ter-General that another
assistant be provided for his Department. I invite your consideration to
the several other recommendations contained in his report.

The report of the Attorney-General contains a history of the conduct of
the Department of Justice during the last year and a number of valuable
suggestions as to needed legislation, and I invite your careful
attention to the same.

The condition of business in the courts of the United States is such
that there seems to be an imperative necessity for remedial legislation
on the subject. Some of these courts are so overburdened with pending
causes that the delays in determining litigation amount often to a
denial of justice. Among the plans suggested for relief is one submitted
by the Attorney-General. Its main features are: The transfer of all the
original jurisdiction of the circuit courts to the district courts and
an increase of judges for the latter where necessary; an addition of
judges to the circuit courts, and constituting them exclusively courts
of appeal, and reasonably limiting appeals thereto; further restrictions
of the right to remove causes from the State to Federal courts;
permitting appeals to the Supreme Court from the courts of the District
of Columbia and the Territories only in the same cases as they are
allowed from State courts, and guarding against an unnecessary number of
appeals from the circuit courts.

I approve the plan thus outlined, and recommend the legislation
necessary for its application to our judicial system.

The present mode of compensating United States marshals and district
attorneys should, in my opinion, be changed. They are allowed to charge
against the Government certain fees for services, their income being
measured by the amount of such fees within a fixed limit as to their
annual aggregate. This is a direct inducement for them to make their
fees in criminal cases as large as possible in an effort to reach the
maximum sum permitted. As an entirely natural consequence, unscrupulous
marshals are found encouraging frivolous prosecutions, arresting people
on petty charges of crime and transporting them to distant places for
examination and trial, for the purpose of earning mileage and other
fees; and district attorneys uselessly attend criminal examinations far
from their places of residence for the express purpose of swelling their
accounts against the Government. The actual expenses incurred in these
transactions are