Even if we give them credit for 4½ hours a day, reckoning their salaries at £5,000 (though many of them receive more) we find that the payment they receive for their work comes to over £5 an hour. At such a price it is only reasonable to expect them to give the fullest attention to their duties. But, alas, for human fallibility! Even judges sometimes nod.
It is true that our system is at fault in permitting our judicature to be conducted by men whose physical infirmities prevent them from giving due attention to their work. But such considerations do not soothe the breast of the unfortunate litigant who has paid an eminent counsel a hundred guineas to address a sleeping judge, or one whose deafness prevents him from comprehending the weighty arguments offered for his consideration.
A messenger.
It is part of the duty of the fourteen judges of the Queen's Bench Division to go on circuit, and during the time of the circuits, as a rule not more than two or three puisne judges are left in London. These judges are absent from town, in fact, fully one-half of the judicial year, and the occupants of the bench are not in the metropolis in their full strength for more than a third of that period. As a result of this arrangement, the business of the high courts, so far as the trial of actions is concerned, is absolutely at a stand-still during the greater part of the year. The cause lists become congested, suitors wait vainly for their cases to be settled, and a multitude of the suits entered never come on for trial at all, many of them being more or less amicably arranged out of court, while others bring about their own culmination through death or other causes. It is notorious that many of the judges, when they observe that a case is of a complex character, involving long and tedious investigation, will bring strong pressure on the parties to induce them either to settle the case or to refer it to an arbitrator. Such pressure it is dangerous for either side to resist, and it results in further fees, further costs, and further delay.
The judges, while on circuit, receive a travelling allowance of seven guineas a day. This is a comparatively recent arrangement, the travelling expenses having formerly been paid in a lump sum. It would be interesting to compare the average length of time occupied by the judges on circuit under the old and under the new system. A great deal of time is utterly wasted. For instance, a whole day is devoted to what is termed "Opening the Commission." This is nothing but an antiquated ceremony of no possible use, consisting of the reading of the Royal Commission under which the judges hold the assizes. It occupies about a quarter of an hour, the remainder of the day being lost. The assizes are often concluded within a less number of days than the time assigned to them, and the judges take advantage of this to enjoy a welcome holiday, with a solatium for their enforced idleness of seven guineas a day.
Our present circuit system undoubtedly leads to a scandalous and deplorable waste of judicial time and public money. For instance, on the South-Eastern Circuit, the largest towns of which are Cambridge and Norwich, there is practically no business whatever; and yet all the paraphernalia and expense of assizes goes on for eleven or
