holidays.  They are spent in patiently reading a mass of deeds, indentures, contracts, vouchers, affidavits, evidence of every description and of the most voluminous character.  These have been put in by solicitors, as part of their cases, and require the most careful attention.  Besides causes that are actually argued out in open Court, there are others which, by consent of both parties, are placed in his hands as arbitrator.  Many involve nice points of law, and require a written judgment in well-chosen words.

The work of the County Court Judge at the present day is simply enormous; it is ceaseless and never finished, and it demands a patience which nothing can ruffle.  No matter how much falsehood may annoy him, a Judge with arbitrary power entrusted to him must not permit indignation alone to govern his decision.  He must make allowances for all.

For the County Court in country districts has become a tribunal whose decisions enter, as it were, into the very life of the people.  It is not concerned with a few important cases only; it has to arrange and finally settle what are really household affairs.  Take any village, and make inquiries how many householders there are who have not at one time or other come under the jurisdiction of the County Court?  Either as Plaintiff, or Defendant, or as witness, almost every one has had such experience, and those who have not have been threatened with it.  Beside those defended cases that come before the Judge, there are hundreds upon hundreds of petty claims, to which no defence is offered, and which are adjudicated upon by the Registrar at the same time that the Judge hears the defended causes.

The labourer, like so many farmers in a different way, lives on credit and is perpetually in debt.  He purchases his weekly goods on the security of hoeing, harvest, or piece work, and his wages are continually absorbed in payment of instalments, just as the tenant-farmer’s income is too often absorbed in the payment of interest and instalments of his loans.  No one seems ever to pay without at least a threat of the County Court, which thus occupies a position like a firm appointed to perpetually liquidate a vast estate.  It is for ever collecting shillings and half-crowns.

This is one aspect of the County Court; the other is its position with respect to property.  It is the great arbitrator of property—­of houses and land, and deeds and contracts.  Of recent years the number of the owners of land has immensely increased—­that is, of small pieces—­and the litigation has correspondingly grown.  There is enough work for a man of high legal ability in settling causes of this character alone, without any ’horse case’ with thirty witnesses, or any dispute that involves the conflict of personal testimony.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BANK.  THE OLD NEWSPAPER