debts. Seeing that to treat my huge subject exhaustively was out of the question, it has been my endeavour to notice those things which, though of common importance, may not be perfectly well known to every reader of newspapers-non subtilia sed utilia, as an illustrious writer said when he undertook a simila task six hundred years ago.

F. W. M.

JUSTICE AND
AND POLICE.

CHAPTER I.

THE DOMAIN OF ENGLISH JUSTICE.

THE word Justice on our title-page will not lead any English citizen to expect a book on English law in general. Sometimes by this word we seemingly do mean the whole law. Thus when we speak of courts administering justice we mean that they administer law. But by coupling Police with Justice we narrow the meaning of the latter word. By the Justice and Police of a country are meant those institutions and processes whereby that country's law is enforced; whereby, for example, those who are wronged obtain their legal remedies, and those who commit crimes are brought to their legal punishments. These institutions and processes are themselves fixed and determined by law, but the law which fixes and determines them is only a part, and a subsidiary part, of the whole law. There is a large body of rules defining crimes and the punishments of those who commit them, rights and the remedies of those who are wronged, but there is also a body of

B

rules defining how and by whom, and when and where, rules of the former kind can be put in force, and rules of the latter kind are our subject-matter. Therefore, were the fiction not too audacious, we might conveniently suppose ourselves to know all the English law which defines rights and remedies, crimes and punishments; the difference, for instance, between manslaughter and murder, between real and personal property, the offences for which a man may be sent into penal servitude, and those for which he may be imprisoned. But there is no need of any such fiction. However technical the law on

these matters may be, the English citizen is likely to know enough about it to allow of his understanding such brief account as can here be given of the means whereby that law becomes a coercive power. He knows in all grave yet common cases whether he is doing a crime or no, whether his neighbour is wronging him or no, and this knowledge will serve for everyday life. Were it not so, there would be no law, or, which is much the same thing, law would be a set of rules about as useful as those of heraldry.

The rules then that we are to consider are subsidiary, they exist for the sake of other rules which they presuppose. Still they are of great concern to all. It will little avail us that our law about rights and remedies, crimes and punishments, is as good as may be, if the law of civil and criminal procedure is clumsy and inefficient. On the other hand, a system of Justice and Police cannot but do for a nation much other work besides that which it is set to do directly; it will shape the national character, and some awkwardness and insufficiency for its immediate ends may be forgiven it, if it invites and compels the people at large to an active