1831.] Lord Broughams Local Courts. 51 



But in nothing will these courts fail in point of attraction and effi- 

 ciency so much as in the want of counsel of approved ability. You 

 cannot have a body of intelligent counsel attending these courts ; and 

 without counsel, who will regard them ? The court is constantly on 

 the move ; every month the judge changes his position, and often twice ; 

 for instance, he sits at Dover, and adjourns the same month to Canter- 

 bury at Rochester, and adjourns to Ramsgate at Hythe, and adjourns 

 to Romney. Conceive the expense of this eternal itinerancy ; no fees 

 can ever meet the expense. At Maidstone, the court sits four times. 

 Maidstone will, of course, be the judge's home, and there may collect 

 two or three counsel, who will also travel occasionally to other towns, 

 when they scent a quarry that will pay. But if a decent pleader should 

 grow up among them, like country actors, he will not be content till he 

 gets upon the London boards. But the fact will be, the business of the 

 barrister must drop wholly into the hands of solicitors; and will the 

 suitors be content with solicitors' law ? It may be as good, but they 

 will not think so. The courts, in short, if they begin respectably and 

 with favour, will fall off with the novelty ; they will degenerate in pub- 

 lic estimation will be scouted, and every evasion will be practised to 

 swell causes to an amount to entitle them to go into the superior courts. 



After all, our objection to the new arrangements, at the bottom, is, 

 that they are really and truly superfluous, and this may readily be 

 shewn. Supposing them to be fully effective and if they are not 

 effective, why think of them for a moment ? what is to become of the 

 time of the superior judges? According to the Chancellor's own data 

 of the 93,375 affidavits filed in the courts in 1827, no less than 78,000 

 were below 100 so that one-sixth only of the usual business would 

 be left for the Westminster Courts. Again, the business at the London 

 sittings, before Lord Tenterden, in 1829, four-fifths of the cases were 

 for sums below 100. So that the fair inference is, that not more than 

 a sixth, or at most a fifth of the business would be left for the old 

 courts. But it is quite manifest, at the same time, that these old courts 

 have not now more to do than they might easily manage, to the perfect 

 satisfaction to the country. As to their actual business, some have too 

 much perhaps, and some certainly too little. But, in the name of com- 

 mon sense, why should this inequality longer exist? We know the 

 immediate causes are, difference of process privileges of the solicitors 

 of the courts monopoly of Serjeants, &c. ; but what is to prevent, 

 where the interests of the country demand them, the sweeping away of 

 every one of these impediments ? Place the three courts perfectly upon 

 an equality with appeals, not to one of them, but to the whole body of 

 the judges and we are quite confident, the practice of the courts 

 would speedily equalize. If one were from any cause, to get a super- 

 abundance of business, it would quickly be reduced, by the prospect of 

 an earlier decision in the leisure court. The business would have a con- 

 stant tendency to equalize counsel, who of course, must be at liberty to 

 practice in all, or a favourite pleader would break in upon the natural 

 adjustment. 



But such equalization will not be thought perhaps to remove the great 

 evils which the local courts are established expressly to remove expense 

 and delay. We are persuaded it will do both, especially when the 

 charges suggested by the law commission are carried into effect (and 

 really Lord R. ought to wait and see how these will operate), with some 

 others that would prove equally effective. The sweeping away of the 



H 2 



