50 Lord Brougham's Local Courts. QJAN. 



mere sarcasms and insinuations, little applicable to the honourable men at 

 whom they were levelled. But a much more serious objection will apply, 

 from which the Welsh judges were most of them exempt. Most of them 

 practised in the superior courts, and though we do not much admire 

 seeing the same individuals, now judges, now advocates, they were at 

 least familiar with the practice of those courts ; they caught the current 

 tone of those courts ; they kept up with the latest decisions ; and, at all 

 events, if improvements were made, they took them with them to their 

 own tribunals. But the new local judge never stirs from his circuit; 

 he never visits the Westminster Courts ; he has nothing to do there ; 

 lie has no intercourse or communion with his brethren ; and the stock 

 in trade he takes with him must last him, whether it grows stale and 

 out of date and application or not. Books to be sure are accessible ; 

 bifc all these judges will not be readers ; and if they were, does any 

 person imagine reading reports will supply the want of personal ac- 

 quaintance with the superior courts ? Few consultors of reports, we 

 believe, are inclined to value them as highly as their own experience in 

 courts, where they see, hear, and estimate upon the fullest grounds. 

 What, in fact, gives superiority to the supreme judges of the land but 

 their intercommunion their interchange of sentiments ? they consult 

 each other ; one is a check upon the other, and a stimulus ; and a pro- 

 gressive improvement in practical knowledge, and, above all, uniformity 

 is the useful result. 



But these local judges will be the Jupiters of their own circuits; they 

 will bear no rivals near their thrones, and will have none. They will 

 have no one to check their decisions, and will naturally play the tyrant, 

 controllable only by appeals. The inevitable and speedy consequence 

 will be, that what is law in one county will not be law in another. 

 The judge of Canterbury will differ from the judge of York, and each 

 of them from his brother of Bristol, and neither even know of the dis- 

 crepancy. Points of difference will multiply insensibly and abundantly, 

 and the only remedy will be appeals ; and appeals there will doubtless 

 be to such an extent, as quickly to extinguish all hope of any useful 

 result from these courts. The only advantage will be, the superior 

 courts will have to try the judges instead of the causes the value of 

 which the country will soon estimate. 



A mighty emphasis is laid upon their efficiency as arbitrators, and 

 still more as conciliators. Now arbitration, on the order of a court, is 

 notoriously an unpopular expedient. To make it indeed acceptable, it 

 must be the free choice of the parties. No good is likely to be accom- 

 plished by adding more compulsion to what we find described, and 

 justly, as a sort of mixed bully-and-coax system of tactics, by which 

 judge and counsel combine to force reluctant parties to submit to the 

 decision of somebody, of whom they know nothing, and in whom they 

 have no confidence. But the conciliatory functions of the courts seem 

 to be the favourite contrivance of the author of them. Here the judge 

 is to play the adviser ; and the object is to spare the embryo litigant 

 the expense of consulting an attorney. In France similar courts have 

 utterly failed, and why should we expect a different effect here ? A 

 French authority thus laments over the failure. " Que cette idee etait 

 philosophique et salutaire de n'ouvrir Tacces des tribunaux qu'apres 

 I'epuisement de toutes les voies de conciliation ! pourquoi faut-il qu'- 

 une si belle institution n'ait pas produit tout le bien qu'on devait en 

 attcndre, and que les effets aient si peu repondu aux esperances?" 



