if there were any convenient court to which the creditor could resort.

It is not intended to put forward here, any ambitious scheme for changing the character of the County Courts, or for decentralizing the heavier litigation of the country, but to indicate a plan for dealing with the foregoing class of cases, for which there is not now any suitable provision. If this can be achieved without disturbing existing machinery, a practical scheme will have been propounded, which will remedy a grievance that is well founded and wide-spread. I will endeavour to show, more in detail, what would be the alterations that are necessary in order to attain this object.

The County Court Judges have already quite enough to do. There is not any serious congestion of the business in most places, for they manage to get through the work by long and late sittings at short intervals; but the constant additions made to their jurisdiction by successive statutes, added to the time spent in travelling on large circuits, render it unreasonable to suggest a material increase in their work. The result of any such attempt would be to produce arrears, and to create undue hurry in the despatch of business, and a tendency to be too summary with the smaller cases, with the result of dissatisfaction everywhere. It is, of course, of the first importance, in all courts, that cases should be carefully dealt with; but in the County Courts it is specially essential that all cases should also appear, to the uneducated suitor, and to the audience drawn mainly from the same class, to be thoroughly investigated. The suitor has often given up a day's wages, in order to be able to attend and state his case; and he has no professional adviser, to assure him that his points were understood and taken into account; and he wants to see for himself that the evidence has been sifted before the decision is given; and he ought to be convinced, by his own observation, that, although the result was adverse, he has been fairly and impartially heard. It may

easily be carried too far, but it is a mistake on the right side, to allow some irrelevant facts and untenable reasons to be put forward by a suitor who appears in person, where but few of the listeners appreciate that they are irrelevant or untenable, rather than that any idea should get abroad that the Judge has sacrificed the interest of a suitor to his anxiety to get through the list. This is of more importance than might be supposed by persons accustomed only to High Court procedure, where counsel can practically insist on bringing to the attention of the Judge, any argument which it is even suggested may be material. If the County Court Judges had more work cast upon them, the same attention to each little case would often be impossible; or the result would be to produce adjournments and delays, and to prevent that prompt remedy which is now given. It follows that, if the Judges are to hear cases between £50 and £100, they must be relieved of some of the work which they now do.

At every place where the Judge holds a court there is a Registrar, who has a staff, which he can strengthen and extend as business grows, and as his remuneration, which depends on the number of plaints, increases. It is usually an advantage, not only to the Registrar, but to the public, when the work does expand; the office becomes better manned and equipped, and that naturally tends to a more efficient discharge of the work, if there is any room for improvement. Those Registrars who are paid directly according to the amount of work in the office, and who are also practising solicitors, can always arrange the other claims. upon their time, so as to attend to any increase of their duties in the County Court, where that increase brings with it a corresponding remuneration. Where the Registrar is paid by salary, the amount depends indirectly upon the amount of work, and is adjusted accordingly; and a slight alteration of the maximum limit of such salary would

There would not,

compensate him for any extra trouble. therefore, be any objection to a re-arrangement of the work in the County Court, by which a larger number of cases in the aggregate would be heard, but which resulted in an increase of the duties and remuneration of the Registrars.

At present, the Registrar can decide most cases up to £2, if the parties do not object; and, in practice, it is rarely that any objection is raised. Above that sum, he has no jurisdiction in disputed actions, although the difficulties which arise in small cases are usually inversely proportionate to the amount involved-due to the imperfect way in which accounts are kept, and the extent to which memory is relied on, by persons who, even if they can write, have no facility in using a pen, or performing the simplest operations of arithmetic on paper-a tendency which increases as we go downwards in the scale of society. The Registrar, who is already required to solve the intricacies of the smallest transactions, with the aid of documents which are nearly illegible, and if legible are almost unintelligible, would assuredly find it an easier task to settle differences where the amount is rather larger, and the parties a trifle more educated. A legislature, which has entrusted the Registrars with the decision of cases under £2, should not have any hesitation in raising that limit to £10, for the new work would be really simpler on the whole, if a proper qualification is introduced, relegating points of law and special cases to the Judge.

The transfer of small cases from the Judge to the Registrar, would also be a material gain in another way. They constitute (with many exceptions, of course) a class of cases which, when the parties are not represented by solicitors, often give the Judge infinite trouble (incommensurate with the interests involved), which would to a great extent be avoided if they were heard by the Registrar. The Registrar has usually lived in the district for the whole of his professional life. He is familiar with the habits and customs of

the people, and understands their special words and expressions. This often makes him more fit to try cases where no solicitor appears, and more likely to come to a right conclusion on the facts, than the Judge, who has not these local qualifications in the same degree, and is apt sometimes to misunderstand a statement made by a witness. The more humble the grade to which a witness belongs, the greater does this difficulty become. The Judge is probably a better lawyer than the Registrar, and he may be more competent to weigh conflicting evidence when he has mastered the facts of a case; but his difficulty is to feel sure that he has understood precisely what the witnesses (some truthful and some not) meant to say. Where solicitors appear for the parties, they take care that the bearing of the evidence is duly appreciated; but, in their absence, the Registrar often has a distinct advantage over the Judge, in dealing with suitors and witnesses whose very limited power of explaining what they mean, in any language, is still further reduced by peculiarities of pronunciation and the use of words known only in the district. There is a dialect spoken in the heart of England, within my own experience, which has constantly to be translated to the Judge by the Registrar, and no doubt this is not an isolated instance; but wherever, in cases of County Court magnitude, the Registrar is required to act even as quasiinterpreter, it would be more satisfactory to leave also to him the decision of the dispute.

A transfer of the cases, not exceeding £10, to the Registrar, would give the Judge sufficient time to try cases from £10 to £100, without probably increasing (at any rate at first) the time which it now takes to try cases between £2 and £50. The local bars are growing stronger every year in the larger towns, and around every County Court most able solicitor advocates have gathered; and it is certain that all ordinary cases, far beyond such a limit as £100, could be efficiently conducted, so far as professional assistance is concerned.

Any increase of the jurisdiction of the Registrar should, however, be subject to a right to take even a small matter to the Judge, in some few instances. This will be alluded to further on; but it should be explained here, that it is not desirable to give a general option to have a case, which comes within the Registrar's jurisdiction, heard by the Judge, or to have a case, which a Judge is authorized to hear, transferred to the High Court. Any such right should be restricted to special cases; for the consequence of giving a general option would be, that the suitor before the Registrar, to whom time is immaterial, or who wishes for delay, would always claim to go before the Judge, in order to try to tire down his adversary; and the rich suitor before the Judge would insist on a transfer to the High Court, in the hope that his poorer antagonist would give up the contest in despair. It is not necessary to consider the case of both parties preferring a trial in the High Court, because the action would not then be commenced in the County Court.

The result may be summed up thus: (1) That no satisfactory tribunal exists for determining the large class of disputes where the claim is between £50 and £100, and that one ought to be provided. (2) That the County Court Judges could try these cases, if relieved from hearing cases up to £10. (3) That the cases up to £10 might be tried by the Registrars, with advantage to every one concerned. (4) That this increase in the powers of the Judge and Registrars might be carried out without any disturbance in the machinery, either of the High Court or the County Courts.

If these propositions are established, the plan is a practical one; and it is surely desirable that the change should be made without delay, instead of leaving the unfortunate suitors, in cases between £50 and £100, to wait for justice, until some one devises a grand scheme, meeting with general approval, for dealing with the hundred and one points on