ractice of
appointing, without Imperial confirmation, temporary Juges d'instruction
whom he could remove at pleasure.

* A flagrant case of this kind came under my own
observation.

It is unnecessary, however, to enter into these theoretical defects. The
important question for the general public is: How do the institutions
work in the local conditions in which they are placed?

This is a question which has an interest not only for Russians, but
for all students of social science, for it tends to throw light on
the difficult subject as to how far institutions may be successfully
transplanted to a foreign soil. Many thinkers hold, and not without
reason, that no institution can work well unless it is the natural
product of previous historical development. Now we have here an
opportunity of testing this theory by experience; we have even what
Bacon terms an experimentum crucis. This new judicial system is an
artificial creation constructed in accordance with principles laid down
by foreign jurists. All that the elaborators of the project said about
developing old institutions was mere talk. In reality they made a tabula
rasa of the existing organisation. If the introduction of public oral
procedure and trial by jury was a return to ancient customs, it was a
return to what had been long since forgotten by all except antiquarian
specialists, and no serious attempt was made to develop what actually
existed. One form, indeed, of oral procedure had been preserved in the
Code, but it had fallen completely into disuse, and seems to have been
overlooked by the elaborators of the new system.*

* I refer to the so-called Sud po forme established by an
ukaz of Peter the Great, in 1723. I was much astonished
when I accidentally stumbled upon it in the Code.

Having in general little confidence in institutions which spring
ready-made from the brains of autocratic legislators, I expected to find
that this new judicial organisation, which looks so well on paper, was
well-nigh worthless in reality. Observation, however, has not confirmed
my pessimistic expectations. On the contrary, I have found that these
new institutions, though they have not yet had time to strike deep root,
and are very far from being perfect even in the human sense of the term,
work on the whole remarkably well, and have already conferred immense
benefit on the country.

In the course of a few years the Justice of Peace Courts, which