tions, so numerous and complicated that it seemed impossible
for even the most unjust judge to swerve from the path of uprightness.
Explicit, minute rules were laid down for investigating facts and
weighing evidence; every scrap of evidence and every legal ground on
which the decision was based were committed to writing; every act in the
complicated process of coming to a decision was made the subject of a
formal document, and duly entered in various registers; every document
and register had to be signed and countersigned by various officials who
were supposed to control each other; every decision might be carried to
a higher court and made to pass a second time through the bureaucratic
machine. In a word, the legislature introduced a system of formal
written procedure of the most complicated kind, in the belief that by
this means mistakes and dishonesty would be rendered impossible.

It may be reasonably doubted whether this system of judicial
administration can anywhere give satisfactory results. It is everywhere
found by experience that in tribunals from which the healthy atmosphere
of publicity is excluded justice languishes, and a great many ugly
plants shoot up with wonderful vitality. Languid indifference, an
indiscriminating spirit of routine, and unblushing dishonesty invariably
creep in through the little chinks and crevices of the barrier raised
against them, and no method of hermetically sealing these chinks
and crevices has yet been invented. The attempt to close them up by
increasing the formalities and multiplying the courts of appeal and
revision merely adds to the tediousness of the procedure, and withdraws
the whole process still more completely from public control. At the
same time the absence of free discussion between the contending parties
renders the task of the judge enormously difficult. If the system is
to succeed at all, it must provide a body of able, intelligent,
thoroughly-trained jurists, and must place them beyond the reach of
bribery and other forms of corruption.

In Russia neither of these conditions was fulfilled. Instead of
endeavouring to create a body of well-trained jurists, the Government
went further and further in the direction of letting the judges be
chosen for a short period by popular election from among men who had
never received a juridical education, or a fair education of any kind;
whilst the place of judge was so poorly paid, and stood so low in public
estimation, th