ENGLISH CAD'S. T HE almost complete success in this country of
the Cadi system of administering justice is, if you think of it, a very curious anomaly in English life. That system is directly at variance with ideas which are rooted in the popular mind. The theory is that no Englishman can be deprived of liberty or property except by the verdict of his peers, and we describe the peoples who are compelled to obey the fiat of a single Judge, acting, so far as appears, under the guidance of his own opinion, as peoples who are oppressed. The right to a jury is supposed to be the Englishman's defence against the Crown, against the Judges, who by virtue of a tra- dition are supposed to be hostile to liberty, and against the police, who in this country are trusted and distrusted by the same classes, and even by the same persons, in the most bewildering way. As a matter of fact, however, the offences which the majority in great cities are likely to commit, and the suits which the majority everywhere are likely to bring, are punished and settled by individuals without the intervention of any jury. The Stipendiaries and County Court Judges who punish and who settle possess, too, in some respects a singular measure of independence. They must, of course, adhere to the law, as also must the Mussulman. Cadi, but they have a certain freedom in its application, they have all the freedom of a jury to believe or disbelieve a witness, and they have a wide discretion as to the amount of punishment to be inflicted on an offender and as to the proportion of his claim which they must award to a claimant. They use their freedom, too, in a liberal way, so that the personal character of the Stipendiary or the County Court Judge is an element in each case upon which the police or the local solicitors will reckon with a certain security. Nevertheless, there is no complaining. Wilful injustice is never so much as suspected, "fads" create nothing but a certain amount of amused comment, and there is no sign even of a wish for any serious change. There is occasionally at long intervals a scandal when a Judge exaggerates his power of committal for contempt, or a Stipendiary is a little too rapid in his decrees, but as a body the Stipendiaries and the Judges alike have won the confidence of the people to such a degree that even the punished or the defeated acknowledge the fairness of the Tribunal, and if they are angry at all, are angry with the witnesses, or with the police, or with their own solicitors, not in any case with the Court. In the case of the Stipendiaries, indeed, the confidence goes farther than this. The people learn to regard them as friends, ask their advice, expound their difficulties before them, and occasionally in cases of household quarrels are positively embarrassing in their erfire reliance upon the benevolent wisdom of the presiding Magistrate. Sir John Bridge, the Magistrate who has just quitted Bow Street, used to be asked questions whenever he sat which showed that he was regarded as a sort of wise household friend by people he had never seen, this confidence, too, being rendered more remarkable by the fact that it extended to the foreign colonies. Men who at home would have regarded all Magistrates with sullen suspicion as potential enemies, looked upon the English Cadi as one who could be trusted as if he had been an employer of their own. Almost precisely the same feeling is dis- played towards inspectors. the whole land is covered with inspectors of different kinds, upon whose fiat the comfort or prosperity of entire classes and businesses frequently depends. They act, for the most part, as individuals, and though, of course, they must obey their rules, their personal ability and judgment and prejudices must, and do, largely affect their decisions. Yet how seldom there are complaints. It is years since we heard of an inspector being suspected of taking bribes, though Custom House officers in the old smuggling days were frequently accused by local opinion ; and though there are constantly criticisms of individual inspectors in the pro- vincial Press, the most serious accusations made are of occasional perversity, or a little favouritism. Even in the business of education, where there are violent conflicts of ideas, and where the inspectors have to deal with an ex- ceptionally jealous and critical class of employes, they are rarely attacked, never with anything like malignity. They are regarded, in fact, with a distinct though tepid liking, and every one is willing to give them any assist- ance possible in the performan ce of their duties.
This pleasing state of affairs is due, no doubt, in the first place to the fact that Stipendiary Magistrates, County Court Judges, and inspectors of all departments are selected with some care, and are, for the most part, good men intent on being as impartial as human weakness will allow ; but there must be somethino, else also. Traditionary feeling has been altered': There cannot be in England much left of that dislike to official interference and supervision which used to be generally assumed, nor can there be anything like so decided a preference for Committees over individuals as it is usual to believe. The dread of individual power seems, indeed, to have entirely passed away. The people would greatly increase the area of County Court activity ; every town which obtains a Stipendiary thinks that its comfort is increased as well as its dignity ; while as for inspectors there is positively no limit to the demand. Whenever a. Member of Parliament attacks a grievance he asks for an inspector to prevent its recurrence, and if the Government always granted the request opposition would come from the economists—now, alas ! a small and decaying band—and not from the average elector, who would increase the public staff by a thousand inspectors, and never think he was thereby forging chains for himself. That the change should occur among the educated is natural, for the educated are sadly in want of posts for such of their sons as are unfit for the rough-and-tutnble of the Colonies; but it is just as marked among the electors, and must, in the end, tend to an immense expansion of State interference. If individuals paid by the State can do work even better than Committees or Benches, and if the electors on the whole like that they should do it, the State and its managers, we may be sure, will make no serious opposition to a process which, while it increases patronage, increases also the general sense that everything is well looked after, and that there are no grievances to trouble successive Governments about. We see ourselves little objection to the change, which certainly rids us of many evils, and possibly will avert a good many rash ex- periments in Collectivism—though we may pay for those advantages in some loss of independence of character—but it is a little odd at the end of the nineteenth century to find ourselves falling back upon the system of the East. For it is the system of the East. The East is really governed when it is well governed by men who administer the law exactly as our Stipendiaries and County Court Judges do, and who act as inspectors in all departments of civil life whenever they are asked. When they are honest the method works with a flexibility which seems to Orientals so admirable that they never give up their preference for it, and think every other method "leaden." Unhappily for them, corruption almost always sets in, but the original idea was by no means a bad one, and under a rigid Sovereign or Minister works more easily than Europeans, sickened by the corruption they see, are will- ing to believe possible. A learned Cadi or Mandarin who happens not to take bribes and intends to administer law is much more like an English Stipendiary than Englishmen watching him quite perceive, and there are such men even in Turkey or China, though unhappily they grow few. When bribes must be sent to the Minister's office, or even the Palace, what can the wretched Cadi do ?
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