nally heavy or one or more of the
criminal cases prove to be unexpectedly long (as may easily happen), the
civil business necessarily gets squeezed into the short residue of the
allotted time. Suitors and their solicitors and witnesses are kept
waiting for days, and after all perhaps it proves to be impossible for
the judge to take the case, and a "remanet" is the result. It is the
opinion of persons of experience that the result has undoubtedly been to
drive to London much of the civil business which properly belongs to the
provinces, and ought to be tried there, and thus at once to increase the
burden on the judges and jurymen in London, and to increase the costs of
the trial of the actions sent there. Some persons advocate the
continuous sittings of the high court in certain centres, such as
Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol, or (in
fact) a decentralization of the judicial system. There is already an
excellent court for chancery cases for Lancashire in the county palatine
court, presided over by the vice-chancellor, and with a local bar which
has produced many men of great ability and even eminence. The Durham
chancery court is also capable of development. Another suggestion has
been made for continuous circuits throughout the legal year, so that a
certain number of the judges, according to a rota, should be
continuously in the provinces while the remaining judges did the London
business. The value of this suggestion would depend on an estimate of
the number of cases which might thus be tried in the country in relief
of the London list. This estimate it would be difficult to make. The
opinion has also been expressed that it is essential in any changes that
may be made to retain the occasional administration by judges of the
high court of criminal jurisdiction, both in populous centres and in
remote places. It promotes a belief in the importance and dignity of
justice and the care to be given to all matters affecting a citizen's
life, liberty or character. It also does something, by the example set
by judges in country districts, to check any tendency to undue severity
of sentences in offences against property.

Counsel are not expected to practise on a circuit other than that to
which they have attached themselves, unless they receive a special
retainer. They are then said to "go special," and the fee in such a case
is one hundred guineas for a king's counsel, and fifty guineas for a
jun