of the Bench, and to have them made public, so that the Bar and suitors might also become aware of them. Nothing has a greater tendency to bring the law into contempt than its instability. The reversal of judicial decisions is, perhaps, a drawback incidental to every legal system, but it is the duty of the Legislature to avoid in every possible way whatever might render the law still more unsettled. Parliament when giving power to make rules of Court ought at least to require them to be laid on the tables of both Houses for a specified time prior to publication. Under the proposed Section the rules of Court may, and probably will, be framed in the same spirit as the Bill, in which event the defendant's right to remove his case will be further abridged, and the exclusive jurisdiction will assume still larger proportions.

Sec. 8 permits actions or proceedings pending in the High Court, which might have been commenced or taken in the County Court, except under the unlimited jurisdiction clause, to be transferred at any time to the County Court, on the application of either party to a Judge of the High Court, or without such application. This provision is designed to supersede the present system of remittal previously mentioned (regulated by 19 & 20 Vict., c. 108, s. 26; 30 & 31 Vict., c. 142, ss. 7 and 8); but, strangely enough, Sec. 10 of the last cited Statute, whereby actions of tort of unlimited amount may, on the defendant's application, be transferred to the County Court, is left unrepealed. The discretion which this clause purports to vest in the Chief Clerks and Masters is about as vague and extensive as it well could be. If, as has been asserted, two-thirds of the actions brought at Common Law involve amounts not exceeding £200, these functionaries will be enabled to decimate the cause lists without let or hindrance. The uncertainty as to the place and mode of trial, which such a rule may create, will be a very great hardship on many honest litigants. Under the ægis of this accommodating

section, a plaintiff who, in the preliminary stages of the action, has availed himself of the speed and economy of the High Court, may, when the result begins to appear uncertain, face his opponent with cheapness and comfort before the inferior tribunal. A defendant who cannot afford to disclose his defence on the pleadings may, immediately after writ issued, remove the case to the County Court, where he can resist a just claim with greater chance of

success.

Sir Henry Thring and his coadjutors must have laboured under the impression that the maxim mala grammatica non vitiat chartam applied with equal force to Statutes, or they would have penned the 9th Section of the Bill less hastily. As a specimen of careless draftsmanship it deserves quotation in extenso :

"Whenever any party to an action in a County Court considers that the Court in which the action is commenced is inconveniently situate for the attendance of counsel or solicitors, it shall be lawful for such party to require, in manner to be prescribed by rules of Court, the action to be tried in a Court in which legal assistance can be less expensively obtained, and which is presided over by a Judge of the Court in which the action has been commenced; provided that if the Judge is of opinion that the expense of the action has been increased by its trial in such Court he shall direct the increased cost the other party may have been put to thereby to be paid by the party at whose instance the action was transferred to such Court, and deducted from the other party, whether he obtains a verdict or not."

The precise manner in which "the increased cost is to be deducted from the other party," is left to conjecture. Are the Judge's instructions to be carried out Shylockfashion, or how otherwise? Altogether, this Section bears the strongest internal evidence of having escaped the scrutiny of the Lord Chancellor, for he, whose language is "a well of English undefiled," could never have allowed

Not

such a clumsy piece of workmanship to pass muster. to dwell upon mere verbal ambiguities and inaccuracies however, it would seem that the authors of the Bill have overlooked Section 22 of 19 and 20 Vict., c. 108, which effects the very object aimed at by the clause. It enacts that "if a Judge of a County Court shall be satisfied by either party to a cause pending in his Court that such cause can be more conveniently or fairly tried in some other County Court, he shall order that the venue be changed, and that the cause be sent for hearing to such other Court, &c."*

Were it to pass in its present form, the proposed Section would be productive of embarrassment and injustice. It would place in the hands of either party an absolute power to remove the action which, if exercised capriciously, might be seriously detrimental to his opponent. Besides, if the place of trial be changed for good cause, would it not be inequitable, nay, unreasonable, to condemn in costs the party who justifiably altered it?

