which are becoming of great importance, this power is not small. The functions of the Home Secretary have been described by Mr. Traill;1 some of them will be noticed hereafter. Were there any need, which there is not, to borrow foreign terms, we might say that the Chancellor is the Minister of Civil Justice, the Home Secretary the Minister of Criminal Justice and Police; but each of these names would have to be used in a narrow sense, and the line is not drawn exactly where a theorist would draw it. The House of Commons is the place for the Home Secretary; the House of Lords for the Chancellor. The Home Secretary is the head of a large and powerful permanent department; the Chancellor is not. The Chancellor is always a learned lawyer, while it is merely our good fortune if the Home Secretary has illuminated the science of international law or the practice of quarter sessions.

1 Central Government, p. 55.

CHAPTER VII.

CIVIL EXECUTION AND BANKRUPTCY.

In the last resort the judgments of a civil court must be executed by force. Goods and lands must be seized and sold, and in some instances persons must be imprisoned. Before noticing the manner in which execution is done, we must glance at the persons who do it. The county courts have for this work officers of their own, high bailiffs,1 but the judgments of the High Court are still executed by the sheriffs. A plaintiff, for example, who has judgment for a debt, can obtain a writ whereby the Queen bids the sheriff of a county levy the sum out of the goods of the debtor within that county.

Now the whole history of English Justice and Police might be brought under this rubric, The Decline and Fall of the Sheriff. The sheriff of the Norman reigns is little less than a viceroy, very strictly answerable to the king, but with great power over all the men of the shire. The shire is let to him at a rent, and he makes what he can out of its administration. But for some seven centuries he has been losing first this function, then that, and we know him now as a country gentleman who, it may be, much against his will, has been 1 See above, p. 25.

endowed for a single year with high rank and burdened with a curious collection of disconnected duties, the scattered fragments of powers that once were vast. He receives the Queen's judges on their circuits, he acts as returning officer in parliamentary elections, he summons jurors, he executes civil judgments, he has a care that the condemned murderer is hanged. These, and a few others, are duties that have to be done, if not by him then by subordinates, and besides, there are many things which according to law books he might do, but which he never does. He might call out the power of the county (posse comitatus) to apprehend a criminal with hue and cry, but justices of the peace and police constables have long rendered needless this rusty machinery. Still he is the greatest man in the county, and may look down upon the lord-lieutenant himself as upon a creature of yesterday.

His appointment is not accomplished without elaborate ceremonies of which little must here be said. Lists are kept for each shire of persons fit and liable to serve. There is no property qualification more distinct than this, that the sheriff ought to have land in the county sufficient to answer to the king and his people; but, in fact, he will be some considerable landowner. The lists are supplied with new names by the sheriffs who suggest them to the judges on circuit. Then on the morrow of St. Martin (12th November) at a meeting at which some of the ministers and of the judges are present, three names are taken from each list, usually the first three, but any one there named has an opportunity of urging an excuse, such as want of means. The three names are submitted to the Queen and she, in practice, chooses the first and marks her choice by pricking a hole opposite

that name in the list that is laid before her.

Certain

towns have acquired the privilege of being counties of themselves (sometimes they are called counties corporate as contrasted with counties at large) and of electing their own sheriffs.1 The election is now made annually by the town council. In general this privilege was acquired, at earliest, in the fifteenth century, but London has enjoyed it from a much older time, and the two sheriffs of London are the one sheriff of Middlesex.

Almost all the duties of the sheriff are performed for him by an undersheriff. The sheriff is bound by law to appoint some fit and proper person to be undersheriff. Commonly he appoints some solicitor of high standing, and though there is nothing to prevent each new sheriff from naming a new undersheriff, still the same person is often undersheriff for many years, and in some instances the office has become well nigh hereditary.2 In theory, a sheriff, in practice an undersheriff, has much business to do which requires experience of legal routine. In particular, civil execution, though less hazardous than it was but a few years ago, is still risky work. If a sheriff does not obey a writ he is liable to be punished in a summary fashion, for the High Court keeps a tight hold over him. Again, he is civilly liable if he does not seize what he ought to seize, or seizes what he ought not to seize, as, e.g., the goods of a wrong person, and there are many

1 Bristol, Canterbury, Chester, Exeter, Gloucester, Lincoln, Lichfield, Norwich, Worcester, York, Caermarthen, Haverfordwest, Hull, Newcastle, Nottingham, Poole, Southampton. In 1841 Coventry was merged in the county of Warwick. Oxford also has a sheriff, but is not a county.

2 There is, I believe, at least one instance in which it has been "in a family" for more than a century.

rules to be observed as to when doors must and when they must not be broken, and so forth, about which, in general, the sheriff himself will know very little. For the conduct of all this business the sheriff himself is primarily responsible; in fact, however, the undersheriff contracts to indemnify him, and in return receives the fees and percentages which are payable for the doing of civil execution and the like. The work of actually seizing goods and arresting persons is done by bailiffs, who have bound themselves with sureties to the sheriff for the faithful discharge of their duties; policemen are not employed for civil execution. Practically then, the shrievalty is, nowadays, an institution whereby a country gentleman is compelled to guarantee for one year the proper performance of important work in which he takes no active part. It is to the credit of English public spirit that such an institution is still possible.

Now a marked line has of late been drawn between those orders of a civil court which direct a man to pay money, and those which direct him to do, or abstain from doing, some other thing. The latter can be enforced by imprisonment. If a man disobeys an injunction which forbids his building a wall, he can be sent to gaol. The courts have large discretionary powers of keeping such persons in prison until they submit to do what they are bid. On the other hand, a judgment for money must in general be enforced by other means. The plaintiff obtains a writ whereby the sheriff is ordered to levy the sum due. At an early date our law touching the exaction of debts became very severe. This was the result, for the more part, of deliberate legislation. The creditor had the power of