obtain redress from another person, official or private, for a wrong-slander, trespass, breach of contract, infringement of patents, and the like-alleged to have been committed against the bringer of the action, or "plaintiff," by the person against whom the action is brought, or "defendant." In matters of this kind the function of the public authorities is merely to judge, i.e., to determine the merits of the controversy. The parties may at any time agree to compromise and end the controversy out of court, as can never be done in criminal proceedings.

The court in which a civil action will be brought depends, in the first instance, on the amount of the claim. If it is less than £100, or if, in certain cases, the value of the property about which the dispute arises is not more than £500, the suit will probably be instituted in a county court. The county courts of the present day, established by act of 1846, replace, although they are not historically descended from, the ancient courts of the hundred and county. They are known as county courts, but in point of fact the area of their jurisdiction is a district which not only is smaller than the county but bears no relation to it. There are in England at present some five hundred of these districts, each with its own "court house," the object being to bring the agencies of justice close to the people and so to reduce the costs and delays incident to litigation. The volume of business to be transacted in a district is normally insufficient to occupy a judge during any large part of his working time, and the districts are grouped in some fifty circuits, to each of which is assigned by the Lord Chancellor one judge who holds court in each district of his circuit approximately once a month. The judges are paid (£1500 a year) out of the national treasury and hold office during good behavior. Procedure in the county court is simple, and frequently the case is conducted by the parties in person. Where the amount in dispute exceeds £5 either party may demand a jury (which for this purpose consists of eight persons); but this is rarely done. Where there is a jury it finds a verdict on the facts proved, under the direction of the judge; where there is none the judge decides on the facts and on the law, and in either case gives a judgment for the plaintiff or the defendant, which is enforced by seizure of the property of the party who fails to obey it, or even by imprisonment. The object of civil proceedings is, however, compensation, not punishment. There can be no appeal from the court's decision on a question of fact; but on a point of law appeal lies to a "divisional" sitting of the High Court of Justice, at which two judges

are present. In cases arising out of workmen's compensation and some other matters, appeals on questions of law may go to the Court of Appeal, and, ultimately, to the House of Lords.1

Where the plaintiff's claim exceeds the jurisdiction of the county court he must, and, even if it does not, he may, bring his action in the High Court of Justice. This High Court is the lower chamber of the Supreme Court of Judicature provided for in 1873 and set up in 1875.2 It is organized in three "divisions " -Chancery, King's Bench, and Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty. In theory, any kind of civil action can be begun in any one of these divisions; and there is no limit to the importance of the actions that may be tried there. In practice, each division retains the kind of business it inherited from the tribunals out of which it was formed. The judges, whose number is variable, are appointed by the crown on nomination of the Lord Chancellor and hold office during good behavior. Under varying conditions, too complex to be stated here, they sit singly and in groups (although never as one body), at the capital and on circuit. There is no appeal on a question of fact from the judge (or jury, if there be one), although on various grounds, e.g., that the verdict was unwarranted by the evidence, application for a new trial may be made to the Court of Appeal, which is the upper chamber of the above-mentioned Supreme Court of Judicature. Appeals on points of law go to this same tribunal. The Court of Appeal consists of the Lord Chancellor, three other high judicial personages sitting by ex-officio right, and six Lords Justices of Appeal specially appointed by the crown on recommendation of the Lord Chancellor; and while it is technically a single court it usually sits in two sections, each actually consisting of three of the specially appointed justices. The sittings are held at London; no witnesses are heard, and there is no jury; and the business, chiefly hearing appeals in civil cases from the High Court, is exclusively appellate; the decisions take the form of affirmation, reversal, or alteration of the judgment of the lower court.

The House of Lords and the Judicial Committee. The dissatisfied litigant has still one more appeal, if he can stand the delay and expense, viz., to the House of Lords. Starting with control, through appeal, over the courts of common law in

1 S. Rosenbaum, "Studies in English Civil Procedure: the County Courts," in Pa. Law Rev., Feb., Mar., Apr., 1916; Report of the Lord Chancellor's Committee or the County Courts. Cd. 431. 1919.

2 Maitland and Montague, Sketch of English Legal History, 164-170; Carter, History of English Legal Institutions, Chap. xviii; Holdsworth, History of English Law, I, Chap. viii.

England, this body in time acquired a similar supremacy in both civil and criminal actions over all British and Irish tribunals (and in civil, but not criminal, actions over all Scottish tribunals) except those of an ecclesiastical character. In 1873 it was proposed to abolish this control, and an act to that effect was passed. But, on the understanding that there would be an alteration of the composition of the chamber when sitting as a court of appeals, the measure was repealed before it took effect. Provision was thereupon made, in the Appellate Jurisdiction Act of 1876, for two (later three, four, and now six) salaried life peers to be selected from men of legal eminence, and to be known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. No judgment can be rendered on an appeal unless at least three "law lords " (these life members, together with all hereditary peers who hold, or have held, high judicial office 1) have been present at the hearing of the arguments, and have taken part in the decision. Nominally, judicial business is transacted by the chamber as a whole, and every member has a right not only to be present but to participate in the decisions. Actually, it is transacted by the little group of law lords under the presidency of the Lord Chancellor; and the unwritten rule which prohibits the presence at judicial sessions of any persons save the law lords is quite as strictly observed as is any one of a score of other important conventions of the constitution. The law lords may sit and pronounce judgments in the name of the House at any time, regardless of whether Parliament is in session.2 A sitting of the Court is, technically, a sitting of the House of Lords, and all actions are entered in the Journal as a part of the chamber's proceedings.3

