The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-18 00:00:00

2.HE LAW •COURTS:

The most slatternly housewife in Europe is the
British Themis, the mythological personage who
presides over law and lawyers. If you go to a
house and find the door opened to you by a dirty
maid of all work, with draggled clothes and clotted
hair ; if you find the rooms .all in disorder and
everything out of its place, and neither comfort, nor
order, nor cleanliness in the dwelling, you may
depend upon .it that: the occupants df that house
cannot do their business as it ought to be done, and
that they are muddling away a gieat aeal more
money than if they made a respectable appearance
in the world and had their comforts about them.
This is exactly how justice is lodged in England.
She has about forty judges to supply with hnnse-
romn, and she quarters them in 'al[ the streets and
alleys in the metropolis. You will find the Lord
Chancellor any morning in a shed in Lineoln's-Inn.
The Lords Justices are sitting in another shed in
the same square. All these legal magnates may be
turned out at any moment and sent adrift to hold
their courts wherever they can find a roof to cover
them, for they are but tenants •at will of their
squatters' wigwam. The.Master.,of the Rolls may
be discovered up a yard in Clianeery-lane.-- The
Common Law Judges are .supPobSelLtesit lit;,West-
minster Hall, but in what din 6 room yOil will
find them, where they have squeezed the Nisi
Prius Courts on any given day, or how they
have managed to get rooms for the two Nisi
Prius Courts and one Court in Banco, which each

set
hof judges has sometimes at work on the same
day. not even :the ushers can tell, You may rush
'about all day looking for a Vice-Chancellor, and
sometimes find him in a garret towards the even-
ing. Sir Cresswell Cresswell , has, properly
speaking, no Court at all. The Lord Chancel-*
lor, when he took to the shed in Lincoln's-inn,
lent Sir Cresswell his Court in Westminster
Hall, where the Bar, the attorneys, the jurymen,
the witnesses, and the suitors crush and gasp as
though they had come there to get a divorce be-
tween soul and body. The Admiralty Court is also
homeless, and if the Elder Brethren of the Trinity-
house had any nautical enterprise they would cut
out one of those empty frigates in the Medway and
moor her off Westminster-bridge as a better make-
shift than they now have. As to the officers, they
are in Quality-court, Staple's-inn, Southampten-
buildings, Lancaster-place, Stone-buildings, and
other discursive hiding-places. Sometimes you may
meet an elderly gentleman hurrying along the
Strand, red in the face, and in a state of haste dan-
gerous for a gentleman of his years. He is one of
her Majesty's Judges ; he has just stopped in the
middle of a case, and, sending jurors, witnesses, and
suitors away, is going to hear a mob of little boys
squabble over summonses and orders. He is on his
way to the Judges'Chambers in Serjeants'-inn, two
miles from the scene of his other judicial labours, and
thus wasting nearly an hour of the very heart of
the judicial day because there is no room for thi
Judges' Chambers near the Judges' Courts. As to
the Courts themselves, they are fit subjects for the
interference of the Inspectors of Lodging-houses.
The Royal Commission say "it requires ocular in-
" spection to conceive fully how insufficient, incon-
" venient, and unwholesome they are."
Nobody ever pities a lawyer. There is a not
uncommon conviction that if the judges and
lawyers and the pestilent litigious people who
support them were all smothered together no great
harm would be done. But the odd thing is that the
lawyers do not pity themselves. It is a curious fact
that close lodgings and unwholesome air become
a habit that people come by custom to love. What
difficulties we have in making the lower classes ven-
tilate their lodging-houses ! How tyrannical it is
considered to make householders drain their dwell-
ings! It is all the same with people of 30s.
a-week and people with £30,000 a-year. Rather
than give up an old habit any man is satisfied
to go on doing as he has done, to his own annoy-
ance, and to the annoyance of every one else, and
to " take his chance" of low fever and shortened
life. Judges have generally lived so long that they
laugh to scorn all that vapours with long chymical
names can do to mortals. Lord Chancellors, until
the wiser Lord Chancellor of present date, have been
as happy as backwoodsmen in their shed in Lin-
coln's-inn. Masters of the Rolls would not come
out of their yard even to live in a palace. Judges
toil through the jostling crowd of the Strand and
think it exercise ; Masters of the different offices
die of dust and mildew and bad smells, succumdbinegs
contentedly as to a natural death. Thenudg
allas
have not, until now, very much complaine
d aj
to the Bar, such Courts relieve them
reproach if they are not present.o whenareop
aecnautose
ains
called on. To the attorneys, ws
p the advantage of
action for negligence, p
this state of things is noteistaCl.ear. The jurymen
find
.their advan-
and witnesses also may not ea. sily
tags in being fined for
not bGing u iquitous, and in
once fairly boxed. But the
R'
being smothered
suitors have every erneason to be satisfied ; for by
destroying the energies of the Judge and jury, and
by making the presence or absence of counsel,
attorneys, and witnesses a hazard, this system has
a tendency to reduce the decision to an equal chance
on both sides, and to such an equal counterpoise
of possibilities of course no litigant ought to object.
Lord St. Leonards has seen with great alarm
that there is a proposition now coming before the
House to put an end to this ancient and much vene-
rated system. The Government is said to have
been struck by the idea that while reforming the
law it would be well to render it possible to carry
the law into effect, and to provide Judges and
lawyers with decent accommodation for the discharge
of their duties. To the north of Temple-bar there
is a labyrinth of courts and alleys known chiefly