of this clause was to prevent the parties from resorting to the English Courts in actions under £50, thereby materially increasing the business of the Great Sessions. By the 29th section, the qualifications of jurymen of the Courts of Great Sessions were fixed to be an estate of freehold or copyhold of £8 yearly value or upwards, or any life interest or estate for the term of ninety-nine years of the yearly value of £15.
The WELSH Judicature.
A.D. 1830.—On July 23, 1830, an Act (1 William 4, c. 70) was passed to put an end to the separate jurisdiction for the Principality of Wales, and to make more effectual provision for the administration of Justice in England and Wales.
As this Act abolished the last vestiges of distinction in legal procedure between England and Wales, it is proposed to summarize the leading characteristics of a system of jurisprudence which had lasted in the Dominion of Wales for three centuries. It was in many respects superior to that prevailing in England, besides being familiar to the Welsh people, and adapted by long use to their habits and customs.
It was brought into permanent existence, as already stated, by the Act of Henry the Eighth, in 1542, promulgated upon the basis of reports made by Commissioners after inquiries on the spot, and it was too favourably said by Barrington "to contain a most complete code of regulations for the administration of justice, framed with such precision and accuracy that no one clause of it hath ever yet occasioned a doubt or required an explanation." It received the approval of two of the greatest of English jurists, Lord Coke and Lord Bacon. Coke refers to the Welsh Courts as the "excellent, venerable variety of seats and courts of justice, with their proper jurisdictions, according to the laws of England—the golden metwand, whereby all men's
