in a similar position to Edinburgh and some English towns, there will be no interference with the jurisdiction or position of this Court. Such a change would probably be beneficial, and, apart from financial readjustments, would affect only the matters of lieutenancy and the Commission of the peace, including the constitution of the quarter sessions and administration of the licensing laws. In Edinburgh the Sheriff's jurisdiction in the County of the City is just the same as in the County of Midlothian. But a totally different question is raised if this movement is to be utilised for the purpose of dividing the County of Lanark, deposing Glasgow from the position of de facto county town, and by uniting the rural part of the county with Renfrewshire, making Hamilton or Paisley the centres of administration for the whole country from Leadhills to Gourock. A bill for this purpose would raise various large questions-that of the double sheriffship, for example. It will probably be found on reflection that convenience requires that Glasgow shall remain the centre of Lanarkshire judicial business; and, which is the point with which I am now concerned, that there is no real justification for the recasting of sheriffdoms which has been suggested in Edinburgh and Paisley.

The Memorandum on Reform of Scottish Judicatories adopted by the Society of Law Agents contains many valuable suggestions, the abolition of the double sheriffship being the cardinal reform without which many of the others would be more or less ineffective. I do not here discuss the arguments for the abolition of the appeal within the Sheriff Court, which are familiar and convincing, and are sufficiently summarised in the Memorandum; I wish rather to direct your attention to the peculiar position of the Sheriff Court of Lanarkshire, especially in Glasgow, and to show you that it warrants exceptional and, if you like to call it so, experimental treatment.

To say that there is a wide difference between the work in Glasgow and that of Wigtown or Ayr, not to speak of Stornoway or Dornoch, is a truism. It may be that the fact is so familiar to us in Glasgow that we have ceased to seek for a remedy for the disadvantages under which we labour. It must be remembered, however, that these evils arise from the fact that we are subject to a uniform system and code of local judicature, which extends over all Scotland, and was not intended to meet the wants of a great industrial and commercial population. What fits the people of Caithness fairly well is not necessarily adequate to the wants of the second city of the Empire and its surrounding districts. Since the Act of 1853, and even before-though even formerly the want was supplied by the Burgh Court under the assessorship of Mr. James Reddie-the Sheriff Courts of Glasgow and other large towns have been used, almost from the necessity of the case, as Courts of first instance in important and valuable suits, which would, but for their convenience and economy, have to go to the Court of Session. It thus comes to pass that because Glasgow is great, the Court of Session is deprived of its proper business and the Sheriff Court here is raised in regard to the importance of its Ordinary Court business to a level with the Outer House, while the mass of the whole work vastly exceeds that of the five Lords Ordinary. If these propositions are true, it is impossible to emphasise too strongly their significance in respect to the reform of the judicial system which is demanded. It is not difficult to demonstrate their truth.

The judicial statistics, which have not been much altered from the form in which they were first framed in 1867 by the late Mr. Hill Burton, have many defects, which busy politicians have not had time to

depended on to reveal certain broad
volume for 1890:-

remedy. They may, however, be
facts. This is what I find in the
The causes initiated in the Outer House were 1708, or, as
that was an abnormally busy year, the average number
of causes initiated for five years, including 1890, was,
The final judgments in the Outer House were, in 1890, 1310,
or the average for 5 years

I do not think that these final judgments were all decrees
in foro, for here the statistics are not clear, as they are
in regard to the Sheriff Courts. It rather appears
that the number of decrees in foro should be
that number being as stated on procedure requiring
closed records," and 748 being 'on procedure not
requiring closed records."

Compare Glasgow:

66

The causes initiated in the Ordinary Sheriff Court were
The judgments in foro by the four Sheriffs-Substitute were -

:

With regard to appeals the following are the results :

Of the Lords Ordinaries' final judgments there were finally
disposed of by the Inner House on appeal, -
Among which there were (setting aside 9 altered) reversals, -
Of the appeals to the Inner House from the Sheriff Courts
the judicial statistics contain no record.

Of the 1291 final judgments by Glasgow Sheriffs, the Principal
Sheriff, on appeal, disposed of

Whereof were reversals

Let us now look at the Sheriff Courts of all Scotland :-
These had of causes initiated,

Of judgments in foro by Sheriffs-Substitute,
Whereof the Principal Sheriffs, on appeal, disposed of -

Of which were reversals

1552

1205

562

1853

1291

222

49

199 11

- 7948

3447

815

108

It thus appears (1) that the number of judgments in foro in the Glasgow Ordinary Court equals, or exceeds, those in the Outer House, and is more than a third of the number in all the Sheriff Courts of Scotland.

