Any barrister of seven years' standing is eligible to become a County Court judge, and appointments have often been obtained by men quite devoid of any practical legal knowledge. Many of the judges never practised at the bar at all, and never had any prospect of doing so with success. The County Court judges, therefore, it will be observed, need no further qualification than is required by a young student for a call to the bar, and these are the men who have to weigh the arguments of able counsel in complicated Admiralty and Employers' Liability cases. The Lord Chancellor, it is true, has power to remove any judge on account of inability or misbehaviour. This, however, is an extreme measure hardly ever enforced, and it is notorious that many of the County Court judges are totally unfit for even the decent performance of their work. Some of them are worn-out, old men who are quite incapacitated by deafness and other infirmities, to say nothing of ignorance, stupidity, and querulousness, and their retention on the Bench constitutes a great evil to suitors as well as a public scandal.
They may, with the consent of the Lord Chancellor, retire on a pension of £1,000 a year if suffering from permanent infirmity. As a matter of fact, however, no man likes to have £500 a year deducted from his income, and the consequence is that the judges retain their positions until they are long past their work. It is much more convenient to appoint a deputy than to retire, and out of the multitude of briefless barristers a deputy can be obtained for a very small sum. Indeed, there have often been scandalous instances of a judge retaining his salary while paying a deputy £200 a year or so to do his work. This was at one time so common, and the men appointed were often so grossly incompetent, that it was found desirable that the names of all deputy judges should be submitted to the Lord Chancellor for his approval. But, notwithstanding this restriction, abuses are still very numerous, for though the Lord Chancellor may take care that the deputy is a more or less capable man, he cannot dictate the amount of his payment. Thus the judicial "sweating system" continues to flourish as before.
The judges of the County Court are greatly assisted in their duties by the Registrars. These officials, who are appointed by the judges, exercise judicial functions, and receive a salary which is regulated by the number of plaints entered in their Courts, but may in no case exceed £1,400 a year. The duties of the Registrar, who must be a solicitor of five years' standing, are multifarious, and include the hearing of Bankruptcy cases and undefended suits. The office of Registrar will in future include that of High Bailiff, for the last-named functionary is by the Act of 1888 to be allowed to die out, that is to say, vacancies are not to be refilled, and the Registrar will undertake the duties of High Bailiff in addition to his own at an increased salary. The High Bailiff is responsible for executing the process of the Courts, and is assisted by sub-bailiffs, of whom there are a varying number for each Court.
From what we have already said, it will have been gathered that in populous commercial districts a County Court judge may be kept largely occupied with cases of as much importance, and involving as difficult legal questions, as the bulk of those tried in the High Court. In other words, legislation has imposed upon the County Court the same class of work as that which was, until a comparatively recent period, confined to the High Court. In 1889 no less than 1,902 cases were remitted from the superior Courts.
Bankruptcy cases involving property of unlimited value and most delicate and difficult points of law, Employers' Liability cases, Admiralty cases, and a variety of other legal work requiring the highest judicial capacity can now be tried in the County Court. And yet, by some absurd superstition, an ordinary common law action for contract for £50 or above can only be tried by a judge of the High Court.
Side by side with the enforced idleness of many of the highly paid County Court judges, there is in the High Court, both on the Equity and the Common Law side, a growing accumulation of arrears. Many of these cases involve comparatively small sums, and they might very well be tried before a competent County Court judge. A litigant at the present time entering an action for £51 in the High Court will be subjected to a delay of at least twelve months; whereas if he sues for £49 in the County Court, even in a busy district, he may reasonably expect to have his case settled within a month. By a reorganisation of the County Court system, properly distributing the work among the judges, cases up to £100 might always be tried before them, and the congested state of the High Courts would be thereby relieved, without the necessity of appointing new judges with salaries of £5,000 a year—a remedy frequently advocated. But that only thoroughly reliable men should be appointed as County Court judges is a sine quâ non.
Besides these matters the Legislature might reasonably address itself to the evils resulting from imprisonment for debt; or, as it is now, out of respect for the humanitarian tendency of the age, euphoniously termed, contempt of Court. Six thousand five hundred and fifty-four debtors were actually imprisoned in 1889. There were no less than 213,831 judgment summonses, and 63,836 warrants of commitment issued. It is a somewhat melancholy fact that the number of judgment summonses in 1889 was nearly 80,000 in excess of what it had been ten years previously. It is, however, satisfactory to observe that in the number of imprisonments in the same period there was a decrease of 1,358.
FATHER OF EIGHT CHILDREN—AND NO WORK!