218 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States. 
disreputable wretches who are willing to barter their judgment 
for a paltry fee. The system becomes in its essence, in many 
cases, a legalized method of bribery. The whole administration 
of justice is perverted in that large class of cases in which the 
humbler classes of the community are most likely to be affected. 
Such a system would not be tolerated in the higher courts, while 
here it is continued year after year without protest, because 
the cases affected as a rule are petty and insignificant in regard 
to the amount involved. 
In many Eastern cities the mayor and aldermen exercise the 
function and receive the fees of magistrates. These, as a rule, 
have been as much influenced by the desire to obtain fees as any 
other justices; nor has their judicial function tended to take 
away the stigma usually attached to the very name of Aider- 
man. One of the methods of reform proposed is to abolish en¬ 
tirely the office of justice of the peace and turn over the duties 
to salaried police courts. 1 
D. FEES OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF 
JUSTICE. 
One of the relics of barbarism which exists in some states or, 
perhaps more accurately, one of the barbarous inventions of this 
nineteenth century, is the system of paying district or state 
attorney’s fees varying in amount according to the number and 
character of the convictions secured. This method is not based 
on the experience of any state, but is like so many other un¬ 
practical schemes which are adopted and applied in many 
Western commonwealths. To be sure, there have been laws in 
some of the original states which are somewhat similar and 
may be called antecedents of these. But the differences are 
broad and far-reaching. A Connecticut statute of 1796 2 pro¬ 
vided that the state attorney should receive fees roughly pro¬ 
portioned to the nature of the trial. 3 For prosecuting a trial 
for a capital offence he secured $14, for any other criminal case 
$9, and for any civil case $3.34. This, however, is widely 
1 Altgeld, Lire Questions. 
2 Statutes , p. 181. 
3 An early law of Delaware gave the attorney general $10 for the prose¬ 
cution of a capital offence and $2.40 for drawing an indictment, etc. 
