was the era of able judges. Royce, Williams, the two Redfields and the brothers Pierpoint, Poland and others were content with the salaries of $1375, and for judicial learning and all other qualities they were certainly not inferior to the judges of any court in the Union. And they earned their salaries. Their courts usually opened at nine o'clock in the morning, or at eight o'clock if there was a large number of cases noted for trial. There was an adjournment from twelve to one o'clock for dinner, and the afternoon session continued until five o'clock, and was often protracted until nine o'clock in the evening, with a short adjournment for sup per. There were no stenographers; judges and counsel wrote their own minutes of tes timony, notes of objections to evidence and other memoranda of the trial, and yet it was seldom that a jury trial occupied more than one day. The defeated party in such a trial was not ruined, nor was it necessary that his fee should support his counsel for a fourth of the year. I think the things which chiefly contrib uted to the brevity of jury trials were, first, the preparation of counsel. No good law yer ever undertook a trial without prep aration, unless he was retained so near to its beginning that there was absolutely no time. Consequently he tried no experi ments with the judge, and imperiled his case with no doubtful points. Secondly, he offered no evidence which he did not think admissible, and objected to none, un less he had considered the question of its admissibility. The senseless repetition of " I object," " I object," to every question of the opposing counsel, and of " I move to strike it out! " to every answer of the witness, was seldom heard. Irritation was thus avoided, time was saved, and justice to the parties more certainly secured. On a recent visit to my native state I found the opinion universal, that there is not one half as much legal business there as there
was forty years ago. A few visits to one of the courts, and a few conversations with my surviving contemporaries, left me in no doubt of the causes of its diminution. It is largely the fault of the Bar. It is true that the ex emption by statute of towns and cities from liability for injuries caused by defects in highways and bridges has taken away one fruitful source of litigation. But the princi pal cause is the fact that the increased time consumed in trial wears out the patience of the client, who swears in his wrath that if he is ever delivered from the cost and per plexity of that one trial, he will never, never have another; or if his patience is inex haustible or his sensibilities are not blunted by his long experience, his money is used up, and his resources destroyed by ex penses, so that he has nothing left to be used in another litigation. If the lawyers will learn when not to cross-examine a hostile witness, not to object to any question by way of experiment, and to apply their en ergies to limiting the trial to the issues really involved, they will find the time of their trials lessened, their income increased, and their own comfort greatly promoted. The readers of the GREEN BAG may be as much entertained as I was by a practical illustration of the lengthening of a jury trial under the more recent system. A number of persons had been injured and several killed by an accident on the railroad. It happened on the approach to a bridge crossing a river seventy feet below, where a broken rail derailed the train, and threw it into the gulf. Actions were commenced by the persons injured, charging negli gence on the part of the railroad, and one came to trial. The trial occupied about six weeks, and ended in a disagreement of the jury. I asked an old lawyer how it was possible to consume so much time in the trial of the only issue which the pleadings ought to have presented, that of the defendants' neg ligence, which might have involved the sub