A tribunal of great and growing importance, although, practically speaking, it does not hear appeals from British or Irish courts, is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This committee was created in 1833 to take over jurisdiction (mainly, but not exclusively, civil) formerly exercised, in a rather loose manner, by the Council as a whole. The members include the Lord President of the Privy Council, the Lord Chancellor, the six Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, such additional members of

1 See p. 143..

2 When Parliament is in session the sittings of the law lords are held, as a rule, prior to the beginning of the regular sittings at 4:30 P.M.

The judicial functions of Parliament are described at some length in Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I, Chap. ix. The principal work on the subject is C. H. McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and its Supremacy (New Haven, 1910). On the House of Lords as a court see MacDonaugh, Book of Parliament, 300-309; A. T. Carter, History of English Legal Institutions (London, 1902), 96-109; and W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, I, 170–193.

the Council as hold (or have held) high judicial office, and not more than seven judges of the superior colonial courts, and two of the superior Indian courts, provided they are members of the Privy Council. The most active members are the six "law lords"; so that in its working personnel the Judicial Committee does not differ markedly from the House of Lords when sitting as a court. The Committee's function is to hear appeals from the ecclesiastical courts, from prize courts, from courts in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, from the courts of the colonies and dependencies, and from English courts established by treaty in foreign countries. Technically, the body is not a court, but only a committee of the King's Council to receive and hear petitions, and its findings take the form, not of court decisions, but recommendations to the crown to grant or refuse the petitions or appeals. These recommendations, however, have the practical effect of court decisions. Unlike the decisions of the House of Lords, they must represent a unanimous opinion of the judges (not under three) who have heard the case. Appeals come to the Committee from the four quarters of the earth and require for their proper consideration a knowledge of the most diverse systems of law. It must be conceded that the plan is not popular in the self-governing colonies. Two or three unsuccessful attempts to restrict it have been made in Canada. The constitution of Australia, as first drafted, provided that there should be no such appeals on constitutional questions except as sanctioned by the High Court of the Commonwealth, and that appeals on all other kinds of questions might be cut off by colonial legislation. The authorities at London objected, and the right of appeal (with, however, some important limitations) survives in the great southern dominion. Appeals from the courts of all of the self-governing colonies are, however, infrequent.1

1 The Privy Council, in its general aspects, is described above (see p. 93). For general accounts of the English judicial system see Lowell, Government of England, II, Chaps. lix-lx; Jenks, Government of the British Empire, Chap. xi; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II, Pt. 1, 136-140, 147-150; Macy, English Constitution, Chap vii. As is stated elsewhere (p. 210), the first volume of Holdsworth's History of English Law contains an excellent history of the English courts. Perhaps the best brief account of the historical development of the judicial system is A. T. Carter, History of English Legal Institutions (4th ed., London, 1910). Mention may be made of Maitland, Constitutional History of England, 462-484, and Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History, 318-383. Two valuable works by continental writers are C. de Franqueville, Le système judiciaire de la Grande-Bretagne (Paris, 1898), and H. B. Gerland, Die englische Gerichtsverfassung; eine systematische Darstellung, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1910). A large amount of precise information on the actual workings of the judicial system can be obtained from E. A. Parry, The Law and the Poor (New York, 1914). The author of this book was for twenty years an English county court judge.

CHAPTER XIII

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Stages of Development. -An important in some respects the most important part of any system of government is the agencies and modes by which the authority of the state is brought 'close home to the people, and by which the people themselves, in their several communities, control their own interests and affairs in a word, the machinery of local government and administration. The history of local institutions in England covers an enormous stretch of time, as well as a remarkable breadth of public organization and activity; and by no means its least striking phases are those that have appeared in comparatively recent years. Speaking broadly, it may be said to fall into five very unequal periods. The first, extending from the settlement of the Saxons to the Norman Conquest, was marked by the establishment of the distinctive English units of local political organization shire, hundred, township, and parish and by the fixing of the principle of popular local control. The second, extending from the Conquest to the fourteenth century, was characterized by a general increase of central control and a corresponding decrease of local autonomy.1 The third, extending from the fourteenth century to the adoption of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, was preeminently a period of aristocratic management of local affairs, of government by the same squirearchy that prior to 1832, if not indeed 1867, was accustomed to dominate Parliament. The fourth, covering the years between the Municipal Corporations Act and the Local Government Act of 1888, was a period of democratic self-government in the boroughs, but of continued aristocratic domination in the rural areas. The last period, that from 1888 to the present, saw the democratization of rural local government, the farther simplification of the administrative system, and also a tendency toward increased central control.

The system as it operates to-day is less symmetrical, and less easy to describe, than that of France, Italy, and other conti

1 See p. 5.