Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/267

 litigation. But it may be urged on practical grounds that to make the path of the litigant too easy would lead to too much invocation of the law, and that the full recognition of the public usefulness of litigants must be postponed to the millennium—which age of ideal perfection will not occur (it may be thought necessary to concede) a hundred years hence. And it is not difficult to imagine means by which the public can be protected against the factious and unnecessary litigation to which, in the absence of some safeguard, we should certainly be exposed. The plaintiff might be required to obtain some sort of fiat, such as is required now before a suit of criminal libel can be prosecuted: and there would be no hardship in the litigant who failed to obtain the fiat being left to bear his own expenses up to the time of failure, though, in the event of his success, he would of course have them repaid. The legal machinery for obtaining permission to sue need not be made too complicated: it must not be allowed to develop into a sort of preliminary trial. Probably some sort of arrangement as the above will be instituted a hundred years hence, and all law-costs borne by the State, except in the case of obvious dishonesty or bad faith; the trouble and loss of time necessarily incurred exercising a restraining influence upon the litigious.

In regard to the general machinery of the