Assuming, therefore, that the future of the County Court as a debt-collecting machine is to be a future of decrease, that the legislature are going to save the taxpayer’s money and encourage thrift by refusing to collect undesirable debts, what will be its future as a litigating machine?
I may commend to anyone desirous of studying in further detail the arguments for and against the extension of County Courts, the proceedings of the Norwood Commission on County Courts in 1878. There is no doubt that if the business man had had his way the County Court in urban centres would have long ago been a district Court for all but cases of some peculiar public or legal importance. The great enemy to such an extension has always been the lawyer, and the London lawyer in particular. A very eminent solicitor, giving evidence before the Commission in 1878, had no confidence whatever in County Courts. His evidence was very typical, and shows how carefully one should criticise the evidence of a professional man who is also a very superior person. His view was that “When occasionally a client of mine of position who has been summoned to the County Court comes to me, I am unable to leave him in the lurch, but I never go into the County Court myself.” Asked whether he thought it “undignified,” he replied enigmatically: “It is not a matter of dignity, but a man of position cannot go into the County Court.” It turned out later that it was a physical difficulty, for it was “quite inconsistent with the position of a professional man to stand in the County Court with women bringing cases about washing-tubs, and servants summoning their masters for wages.”
He called them untaught knaves unmannerly
To bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse,
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
Dozens of times, he told the Commission, barristers had declined to go into the County Court, and his clerk had gone to half-a-dozen barristers before he could find one who would demean himself by taking a case in the County Court. County Courts were, in his view, “inherently incapable of conducting important litigation.” The County Court Judges had not, in his opinion, the confidence of the country, because they are not taken from the successful members of the Bar, it is known that their salary is an extremely small one, there is no Bar attending before them, there is no report of their proceedings, and there are difficulties of appeal. One thing I find very delightful in the eminent solicitor’s evidence.
Question.—Some of the County Court Judges are very competent men, are they not?
Answer.—Extremely.
Question.—You think that there are some who are not equal to the others?
Answer.—Yes.