1828.] Welsh Jurisprudence. 471 
trials to eleven hundred and seven ; but as the decrees pronounced in 
the various bills filed did not exceed two hundred and fifty-six, and the 
orders were only seven, the aggregate of causes actually despatched, but 
just reaches two thousand six hundred and eighty-seven. This divided 
over a period of eleven years, will give an average of two hundred and 
forty-four and a fraction, for each year; and this again distributed 
among the eight judges, the share of each will be a fraction more than 
thirty. Their wages, however, for trying thirty causes, amounting to 
eleven hundred and fifty pounds, it follows that the cost of judgment in 
each cause is somewhat more than thirty-eight pounds—So much for 
the cost to the public. Let us next see what the proportion of payment 
is to those who receive it. Now both circuits together never occupy 
more than six weeks in the year, three in the spring, and three in the 
autumn ; and, as there are but six working days in the week, there can 
be but thirty-six for the adjudication of these thirty and a fraction 
causes. From this we may fairly strike off the odd six for the days 
idled away in cpening commissions, going through the farce of session 
sermons, grand jury charges, and all the parade of wasting time, and the 
estimate will therefore be for each judge one cause per day—and that, 
be it remembered, at the rate of thirty-eight pounds per cause. There 
are, however, just three hundred and thirteen working days in every 
year ; if then the Welsh judges were in actual employment all the year 
round, at the same rate of business, and at the same scale of wages, 
each of these inferior functionaries would just receive the trifling salary 
of eleven thousand eight hundred and ninety-four pounds, which is only 
one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four pounds more than the chief 
Justice of all England. But this is by no means a fair way of putting 
the estimate. On the English circuit, at the very lowest, we apprehend 
the daily average of causes cannot be less than six ;* and, as all Welsh 
causes of importance are, for obvious reasons, carried to the next county 
within the English jurisdiction, and those left for the Court of Great 
Session, on the whole considerably less intricate and difficult than Eng- 
lish ones, the Welsh causes ought probably not to consume above half the 
time of the latter in their trial. Taking, however, the average of busi- 
ness from the English, and the pay from the Welsh circuit, this would 
give the trifling rate of payment for each individual Welsh judge of 
seventy-one thousand three hundred and sixty-four pounds per annum ; 
which, it cannot help being observed, is below the mark by a few thou- 
sands at least ; and this for a little more than an easy drive through one 
_ of the most romantic countries in the world, twice in each year—once 
when the voice of spring is ringing through its mountains, and again 
when its magnificent vales are embrowning with an autumn sun. 
Some little difference between a Welsh judge and the worthy Parson 
Adams, who, “at the age of forty-five, found himself possessed of the 
handsome income of twenty-three pounds a-year, with which, however, 
he was unable to make any great show, because he lived in a dear 
country, and was, moreover, a little incumbered with a wife and six 
children.” How close must the legal population be pressing upon the 
means of subsistence. Yet with all this in their eyes, the Finance Com- 
mittee on Courts of Justice, of 1798, quietly report “among other 
* In the Hints for more Speedy Administration of Justice, page 21, the annual average 
_issaid to be 2,090, ¢ 