(2) That 17 per cent. of the final judgments of the Lords Ordinary were reclaimed against and disposed of by the Court, or if the comparison be made with the 562 cases requiring closed records, 37.8 per cent.; that appeals were taken to the Principal Sheriff against 154 per cent. of the final judgments of Sheriffs-Substitute in Glasgow, and against 23.6 per cent. of those over all Scotland.

(3) And that of reversals, in the cases appealed, there were (setting aside partial alterations):

Of Lords Ordinary by the Court of Session,

Of Sheriff's by Principal Sheriffs, over all Scotland, 13.3 "" Of Sheriff's in Glasgow by Sheriff-Principal, While several useful and interesting inferences may be made from these figures, my present purpose is to show that the number of causes finally decided here is, on the lowest estimate, nearly the same as those decided in the Outer House. I do not question that the cases in the Outer House must considerably exceed those in this Court in value and importance, not only because the former has privative jurisdiction by law in the larger questions of heritable right, in cases of status, and a

F

few others; and because in practice it is properly preferred in almost all questions of trusts and succession, and in others where large sums are at stake. But after making due allowance for this, it is the subject of complaint by those who would draw all important litigation to Edinburgh that many of the cases in this Court, as in other large cities, involve such large sums of money and such important interests that they ought to have been brought to the Supreme Court. There is no available public information as to the value of causes in the various Courts. It is, however, notorious that many cases involving many hundreds, and not a few in which thousands, of pounds are at stake are disposed of here. Sheriff Lees has stated, and his accuracy is well known, that the average value of causes with pecuniary conclusions coming before him during a period of five years was £267; but I am inclined to think that, excluding actions concluding for a random sum of damages, his computation is extremely moderate, and rather falls short of the truth. However that may be, these propositions may, I think, be safely accepted, (1) that the volume of civil business in this Court-excluding entirely the Debts Recovery and Small Debt Courts -is equal to that of the Outer House; (2) that the time required to dispose of it is not less; (3) that a large part of the business cannot be distinguished in its character from that of the Outer House, except in the artificial exclusion of certain kinds of cases, and the natural preference of the more dignified and expensive Court for cases where very large interests are at stake, and expense is not regarded. In somewhat different words, there is no clear line of demarcation between the litigious business which goes to the Supreme Court and the equally large mass which is dealt with in this Ordinary Court; but experience shows that the public finds a certain preferable convenience (notably in regard to expense) in having its cases tried here rather than in Edinburgh, and reposes a certain degree of confidence in the local bench and bar.

I now invite your attention to the operation and value of the appeal to the principal Sheriff. I do not discuss the arguments for the abolition of the double sheriffship, which are well summarised in the Law Agents' memorandum. I should prefer, indeed, not to handle the subject at all in this place. But the system has so long been condemned by the majority of intelligent and disinterested men, and its evils, especially here, are so flagrant, and seem to be so permanent and ineradicable, that one who sees them daily is almost bound by duty to try to get them removed. My views about this question were substantially formed some years before I came to this Court, and I have since seen nothing to change them. On the contrary, the business here, as in other large cities, differs so much from that of more distant and more rural counties, in whose interest the duplicate sheriffship may perhaps be best defended, that it may be right to make trial here of a different system free from the characteristic evils of the " one-man appeal." Apart from any personal reference, I object to a system which is founded on the principle of the revision of primary judgments by a Court no stronger numerically than the Court of the first instance, and which ever and again results in accumulated delays. I am as far as possible from suggesting the want of industry or pains on the part of the Principal Sheriff of Lanarkshire, who, indeed, has given exclusive and assiduous devotion to the appellate part of his duties. It is for the defenders of the present system to depreciate the personal ability of the judge of appeal. My argument does not require it.

