16. PROGRESS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE DURING THE VICTORIAN PERIOD ^ By Charles Synge Christopher, Baron Bowen^ NO story can be more difficult to tell than that of the progress of reforms in the administration of the law during a period of fifty years. It consists for the most part of the history of countless changes of detail, many of which must remain absolutely unintelligible to the greater portion of the public. To comprehend their exact value would re- quire a number of minute and technical explanations suf- ficient to fill, not merely one chapter, but several volumes. All that can be aimed at within the compass of a few pages is to endeavour to sketch in outline the broad features of a picture which it would be hopeless to attempt to render elab- orate or complete. The recent fusion of the superior tribu- nals of the country into a single Supreme Court of Judica- ture is a landmark on which the attention of the lay world fastens, and which it in some measure can appreciate. Yet this change, important as it is, has only perfected and crowned a long course of simplification and reform, of which it is the logical consequence. Perhaps the best way of mak- ing the narrative understood by those who are not adepts in the language or the procedure of the law will be to explain briefly, even if it must of necessity be roughly, what the great English Courts of Justice were at the beginning of the reign,
- This essay was published as a chapter in " The Reign of Queen Vic-
toria; a Survey of Fifty Years of Progress," 1887, volume I, pp. 281- 329, edited by Thomas Humphrey Ward (London: Smith, Elder, & Co.). » 1835-1894. B. A. Balliol College, Oxford, 1857, M. A, 1872, D. C. L. 1883; Barrister and Bencher of Lincoln's Inn; judge of the High Court, Queen's Bench Division, 1879; judge of the Court of Appeal, 1888; lord of appeal in ordinary, 1893. 616
