Witnesses arrive before they are needed, and have to be paid accordingly. Tradesmen are brought away needlessly from their counters and agriculturists from their land; while the Judge himself, to his own and everyone else's inconvenience, is obliged to sit over-time at A. in order to finish the work. Everyone is in consequence tired and worried. Litigants are driven into "settlements by force of circumstances. In a word, the whole legal machinery is out of gear. Moreover, unless the work at B. turns out to be lighter than was expected, the same pressure will re-occur there, and C. will suffer in its turn.

As long as only one Judge is allotted to any assize town the trial of civil actions must take a secondary place and the interests of all classes of people engaged in that work must accordingly suffer. Nor can late sittings by an active Judge be considered by any means an adequate remedy. Jurymen frequently thereby lose their last train home, and have to spend the night in an insalubrious pot-house at their own expense. Witnesses may be left in an equal plight at the litigants' expense. Barristers miss consultations and lose their dinners and consequently their tempers; while the Judge himself suffers from unduly prolonged tension. In the late sitting of a Court, except by consent of all, for the purpose of finishing a case, the aspect of the Court is not apt to be dignified; the sword of justice no longer rings like true steel; there is a good deal of ineffectual slashing.

Having dwelt upon this one picture let us look at another of an opposite school, which may be styled that of the old-fashioned leisurely assize. Business is timed to commence at 11.30 a.m, Owing to trifling delays at Church and en route it may be mid-day before his Lordship is able to settle himself down on the bench. Many of the county gentlemen ready to serve on the grand jury and all

the jurymen in waiting have been kicking their heels about the Court corridors since 10.30 a.m. owing to the exigencies of the local train service. One o'clock strikes ere the grand jury, after a prolonged harangue from the Judge, find their first true bill. His Lordship thinks it might be more convenient to adjourn and begin work at 2 p.m. By the time the first petty larceny is disposed of, and the other prisoners' pleas taken, it is time for the old-fashioned adjournment at 4 p.m. Perhaps a pertinacious solicitor gets a timid junior to appeal to the Judge, who is just about to leave the bench, with the query: "Might I ask if your Lordship would say when you would take the first cause?" After a hasty consultation with the Clerk of Assize the judicial reply will probably be: "I cannot at present say, Mr. Briefless; but I will say this: I will not take any causes to-morrow, but all parties must be ready by 10 o'clock on the day after." With profuse thanks counsel engaged elsewhere on the next day hurry off by late trains to return again at all hours of the ensuing night and dawn only to find that the Judge is not sitting till 10.30 a.m., that there are two long criminal cases to occupy all the morning, and that the Judge has announced that he cannot sit later than 5 o'clock, when all non-jury causes not reached by that time must be adjourned to London or elsewhere or be left as remanets.

Now had the criminal work been taken in hand promptly at 11 a.m. on the first day, it could probably have all been completed by six o'clock. Prisoners would not have been kept wearily awaiting trial in the cells below the Court: police and goalers, jurymen and witnesses, could all have been let free for other duties and business: indigent barristers would have escaped two nights at an expensive hotel; while the causes would have been taken in hand by a Judge fresh to his morning work, and been completed by the close of the second day.

Can anyone, looking at these pictures of common events, wonder that a suspicion of unnecessary incivility creeps into the minds of jurymen and witnesses? And that neither over-active nor over-leisurely assizes bring balm to those engaged in civil business on circuit.

Yet it is not the fault of either Judge that has caused the mishap; that is rather due to the lack of any scientific forecast of the amount of work to be got through at any one place. What is the cause of this discouragement of civil business on circuit ?

One immediate cause is the uncertainty as to the time of the trial of any action, with the consequent delay and unforeseen expense incurred. Then also there is frequently insufficient time for full trial of an important action, owing to the exigencies of the criminal work, involving “Further Consideration" in London. The fons et origo mali, however, is the single Judge system. Given two Judges in any assize town, the civil work begins simultaneously with the criminal work, at a fixed time, which in itself would be a great gain. The only question left open in that case is the arrangement of the day's cause list, as to which, litigants must take their chance in London as elsewhere. Moreover, whenever the one Judge has got through his work, be it criminal or civil, he is at liberty either to help his brother Judge or to keep time at the next place.

Presuming, however, that in the present trend of judicial reform, such a return to old ways is out of the question, except under the form of the linked Judge system, whereby a Judge in town holds himself in readiness to be summoned to the help of a Judge on circuit (a system which might advantageously be more insisted upon), it will be more expedient to seek for some other remedial measures. But before doing so it is necessary to determine on what principle civil business on circuit is to be dealt with. Is the civil assize to be mended or ended? Is centralisation to

supersede all local venues for the purpose of trials in the High Court, except in a few great commercial centres such as Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, and Cardiff?

Apart from the constitutional character of English local jurisdiction-a consideration not to be disregarded as academic-English antipathy to centralisation is founded. on a very rational basis. The advantage of civil trial in the suitors' county is surely as obvious as the claim of an accused to "put himself on his country." There is the personal convenience to the provincial litigant of coming to his own county town at far less trouble, expense, or fluster than is involved in a journey to London, with the consequent housing of suitors, solicitors, and witnesses at strange hotels and the finding of their way about unknown and confusing Courts of Justice.

Then there is the difficulty of keeping witnesses in attendance away from their homes, since there is as much uncertainty in London as elsewhere as to the exact day and hour of possible trial. The mere fact that all parties concerned in a case can get back to their homes and offices and shops each day and so keep in touch with their own business, serves to ease the burden of litigation.

But there is another more substantial advantage in the local trial of actions. The experience of provincial juries in itself, in the majority of cases, is a distinct aid to justice being secured as well as being the cause of a great saving of time in the administration of the law in actions which would be "Greek" to a London juryman. They are more apt also to judge of the value of the subject-matter in dispute or of its triviality in the particular community or in the local surrounding circumstances than jurymen who are strangers to the locality could be. An agricultural jury, not necessarily composed of farmers, but of provincial townsmen accustomed to agricultural dealings, can adjudi

cate more correctly and expeditiously on a right-of-way dispute, or on a matter of tenantry, waste, trespass, or breach of contract in the sale of grain by sample, than a London jury or a jury of mere tradesmen at a commercial centre. A Nottingham jury will grasp the material points in a lace machine dispute quicker than a Derby jury living in the neighbouring county. A Northampton jury will grapple with an action over leather " uppers" which would require hours of explanation and illustration to an average London jury. There are, again, questions as to cropping, tenantry, notices, leases, hiring of servants, and of trading in many ways which are entirely local and customary, for all of which a local jury forms a surer tribunal than the sharpest Judge or the smartest London special jury.

Moreover, the importance of a libel or slander may be entirely local or accidental to the position of the parties in a particular neighbourhood, and is therefore peculiarly capable of being appreciated at its proper value by a jury drawn from a similar environment, though not of course one too closely connected with the actual locality.

Lastly, it is a mutual advantage for the Judges to know the provinces, and for the provincials to know Her Majesty's Judges. Their presence serves as a useful civic lesson for the provincial public, more accustomed to be left to the tender mercies of Quarter Sessions and County Courts, and forms a standard to which the administration of justice can be raised in the public view. For this reason it is a matter of regret that the Lords Justices cannot take their turn, say once a year, at civil assizes. They would thereby keep in touch with work at Nisi Prius, while they themselves would not be lost to sight though to legal memory dear, a phrase which inevitably escapes one at the thought that Lord Justice Vaughan Williams and Lord Justice Collins can no longer be numbered among the visible planets in the circuit orbit.