Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/402

 may be of slight importance, the cost of litigation is by no means insignificant. The court-fees, it is true, are not proportionately so high as in the County Court, although they might with advantage be largely reduced; but the average charges for legal assistance are enough to make the boldest litigant pause.

In an ordinary action for £100, supposing the defendant to be unsuccessful, he will probably have to pay, in addition to the £100, not less than £120 to his opponents' solicitor for the costs taxed against him, as well as, say, £150, the little account of his own attorney. Supposing he conscientiously believes the verdict to be unjust, and determines to go to the Court of Appeal, he will have to pay at least £100 more if unsuccessful. This brings his bill up to £470, instead of the original £100. A rational litigant would in such a case be unlikely to want to go beyond the Court of Appeal, but supposing he should desire to avail himself of the highest tribunal that a generous country places at his disposal, and takes his case to the House of Lords, he will be put to a further expense of about £200.

On the other hand, the successful suitor would also be at a considerable loss, the costs that he would have to pay being far in excess of the £100 recovered. By such a system a powerful and dangerous weapon is undoubtedly placed in the hands of a wealthy litigant who chooses oppressively to take his opponent from court to court. In many cases the costs are augmented to a scandalous degree by the multiplication of interlocutory proceedings. It is monstrous that in an action to recover a sum of £100 a wealthy and perverse litigant should have the power, on some incidental question of interrogatory, to take his opponent from the master to the judge, from the judge to the Divisional Court, from the Divisional Court to the Court of Appeal, and from the Court of Appeal to the House of Lords.

An evil hardly less grave than the law's expense is the law's delay. In a common law action of the simplest character, with little or no interlocutory proceedings, the period that must elapse between the issue of the writ and the trial of the action is little short of twelve months, while in the event of appeal nearly another year will be lost. In the Chancery Division the delay is still more marked.

At the commencement of the legal year, namely, October 24, 1890, there were 448 Chancery cases set down for trial. Of these, when Christmas arrived, only 74 had been decided, that is, after about one-third of the judicial year had elapsed. At that rate of progress—without allowing for the setting down of additional causes, which is, of course, continuous throughout the year—there would only be, of the 448 causes set down in October, 1890, 222 disposed of by October, 1891, thus leaving still unsettled