JUDGES, WITNESSES, AND PRISONERS. T HE statement made by Mr. Baron
Huddleston at Bury St. Edmund's last week, as to the effect of the Assize system on poor witnesses, was startling. -" Last year," he said, "when I was on the Oxford Circuit, we had at Worcester eight persons charged with murder, and the business then occupied fifteen working days ; the result being that before the assizes were finished some of the witnesses actually became dependent upon the charity of their friends, and had even to pawn their clothes." This is certainly a monstrous hardship on the witnesses, and sounds more like a tale of the dark ages than an incident in the life of the nineteenth century. The Baron used it to enforce his doctrine that the new circuit arrange- ments were wholly bad. His speech was delivered in answer to a presentment of the Grand Jury of the county of Suffolk that, "looking to the absence of crime and other causes, there is no necessity for the number of Assizes now held, entailing as it does considerable expense and trouble." The Baron's remarks above quoted would seem to be a pretty effective answer to the complaint of the Jury as to the absence of crime and the excessive number of Assizes ; because if with four Assizes a-year the witnesses are kept kicking their heels and reduced to pawning their clothes in fifteen days, what would they not be reduced to in twenty-two days or thirty days, which is the time the Assizes might be expected to last if reduced to three or two a-year ? Yet the Baron's speech con- sisted of a vindication of the Jury, and his story of the witnesses was introduced for the sake of supporting their charge. Not only did he not approve of four Assizes a-year, but he did not approve of the practice of amalgamating counties for assize purposes which prevails at two out of the four Assizes. The two complaints are, however, inconsistent. If there is so much crime that the result of amalgamating counties is to drive the witnesses to pawn their clothes, then there is crime enough not merely to justify four Assizes, at two of which counties are amalgamated, but to justify four Assizes in each separate county- town. If, on the other hand, there is not enough crime to justify four Assizes, then they must be reduced to three or two, and the undeserved hardships of the witnesses will still be suffered in their separate counties, the length of which will be proportionately increased. Butt the fact is that the authorities are right in considering, as, according to Mr. Baron Huddleston, they do, that "a change from four to three Assizes would be a retrograde motion." The institution of Quarter Sessions is a sufficient answer to that proposal. Quarter Sessions are held four times a year because of the hardship inflicted on prisoners in keeping them untried for more than three months on end: Why are prisoners guilty of housebreaking to be thus offered the boon of speedy justice, while it is denied to the burglar? Burglary is only house- breaking by night ; yet, according to the theory of the Grand Jury of Suffolk, the one is to be kept in prison for six months or four months before trial, while the other would be hardly used if kept at the utmost three months. What are the hardships of a witness who has to live doing nothing for a fortnight compared with those of the perhaps equally innocent prisoner who is kept locked up for six months or four months before trial ? There is a very simple and easy remedy for the case of the witnesses. Nothing more is required than authority to the police or the Clerk of the Peace to order the expenses of witnesses to be paid in advance whenever the necessities of the case require it, instead of deferring payment till after the case is tried. The solicitors in the case would be ready enough to advance subsistence-money if they had power on application to get payment, or a promise of payment, from the recognised authority. The additional expense, if any, entailed on the country, would be as nothing compared with the saving effected by the system of amalgamating the less populous counties for Assize purposes. That the amalgamation is necessary in some counties is instanced by the experience of a Judge this week, who announced that he had attended the opening of the Assizes in three counties to try one prisoner. The
precise method of amalgamation is a pure matter of detail, to he varied from time to time as experience dictates. But the retention of four Assizes a year is a matter of principle, and it is one on which there should be no backsliding. It is impossible to help feeling that it was not the absence of crime, but the "other causes," which dictated the presentment of the Suffolk jury. Those other causes are that it is a great bore for country gentlemen to have to go to the Assize town to take part in the administration of justice. It is also, no doubt, a great bore for the learned Baron to have to leave the delights of London dinners for the disordered feasts of Judges' lodgings. It is a still greater bore for the members of the Bar to have to leave "the blossom of the flying term" to try and catch the flying and scanty briefs on circuit. But, "after all,"—if Mr. Goschen will allow the phrase,—the Assizes are made for criminals, not for counsel; for gaol-birds, not Judges ; for the persons to be tried, not for those who have to try them. In the administration of justice, and, above all, in the administration of criminal justice, speed is almost as essential as fairness. In a large number of cases a wrongful conviction would be less harmful to the convict than an acquittal after six months' imprisonment. To the public at large, a delay in trial is a greater burden than a miscarriage of justice or the offence itself. It may well be that alterations in our criminal system are necessary. The Grand Jury itself is an obsolete ornament which might advantageously be got rid of. An itinerant Justice of the High Court might in many places be conceivably dispensed with. In the more populous centres —in Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and Middlesex, in Birmingham and the Potteries—a permanent Judge of the High Court of Justice would certainly not find the time hang heavy on his hands for want of work, civil or criminal. In other parts of the country a roving Stipendiary might be a more profitable investment of public money than the angel visits of the last of the Barons. Partly by localisation, partly by devolution, the burden too heavy to be borne of the itinerant Justices might perhaps be lightened. But whatever may be the instruments by which the gaols are delivered, nothing is more certain than that the more frequently gaols are delivered, the more effectively will the State perform its primary function of protecting the lives and property of its members. Economically, as well as politically, speaking, it would be far better to increase the number of Judges than to decrease the number of Assizes. The cumbrousness of the machinery may well be diminished, but only that the speed of its working and the continuity of its output may be propor- tionately developed.
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