resentatives
in proportion to its population, the total membership being nineteen
hundred and seventeen. Each island has a Subordinate Council for the
management of local affairs and a Head Chief charged with execution of the
laws. There is also a Great Court at Felduchia, whose function it is to
interpret the general laws of the Kingdom, passed by the Supreme Council,
and a Minor Great Court at the capital of each island, with corresponding
duties and powers. These powers are very loosely and vaguely defined, and
are the subject of endless controversy everywhere, and nowhere more than
in the courts themselves--such is the multiplicity of laws and so many are
the contradictory decisions upon them, every decision constituting what is
called a _lantrag_, or, as we might say, "precedent." The peculiarity of a
_lantrag_, or previous decision, is that it is, or is not, binding, at the
will of the honorable judge making a later one on a similar point. If he
wishes to decide in the same way he quotes the previous decision with all
the gravity that he would give to an exposition of the law itself; if not,
he either ignores it altogether, shows that it is not applicable to the
case under consideration (which, as the circumstances are never exactly
the same, he can always do), or substitutes a contradictory _lantrag_ and
fortifies himself with that. There is a precedent for any decision that a
judge may wish to make, but sometimes he is too indolent to search it out
and cite it. Frequently, when the letter and intent of the law under which
an action is brought are plainly hostile to the decision which it pleases
him to render, the judge finds it easier to look up an older law, with
which it is compatible, and which the later one, he says, does not repeal,
and to base his decision on that; and there is a law for everything, just
as there is a precedent. Failing to find, or not caring to look for,
either precedent or statute to sustain him, he can readily show that any
other decision than the one he has in will would be _tokoli impelly_; that
is to say, contrary to public morals, and this, too, is considered a
legitimate consideration, though on another occasion he may say, with
public assent and approval, that it is his duty, not to make the law
conform to justice, but to expound and enforce it as he finds it. In
short, such is the confusion of the law and the public conscience that the
courts of Tortirra do whatever they please, sub