Frequently solicitors are engaged, one trying to make the case appear black, and one trying to make it appear white. Very often they are able to twist witnesses at their pleasure, their business being not to arrive at the truth in any matter, but to make the opposing side appear in the wrong. To note and sift the evidence, to study the witnesses, and sweep away the sophistries of the defence or prosecution, is not an easy matter, but the London magistrates do it, and do it to perfection. I do not know any magistrate in whose hands the interests of a prisoner, guilty or innocent, are not absolutely safe. It is, in fact, no uncommon thing for a magistrate to protect a prisoner against himself and against his own or the prosecuting solicitor. To hold the balance of justice evenly day after day in all sorts of charges is not an easy task, but it is done; and the fact that very few of their decisions or sentences are annulled or revoked shows that the manner in which justice is administered in our police courts is beyond question. Yet it is not a hard-and-fast or a cut-and-dried justice that is administered, for the spirit of the law is sometimes only to be kept by breaking the letter. Some people are for ever excited about disproportionate sentences, and are quite wroth when they read that one man has received a much more severe sentence than another, though both have committed the same class of offence. If the same magistrate has awarded both sentences, then the outcry is great. I once met with a gentleman many miles from London who kept a scrap-book for the purpose; in this he had cuttings from the daily police court news, the sentences and decisions of the different London magistrates. He had them arranged in a most systematic way: the court and magistrate, offence and sentence. Contrasts were shown not only by comparing the sentences of different magistrates for similar offences, but also the varying punishments awarded by the same magistrate for one class of offence. He was rather proud of his work, and protested that law and justice was a complete ‘hotch-potch.’ He said he should like to see justice administered in a more logical and scientific way. I suggested that it might be a good thing to have a phonograph instead of a chief clerk, then every word spoken by witnesses, prosecutor, or prisoner might be spoken into it, and said that it would be easy to have an automatic machine for magistrates, so that by a combination of the two scientific justice might be done. The glory of London police court justice is that it is not administered in a scientific way. God forbid it ever should be! for then injustice would be the rule and not the exception.