CHAPTER XII.
CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LAW.
THE legal profession forms a very important and numerous caste in Colymbia, and as the people are very litigious, there is plenty of what we would call civil business transacted in the courts. The laws have been enacted by the legislature at various periods, but whether from accident or design, have usually been so clumsily worded that their precise meaning is known to none. Every law requires some case to be tried in order to determine its meaning. Such cases are referred to as precedents in the event of future cases to which the laws are applicable being tried, and it is the great aim of the lawyers on either side to deny or contend for the applicability of the precedent to their client's case, according as it is made for or against him. When no precedent applicable to the case in hand is recorded, the judge proceeds to try the case by the relative weight of the arguments on each side. He has before him a nicely adjusted balance, one scale of which is for the plaintiff, the other for the defendant.
When the counsel for the plaintiff is about to speak, the judge asks him solemnly, "How many
