But often a statute has given an action for a penalty, not merely to the person, if any such there be, who is wronged, but to any one of the people who chooses to avail himself of it; in other words, to a common informer. In form there is just an action for a debt, and the procedure is the ordinary civil procedure; but in truth the object often is to punish one who without invading any private right has been guilty of a breach of public law. Important rules are from time to time sanctioned in this way. To act, for instance, as a member of a local board, or as office holder in a municipal corporation without being lawfully qualified, subjects a man to a penalty of £50, recoverable by an action, which in the one case may be brought by any one, and in the other by any burgess. So the regulation of divers trades and professions has been enforced by penal actions, penal in substance, civil in form, given to persons in general, or to persons grieved, or again to some corporation, the Goldsmiths' Company, the Law Society, the Pharmaceutical Society, or the like. Our Parliaments, careful rather of ends than of means, have been inventive of such expedients for insuring obedience to public law.

It will not have been amiss to glance at this matter if thereby we have reminded ourselves that in our law (the product of many forces acting through many ages) the distinctions will not always be found just where we now should draw them. There are some proceedings in our courts about which it is quite possible to raise the question whether they are civil or criminal. The regular means of trying whether the occupant of a public office has any right to the post, e.g., whether he who is acting as mayor of a town has been duly elected, is a proceeding (in "quo warranto") which once was distinctly

penal and which there was some reason for technically calling criminal, until a statute of last year declared that it was to be deemed civil. But still we shall do well to make the distinction between civil and criminal justice a main outline of our work.1

1 It may well be doubted whether every proceeding in a court of law can conveniently be called either civil or criminal, but we are somewhat deeply committed to this theory by Acts of Parliament.

CHAPTER III.

THE COUNTY COURTS.

UNTIL lately, our system of civil courts was very intricate, and no explanation could be given of it without a long historical preamble. It has now become fairly simple and symmetrical. Its chief features are these. There is one court of first instance for the whole of England, with an unlimited competence, namely, the High Court of Justice. Its judicial work is done partly at sittings held at Westminster in the building known as the Royal Courts of Justice, partly at sittings held periodically at divers towns, assize towns, throughout the country. What we may call the official work, preparatory and subordinate to this judicial work, is done partly at a great office at Westminster, partly at district registries scattered about England. From this court there lies an appeal to the Court of Appeal which sits at Westminster. The High Court and Court of Appeal taken together are styled the Supreme Court of Judicature. From the Court of Appeal there lies an appeal to the House of Lords. These courts are central and superior." Besides these there are some five hundred County Courts, which are local, "inferior," and of limited competence, and whence an appeal lies to the High

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Court. There are a few other local courts which, in no bad sense, may be called eccentric. This is a rude sketch to be made somewhat more precise hereafter. We may look first at the County Courts which, if the least splendid, are none the less of great importance.

Nothing in the history of English law has been more momentous than the very thorough centralisation of its judicial system, and the consequent aggregation in London of the whole body of lawyers. Before 1846 there had been a period, to be measured rather in centuries than in years, during which the only civil courts of at all a general competence were the courts at Westminster. We may say not untruly that in 1800 almost all the judicial work of the kingdom was done by fourteen men. Each of the three courts of common law, King's Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer, had four judges; in the Chancery there were two judges, the Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls. Wales, it is true, and a few palatinates had courts of their own; there were some other local courts of vast antiquity but trifling real value, and the ecclesiastical courts did a good deal of business that was not of a very spiritual kind; still it is almost true that he who had aught against his neighbour had to seek his remedy in Westminster Hall. Once a year into the four northern counties, twice a year through the rest of England, the common law judges went as Commissioners of Assize to try actions; but these actions were depending in courts at Westminster, and many proceedings in them could only be taken at Westminster; there was the seat of judgment, and thither the tribes went up. If the administration of common law was centralised, the administration of the supplemental law called equity was still more centralised;

it was all centre; the two Chancery judges never sat out of London. In dispensing penal justice a much larger number of men, Justices of the Peace, took an active part, and probably it was this large local magistracy which made the concentration of civil justice as tolerable as it was.

Far back in the middle ages there had been local courts in plenty. We must not here say anything of their decline and fall; only let us note, to prevent confusion, that from time immemorial there had been "county courts," wherein, under the presidency of the sheriff, all freeholders of the shire might sit as judges. But, long ago, these courts had ceased to do much business. A statute of 1278 was construed as fixing forty shillings as the limit of their jurisdiction. They were thus hemmed within a boundary, which, though nominally it was never altered, became always narrower as the value of forty shillings became less. The discovery of Mexico and Peru altered the meaning of several rules of English law, the letter of which remained unchanged; it extended the county franchise and the sphere of capital crimes; it also made our petty tribunals very petty indeed. They dragged on an almost useless existence until 1846, when the contentious jurisdiction was taken away from "the old county courts" and transferred to "the new county courts," which were then created.1 The new courts are connected with the old by a very thin thread of statutory theory, and a name which is singularly inappropriate. The old courts have still a phantom being, though not as judicial tribunals. The statute book authorises the modern county voter to believe, if he can, that when in strictest secrecy he is dropping his 1 The County Courts Act, 1846.