The only other proviso to be noticed in connection with the extension of County Court jurisdiction is Sec. 14. Its purpose is not far to seek. It is a covert blow, aimed at the local and inferior Courts about the country to conduce to an accession of business in the County Court. Having endeavoured to fence round the County Court with safeguards against the competition of the Superior Courts, the framers of the Bill resort to a somewhat similar device in reference to the Mayor's Court, the Liverpool Court of Passage, the Hundred Court of Salford, the Court of Chancery of Lancaster, the Court of Pleas of Durham, &c. The Section proposes that when not more than £20 in contract,

£10 in tort, shall be recovered in any Court other than the High Court of Justice, the plaintiff shall only recover County Court costs, any Act to the contrary notwithstanding. Suppose, however, that the action was one that

*For change of venue when the Judge or Registrar is an interested party, see continuation of this Section, also ss. 19, 20 and 21 of the same Act.

could not have been brought in the County Court, is the plaintiff, if he recovers less than the specified amount, to be mulcted of a portion of his costs? This casus omissus would not arise if matters were permitted to remain in statu quo. Sec. 29 of 30 & 31 Vict., c. 142, which it is now sought to repeal, allows County Court costs only where the plaintiff recovers less than £10 in any Court other than a Superior Court, unless the Judge certified that the action or suit was a fit one to be brought in such local or inferior Court. If it be deemed necessary or expedient to extend the principle of the clause to be repealed, a proviso, analogous to the one just quoted, ought to be incorporated in the superseding Section.

The remaining Sections of the Bill may be dismissed in a very few words. The solitary instance of an attempt to alter the procedure of the County Courts is represented by Sec. 10, which reduces the time for entering an appearance, after service of summons for judgment by default, from sixteen to eight days, thus assimilating the time for judgment by default in the County Court with that in the Superior Court. Sec. II permits damages awarded to an infant to be invested for his benefit. Sec. 12 empowers the Lord Chancellor, on the death of a Judge, who has not appointed a deputy, to appoint a barrister, of seven years' standing, to act as Judge for a period not exceeding three months. By Sec. 13 the Lord Chancellor may, under certain circumstances, permit a Registrar to reside out of the district of a County Court. It is a pity that this last clause did not go farther, and interdict him from practising as a solicitor, at all events within his own district. The schedule to the Bill proposes to remove claims for malicious prosecution from the category of prohibited actions, in accordance with the recommendation of the last Select Committee, and to repeal, in addition to the Sections already mentioned, all clauses in existence enabling the making of rules and orders, except the power to make

rules and orders under the Act of 1856, and the power to frame scales of costs under Sec. 8 of the Act of 1875.

The County Courts, as we have seen, were created for the recovery of small debts and demands, and their constitution and procedure partook of that character. Notwithstanding the considerable extensions of their jurisdiction, which have from time to time been made, the original characteristics of those Courts remain unaltered. The vast majority of cases that come before them are claims for sums far below the present limitation. According to the latest judicial statistics the average amount of each plaint entered was £3. 4s. 11d., and according to a return obtained by Mr. Norwood in 1876, it appeared that in 1875 out of 894,000 plaints, upwards of 877,000 were for sums below £20. Since 1865, there has been a tentative process of what may be termed a voluntary jurisdiction between £20 and £50, but according to the official returns the resort to this has been little more than nominal. When, for instance, we find 297 only out of 16,000 claims in one district exceed £20, the experiment proclaims its own fiasco. Why then, it will be asked, did the last Select Committee recommend an extension of jurisdiction? In all probability, because the County Court Judges and their Registrars were in favour of it. A further question then arises, viz., whether evidence proceeding from such a source ought not to be received with great caution? Is not the love of power, innate in every human breast, coupled with a consequent elevation of status and a prospect of increased remuneration, calculated unconsciously to bias the judg ment of the most conscientious of men? Are not these Incentives sufficient to induce a man to look approvingly on the proposition submitted to him? As Judges in their own cause, the evidence of these witnesses should be admitted with considerable reservations.

In leaving untouched the existing procedure, the Bill before us raises two presumptions. One is, that the machinery of