CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



session. There are also magistrates of police. 

 In civil causes, the county courts a modern in- 

 stitution have, in England, jurisdiction where 

 the debt in dispute does not exceed .50 in amount. 

 For matters of bankruptcy and insolvency, there 

 are courts both in London and Dublin, and in the 

 provinces in England. Besides the civil and 

 criminal courts, there are ecclesiastical courts 

 which have jurisdiction in matters of church- 

 discipline. Until lately, the ecclesiastical courts 

 had jurisdiction in cases connected with marriage, 

 wills, &c., and the courts of Admiralty superin- 

 tended maritime causes, and questions between 

 persons of different nations ; but such cases now 

 go before the Exchequer division, and the Probate, 

 Divorce, and Admiralty division of the new ' High 

 Court of Justice.' The Prosecution of Offences 

 Act, 1879, sanctioned for the first time the 

 appointment of a public prosecutor in England. 



Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, the Isle of Man, 

 and other small islands in the British Channel, 

 which politically belong to the United Kingdom, 

 possess a variety of peculiar privileges and legal 

 usages. 



In Scotland, laws peculiar to itself, founded 

 upon the principles of the Roman and the feudal 

 law, are administered by a supreme civil tribunal, 

 denominated the Court of Session, which remains 

 fixed at Edinburgh, and by a criminal tribunal, 

 named the Court of Justiciary, which not only sits 

 in the same city, but makes circuits through the 

 provinces. The sheriff or county courts exercise 

 a very extensive jurisdiction in civil matters it 

 being almost unlimited, unless where the matter at 

 issue involves a question of ownership of land, 

 houses, or other heritage, or relates to the consti- 

 tution of a marriage, or to divorce. The sheriffs 

 are also criminal judges in cases not sufficiently 

 important to come before the supreme court 

 Minor civil and criminal cases are also judged in 

 Scotland by the justices of the peace, and by the 

 magistrates of the boroughs. Scotland possesses 

 the advantage of public prosecution of offences, 

 the injured party being only a complainer to the 

 public prosecutor. The chief public prosecutor is 

 the Lord Advocate ; the inferior public prosecu- 

 tors, in connection with the various minor courts, 

 are termed Procurators-fiscal. The whole expense 

 of prosecution is defrayed by the national ex- 

 chequer. 



The peculiar boast of the criminal law of the 

 British Empire is the jury. In England and Ire- 

 land, where the principle of the criminal law 

 requires the injured party or his representative to 

 prosecute, he can only do so by permission of a 

 jury of accusation, called the grand jury ; another 

 jury sits for the purpose of deciding if the evi- 

 dence against the accused has established the 

 guilt. Juries of the latter kind consist, in Eng- 

 land and Ireland, of twelve men, whose verdict 

 must be unanimous ; in Scotland, the jury upon 

 the charge consists of fifteen men, who decide by 

 a majority of votes. The jury is an institution of 

 Teutonic origin, transmitted to Britain through 

 the Saxons ; and it is justly considered as a most 

 efficient protection of the subject from the vindic- 

 tiveness of power. Civil cases, turning upon 

 matters of fact, are likewise decided in all parts 

 of the United Kingdom by juries consisting of 

 twelve men. Unanimity in the verdict is required 

 in these civil cases, as well in Scotland as in Eng- 



183 



land and Ireland, with this difference in Scotland, 

 that, after the jury have been kept six hours in 

 deliberation, the verdict of nine is sufficient 



CHURCH. 



In Great Britain, the Protestant religion is 

 established by law. But there is the broadest 

 toleration of all creeds not offensive to public or 

 private morals. Non-established churches are 

 allowed to manage their own affairs as they 

 please under protection of the law, though they 

 have no subsidies or patronage conceded them 

 by the state. In England, the Protestant Epis- 

 copal, in Scotland the Presbyterian churches are 

 established by law. In Ireland, there is now 

 no established church, the Protestant Episcopal 

 Church, which was united to the Church of Eng- 

 land, having been disestablished on and after 

 ist January 1871. The sovereign is supreme head 

 and governor of the established churches in Eng- 

 land and Scotland ; and in the case of old sees, 

 nominates the archbishops and bishops, the form 

 being, to send to the dean and chapter of the 

 vacant see the royal license to elect the crown 

 nominee, and afterwards to confirm the appoint- 

 ment under the Great Seal The bishoprics of 

 Gloucester and Bristol, Chester, Peterborough, 

 Oxford, Ripon, and Manchester are conferred by 

 direct letters-patent from the crown. 



In the colonies, no one church, as a rule, is 

 favoured by the state more than another. The 

 crown may appoint colonial bishops, but it can 

 give them no jurisdiction, and it is only under 

 special acts of parliament that the bishops in 

 India have any jurisdiction at all. The Church 

 of England can take no step out of the ordinary 

 routine save by act of parliament Laymen, save 

 through parliament, cannot interfere with the doc- 

 trines or practice of the church which doctrines, 

 as defined by the 39 Articles and Book of 

 Common Prayer, are, as regards disputes as to 

 interpretation, liable to be adjudicated on by the 

 Judicial Committee of the Privy-council, as a 

 tribunal of final appeal. Each bishop has a dio- 

 cese the two archbishops of York and Canter- 

 bury have provinces, and the latter is ' Primate of 

 all England and Metropolitan.' Other ranks in 

 the hierarchy of the Anglican church are arch- 

 deacons, deans, and prebendaries, rectors, vicars, 

 curates though, strictly speaking, there are only 

 three orders of clergy bishops, priests, and 

 deacons. The provinces of York and Canter- 

 bury have each a convocation of bishops, arch- 

 deacons, and deans, of proctors representing the 

 inferior clergy, which assemblies are summoned 

 by the archbishops in accordance with a royal 

 mandate. They must have the sanction of the 

 sovereign before their resolutions are binding. In 

 England there are 12,000 parishes and 200 extra 

 parochial places, and in every parish there is a 

 parish church, ministered unto by the rector, who 

 holds the living. He is sometimes called the 

 parson or persona ecclesice that is, the jural 

 person who holds the rights that inhere in a 

 parish church. He has for life a freehold of 

 parsonage, glebe, tithes, and other dues, which 

 dues may be 'appropriated' in cases where the 

 'living' is spiritually annexed to some corpo- 

 ration which is patron of the benefice. In such 

 cases, the minister appointed by the corporation 



