183J.] Lord Broughams Local Courts. 49 



has cut out other work for them ; they are to be not only judges, but 

 arbitrators not only arbitrators, but conciliators. Even these offices 

 will not fill up their time sufficiently ; and they must occupy their spare 

 hours with a little equity practice, for the recovery of legacies, &c., just 

 to tax the versatility of their powers. 



Rarce aves must these new judges be ; and where in the world are 

 fifty of them to be found ? But supposing them to be found, will their 

 courts be acceptable, at last, to the suitors ? We say boldly they 

 will not. They are inferior courts, and will inevitably share the fate 

 and fortunes of other inferior courts. Such courts never have been 

 respected. Courts for determining small causes involving, we mean, 

 small sums are numerous enough already in this country ; but they 

 are little used reluctantly resorted to and falling off in practice year 

 by year. Law is cheap enough there, but, whatever may be its quality, 

 nobody believes it good ; and Lord Brougham himself has told us, that 

 though cheap justice is a very good thing, yet costly justice is better 

 than cheap injustice; ay, and people will never believe otherwise. 

 Inferior courts abound in America, and every body has heard with what 

 effect. In France, too, the courts of the Juges de Paix are as thick as 

 hops, and as little respected as the pied-poudre ones of our own fairs. 

 It becomes disgraceful to appeal to them it is like dragging a man 

 through a horsepond creditable to neither party. It is not, in short, 

 in the nature of man to be satisfied with an inferior article where a 

 better is attainable, or supposed to be so. Nobody buys willingly what 

 is bad in his own town, when he can get the good at the same price, 

 or nearly so, by sending to the capital. 



But the respectability of the new judges the rank they hold in the 

 profession the very amount of income, will give weight to their deci- 

 sions, will invest them with an authority that no other inferior courts 

 ever before possessed, and, therefore, by no principle of sound logic can 

 similar conclusions be drawn from premises so unlike. Well, then, let 

 us reconsider these judges invested with the paraphernalia of superior 

 authority stuck up in a bit of a room at some paltry inn. Are they 

 superior in standing or station to the late Welsh judges to existing 

 recorders in corporate towns to commissioners of bankruptcy, or even 

 to the commissioners of insolvent courts ? No, they will not be supe- 

 rior, for instance, to the Welsh judges, the best of these classes. Now 

 on what ground did you get rid of them ? " Because" we quote the 

 Chancellor he is always at hand among other objections " they 

 never change their circuit j one, for instance, goes the Carmarthen cir- 

 cuit, another the Brecon circuit, and a third the Chester circuit but 

 always the same circuit. And what is the inevitable consequence? 

 Why they become acquainted with the gentry, the magistrates, almost 

 with the tradesmen, of each district, the very witnesses who come before 

 them ; and intimately with the practitioners, whether counsel or attor- 

 neys. The names, the faces, the characters, the histories, of all these 

 persons are familiar to them ; and out of this too great knowledge grow 

 up likings and prejudices, which never can, by any possibility, cast a 

 shadow across the open, broad, and pure path of the judges of West- 

 minster Hall." 



Now the new judges are precisely the Welsh judges they are run 

 in the same mould ; they are eternally in the same circuit, and must be 

 liable to the very same objections though some of those objections are 



M.M. New Series. Voi. XI. No. 61. H 



