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courts, and more especially in those of district munsifs, lias 

 been fast increasing, while owing to the multiplicity of laws, 

 the growing legal consciousness of the people and complexity 

 of social relations, the rise of a class of legal practitioners 

 with high educational qualifications, and the necessity for 

 justifying every decision given by such elaborate arguments 

 as will commend themselves to appellate tribunals, the old 

 rough methods of arriving at decisions are no longer available. 

 To meet the growing work the Government had recently 

 to appoint additional district munsifs, but the relief thus 

 afiforded has hardly been appreciable ; and as judicial officers 

 cannot be indefinitely multiplied, except at enormous cost and 

 consequent increase of taxation, the expediency of leaving 

 petty litigation to be dealt with by popular tribunals becomes 

 obvious. The present system of administration of civil justice 

 is felt to be faulty also in other important respects. The 

 necessity for ensuring full consideration of the facts and of 

 the legal aspects of each case as well as rectitude of decision, 

 by tribunals in the rural tracts presided over by single paid 

 judges not amenable to the influence of public opinion, has 

 led to the provision of an elaborate system of appeals ; and 

 this has in its turn given rise to serious evils. The chances 

 of error in the ascertainment of facts even by native judges, 

 conversant with the language of the country, and the customs, 

 habits and idiosyncracies of the people, in accordance with 

 artificial tests borrowed from a foreign jurisprudence, are 

 considerable ; and these chances are greatly multiplied when 

 appellate courts presided over, for the most part, by Euro- 

 pean judges have to decide from recorded evidence on the 

 credibility of witnesses and the truth of the story told by them, 

 without having an opportunity of watching their demeanour 

 at first hand when they tell the story. Added to this, there 

 is the inconvenience arising from the absence of opportunities 

 for legal training on the part of the European officers who 

 are liable under administrative necessities to be transferred 

 from executive to judicial appointments, even when they 

 have no special aptitude for judicial work, while the native 

 judges in the lower courts are mostly men who have had a 

 legal training. These circumstances enhance greatly the 

 uncertainty to which litigation must always be more or less 

 subject and, I believe, I am expressing the opinion of persons 

 who have had special opportunities of watching the working 

 of the courts, when I say that these circumstances have led 

 to the growth of much unwholesome litigation . The following 

 remarks of the Honorable Mr. Chentsal Rao extracted from 



