48 Lord Brougham's Local Courts. [JAN. 



most serious grievance, for common experience proves the plaintiff to be 

 generally in the right. Here then the plaintiff is placed in a worse con- 

 dition than before, and this is called reform, and the admiration of the 

 world is challenged for so ingenious an improvement ! 



We see then how expense is likely to be saved; the defendant is 

 spared at the cost of the plaintiff, or in other words, in nine cases out of 

 ten probably, the offender at the cost of the sufferer. Suppose the 

 plaintiff to be a dry-salter in London, who has furnished articles in the 

 way of his trade to a customer at Morpeth. The defendant's residence 

 is within the district court of Northumberland, and the cause comes on 

 for trial at Newcastle. The plaintiff, to prove his case, is obliged to carry 

 from London to Newcastle his books, the person who made the entries, 

 the packer, the porter who delivered the goods to the carrier, and pos- 

 sibly somebody to prove the quality and value of the goods the whole 

 of which expense and inconvenience might have been spared, by laying 

 his action, .as he could now do, in London. Well, but if the expense 

 attending the bringing up witnesses cannot be materially reduced, that 

 of lawyers will be. They are on the spot, and charges of travelling are 

 spared. No such thing the supposition shews the author of the plan 

 knows little of the actual practice of business. Had he consulted the 

 first solicitor that fell in his way, he might have learned better. The 

 country attorney rarely attends the Westminster courts ; he transacts the 

 whole through his London agent, and the difference of expense to the 

 suitor amounts to a trifling postage. No additional fees are charged : the 

 fees are shared between the tow.n and country attorney in some fixed pro- 

 portion. It is as easy to act through the metropolis, as through a county 

 town. In most legal matters the course and management of men of 

 business has made it actually more so. The facilities, too, of convey- 

 ance, now-a-da}rs, annihilates both space and time, and cheapens expense 

 accordingly. But under this new and choice arrangement, how is the 

 plaintiff to act who has debtors at a distance ? Why naturally he con- 

 sults his attorney where his case is, where his cause of action arose, 

 and his witnesses live. Must that attorney have an agent in every dis- 

 trict town ? If he has not, how is he to serve notices, and to be served 

 with them ? And if he has, at once the new system is worse and more 

 expensive than the old, for certainly the quantity of business will 

 never enable him to make the same arrangement that is now made 

 between the country attorney and the central practitioner in town. 



Justice, then, accessible, prompt and cheap the promises which these 

 new institutions hold out they will not be able to furnish more success- 

 fully than the existing courts, especially with the curtailments sug- 

 gested by the law commission, at once easy to be accomplished, and not 

 likely to meet with insuperable obstructions. 



The matter must not be dismissed, however, so abruptty. Turn we 

 for a moment to the business of these courts. They are intended, it 

 seems, to relieve the courts of Westminster and the assize Nisi Prius j 

 and, of course, whatever comes before them, comes before these district 

 judges within certain circumscriptions. All actions of debt, trespass, 

 or trover not exceeding 100 ; and all actions of tort, or personal 

 wrongs, where the damages are not beyond 50. All actions, again, for 

 breach of agreement, whether under seal or not, where damages are 

 within 100 though, by consent, the court may try these to any amount 

 of damages. The judges are not to anticipate an idle life, their creator 



