Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/548

516 of the coursing championship, and the Waterloo cup is the &quot; Blue Riband &quot; of the leash. Rabbit coursing is much pursued in the suburbs of Lancashire manufacturing towns. It is conducted more artificially than hare coursing, the [rabbit being dropt by hand some twenty yards in front of the dogs, and the victor being the first that catches and holds the game.

1em  COURT. This name is now usually restricted to judicial tribunals, almost the only exception being the household of the king, which is still called the Court. All courts are not even now purely judicial in character ; the County Court, for instance, is still the assembly of the free holders of the county in which representatives and certain officers are elected. Such assemblies in early times exer cised political and legislative as well as judicial functions. But these have now been almost entirely separated every where, and only judicial bodies are now usually called courts. In every court, says Blackstone, there must be three parts, an actor or plaintiff, reus or defendant, and judex, or judge. The language of legal fictions, which English lawyers in variably use in all constitutional subjects, makes the king the ultimate source of all judicial authority, and assumes his personal presence in all the courts.

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These words, which are still printed in modern editions of the commentaries, might give a false impression of the historical and legal relations of the courts and the Crown, if it is not remembered that they are nothing more than the expression of a venerable fiction. The administration of justice was, indeed, one of the functions of the king in early times ; the king himself sat on circuit so late as-the reign of Edward IV., and even after regular tribunals were established, a reserve of judicial power still remained in the king and his council, in the exercise of which it was pos Kible for the king to participate personally. The last judicial act of an English king, if such it can bo called, was that by which James I. settled the dispute between the Court of Chancery and Courts of Common Law, Since the establishment of Parliamentary government the courts take their law directly from the legislature, and the king is only connected with them indirectly as a member of tho legislative ^ body. The king s name, however, is still used in this as in other departments of state action. The courts exercising jurisdiction in England are divided by certain features which may here be briefly indicated.

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The distribution of judicial business among the various courts may be exhibited as follows.

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