plaints entered are undefended debtcollecting summonses, which are dealt with by the registrars. Probably less than 4 per cent. of these plaints come before the Judge. Judicial work seems very unevenly distributed, as the following table shows:

In Bow and Shoreditch the Judge has sixty-three days' assistance of another judge. The other Courts are one-judge

Courts. This is not of course a full record of judicial work, for it does not include judgment summonses-the hearing of which take much time-nor remitted actions and other matters; but it suffices to show the necessity of a rearrangement of the districts which seem to have been left more or less untouched since the Courts were first instituted. How they should be rearranged depends, as a business proposition, upon what duties they are to undertake. It is only right to remember that the Judge of Mid Wales, for instance, has eighteen Courts to visit between Builth and Pwllheli, and the Gloucester Judge fourteen Courts, visiting out-of-the-world places like Northleach and Stow-on-the-Wold. A business system would probably not permit a district judge to travel automatically to places where he is not really wanted. Each district should have central Courts for the bigger work, and the Judge should only pay occasional visits to smaller places, where the Registrar should have powers to deal at once with small claims. The amount of money dealt with by the County Courts is very considerable. Judgments were obtained for £1,946,973; awards were made under the Compensation Act for £219,247 in lump sums, and for half wages at the rate of £888 weekly. We have now a fairly clear statistical picture of the two competing and unattached systems. The business problem is how to make them one. At present, if a man begins an action in the High Court he issues a writ, if in the County Court he issues a plaint; and from that moment each action proceeds according to the rules of the Court in which he starts. These two practices and procedures are very similar, but they each maintain a huge volume of different rules and orders of their own, and innumerable cases are decided as to their meaning and intention. In the country the District Registrar of the High Court is also the Registrar of the County Court, and issues either writ or plaint to his customer as desired, and is equally capable of dealing with matters under either form of procedure. This position was not so absurd fifty years ago, when County Courts were merely small debt courts, but for many years it has been seen to be an indefensible proceeding to have two sets of conflicting practices to carry out a single purpose.

Here, again, the necessary reform has long ago been thought out and described, and lies to hand when there is an authority to set it working. In his evidence before the County Courts

Committee of 1878, Mr. Pitt Taylor, the learned judge of the Lambeth County Court, tells us that he was asked by the Judicature Commission to draft a Bill to consolidate the law and provide for the extension of County Court jurisdiction. He was released from his judicial duties for several months, and, but for the unfortunate retirement of Lord Hatherley in October 1872, owing to his loss of sight, we might, fifty years ago, have had the reform we are waiting for to-day. His idea was that any action that could be brought at common law in the High Court of Justice might be commenced in the County Court; that there should be optional unlimited jurisdiction with a power to the defendant to remove a case from the County Court over and above a certain amount. This was approved by Mr. Hollams, the well-known solicitor, who said: 'I see no objection whatever to proceedings being insti'tuted in any Court, subject to an arbitrary right of removal.' The principle was supported by Lord Bramwell, who at the same time strongly advocated the prohibited actions of breach of promise, libel, etc., being tried in County Courts unless their importance really warranted a more expensive process.

What is necessary may be set out in a few words, and as in 1878 so to-day, there is no real dissent among business men— including lawyers who place business before narrow professional interests-from the following principles of reform. All the Courts of law should be constituent parts of the High Court of Justice. In their judicial duties the judges should be entirely independent of any department. For business purposes they should be under the control of a Ministry of Justice who should direct where they should sit, what class of case they should try, and under what procedure. One sort of writ, plaint, or summons should issue in the office of the District Registrar, who is already one human person, and would then be one official of all Courts. Unless it were deemed right to remove a case on account of intricacy, importance, amount, or other good cause, to the High Court branch to be tried at a central district, it would remain in the County or District Court and be tried there. The waste, cost, delay, overlapping, and uncertainty that is caused to-day would readily disappear, and each case would be tried before an appropriate tribunal. This is far from being so to-day, when in a commercial city in the North or the Midlands a County