The judicial statistics do not now furnish any information as to the

time which elapses between the marking of an appeal and the SheriffPrincipal's judgment. I have, however, kept a record of the results and the dates of the judgments in all appeals in my own cases, so far as the Sheriff-Clerk has in ordinary course put them on my table. Possibly some interlocutor sheets have failed to reach me; but 244 unselected appeals in a period of five years may reasonably be held to show approximately the working as regards delay of the present appellate jurisdiction in the Lower Ward of Lanarkshire. The following periods elapsed in the 244 cases between the judgment appealed from and the principal Sheriff's judgment:

These figures show that in five-sixths of the cases the delay caused by the appeal has been over four months, that in three-fifths it has been over six months, and in one-fourth it has been over nine months. If casual appeals were omitted the average delay would be much greater.

I cannot find a quite satisfactory answer to the question to what extent the number of appeals within the Sheriff Court of Lanarkshire have diminished during the last twenty years. There is no doubt that it has, and that the work of the Sheriff-Principal has been lessened, while that of the Sheriffs-Substitute has greatly increased, taking into account Debts Recovery and other Courts. That the appeal work must be proportionately very much reduced appears from the statement of the Royal Commissioners on Courts of Law in 1870, who say that appeals were taken to the principal Sheriffs against 33 per cent. of all final judgments of the Sheriff-Substitutes of Scotland in 1833, and in 50 per cent. in 1868; whereas the figures I have given show 23 per cent. for Scotland and 15 per cent. for Glasgow in 1890.

So, in Sheriff Glassford Bell's address at the beginning of the session 1869-70, he said, "Out of 1470 enrolments in the Appeal Courts, "1096 were for debate. No case set down for debate in the Sheriff's "roll was continued more than twice except on very special grounds, "and 773 cases were debated and advised. The Sheriff has not at the present moment a single case undisposed of before him." I suppose that the 773 cases are fairly to be compared with the 199 final judgments of 1890, plus 350 ordinary appeals from Hamilton, Lanark, and Airdrie, plus 74 Debts Recovery appeals from all the county-equal in all to 323 judgments on appeal. The statistics add 158 casual and other appeals from Glasgow, and 20 from the rest of the county, which I take to be appeals on points of procedure, the result of which is not recorded, and many of which are withdrawn or allowed to drop. If we add these, the total is 481, still almost 300 cases short of Sheriff Bell's work in 1868.

In some years the number of decided appeals in the returns fluctuate considerably. Thus, in 1870, the appeals decided are said to be 527; in 1871, 622; in 1872, 696; in 1881, 576. But as I am not sure that the tables have always been framed and the returns made in the same way, I do not assert that a reliable comparison of periods can be obtained from the blue books. It is only certain that there is a considerable diminution of appeal work.

I do not pursue the subject into the details of a reformed judicatory. I have said enough to show that Glasgow, may well receive a different treatment in regard to its local Courts from the rest of Scotland. The only point in which I cannot obtain a comparison with other Courts is the last-namely, the delay caused by the present ineffective appeal. If there are like delays in any other part of Scotland, I invite the defenders of things as they are to tell us where; and they will perhaps also be able to say why the column stating the number of weeks between reception of appeals (whatever that may mean) and the principal Sheriff's judgment has dropped out of the judicial statistics since 1870.

The conclusion is that one of two things ought to be done for the judicial business of Glasgow and (if you like) of the west of Scotland. You may level up the Sheriff Court as nearly as possible on its present lines to an equality with the Outer House, to which it already approximates. Or you may limit its jurisdiction to small causes not exceeding £100 or £150 in value, and transfer a part of the Outer House permanently to Glasgow for the double purpose of constituting (1) a Sheriff Court of Appeal final in matters of fact, and consisting of not fewer than two judges; and (2) a local Court of first instance precisely the same as the Outer House in Edinburgh, except that here it would, I think, be impossible to exclude competent law agents from audience before the Lords Ordinary. Either or both of these tribunals might have its jurisdiction extended over all the western counties near Glasgow. The former project is what some reformers, for whom I have great respect and sympathy, are aiming at.. But it may take years of labour and waiting to achieve this for all Scotland; and the grievance of Glasgow ought to be at once abated. The latter scheme recommends itself as suitable for the exceptional situation of Glasgow, and as it extends, instead of curtailing the province and perogatives of the Court of Session, may possibly meet with less opposition.

Appointments, Business Changes, &c.

PERTH.-Mr. Alexander King, solicitor, has been assumed as a partner of the firm of Skeete & Chalmers, solicitors. Mr. King has been principal assistant to the firm for several years. The business will now be conducted under the firm of Skeete, Chalmers, & King.