Father of eight children—and no work!
Side by side with the enforced idleness of many of the highly paid County Court judges, there is in the High Court, both on the Equity and the Common Law side, a growing accumulation of arrears. Many of these cases involve comparatively small sums, and they might very well be tried before a competent County Court judge. A litigant at the present time entering an action for £51 in the High Court will be subjected to a delay of at least twelve months; whereas if he sues for £49 in the County Court, even in a busy district, he may reasonably expect to have his case settled within a month. By a reorganisation of the County Court system, properly distributing the work among the judges, cases up to £100 might always be tried before them, and the congested state of the High Courts would be thereby relieved, without the necessity of appointing new judges with salaries of £5,000 a year—a remedy frequently advocated. But that only thoroughly reliable men should be appointed as County Court judges is a sine quâ non.
Besides these matters the Legislature might reasonably address itself to the evils resulting from imprisonment for debt; or, as it is now, out of respect for the humanitarian tendency of the age, euphoniously termed, contempt of Court. Six thousand five hundred and fifty-four debtors were actually imprisoned in 1889. There were no less than 213,831 judgment summonses, and 63,836 warrants of commitment issued. It is a somewhat melancholy fact that the number of judgment summonses in 1889 was nearly 80,000 in excess of what it had been ten years previously. It is, however, satisfactory to observe that in the number of imprisonments in the same period there was a decrease of 1,358.
Many Courts are occupied with sixty or more judgment summonses a month. The practical result of the working of the present system of imprisonment for debt is that persons of good position are very rarely committed. Nearly all the imprisoned debtors are very poor persons, and the amounts that they owe are very small, the average not exceeding £10. It is melan- choly to see delicate, half-starved women, some of them with babies, come into Court after trudging miles in order to save their husbands, who perhaps have got a bit of work, from imprisonment.
A fair defendant.
Many judges are most careful and painstaking in their efforts to find out whether the debtors are, or are not, able to pay, while others perform these duties in a very perfunctory manner. In illustration of this it may be mentioned that in the year 1889, while one judge heard 2,256 judgment summonses and granted 855 warrants of commitment, another heard 1,220 judgment summonses and committed 1,043 persons to prison.
The statute gives the judge power to commit if satisfied that the debtor has means at the time when the order for imprisonment is sought, or has had means since the liability to pay was incurred. The latter provision permits the monstrous injustice that because six months ago a man had money that he was obliged to expend on the necessaries of life, he may
