Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/533

 16. BOW EN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 519 puisne judges. Its authority was supreme over all tribunals of inferior jurisdiction. It took sovereign cognisance of civil and criminal causes alike — kept the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Admiralty within bounds, controlled magistrates and justices, supervised the proceedings of civil corporations, repressed and corrected all usurpations, all encroachments upon common right. It wielded two great weapons of justice over public bodies: mandamus, whereby, when no other remedy appeared available, it compelled them to fulfil the law; prohibition, by means of which it confined all inferior authorities strictly to their respective provinces and powers. The Court of Common Pleas, historically the most ancient of the three, which had retained, with no par- ticular benefit to society, supervision over the few ancient forms of real actions that still survived, exercised also a general authority over personal actions. It was directed by a chief justice and four puisne justices. It laboured, how- ever, under the disadvantage that, as far as the general bar of England was concerned, it was a ' champ clos.' Serjeants- at-law had exclusive audience in it during term time, and it was not till 1847 that this vexatious and injurious monopoly was finally abolished. The Court of Exchequer had been from early years the special tribunal for dealing with mat- ters in which the king's revenue' was interested. It still retained in revenue cases and some other matters a particu- lar jurisdiction, though clothed by this time (like the Queen's Bench and the Common Pleas) with power over all actions that were personal. Besides these functions, it was also a Court of Equity, and took part from time to time in the Chancery business of the realm. A chief baron was at the head, assisted by four puisne barons, of whom two still re- main and preserve to us a title which otherwise would be extinct, the present Baron Pollock and Baron Huddleston. The procedure at the common law, as compared with the wants of the country, had become antiquated, technical, and obscure. In old days the courts at Westminster were easily able to despatch, during four short terms of three weeks each, together with the assizes and sittings at Guild- hall, the mass of the business brought before them. But,