There was a corresponding improvement in the administration of justice. The slovenly and corrupt traditional system was condemned, and an entire series of new tribunals, framed on western models, was created. There was a court for each district and a court of appeal, from which a final appeal for revision might be made to the Senate. On the French model the magistrates were to conduct the preliminary inquiry which had hitherto been left, with disastrous results, to the police, and public trial by jury was introduced. In the rural districts justices of the peace, who were generally large landed proprietors, heard the petty cases which had earlier been made a matter of rough justice, or injustice, between the serf and his master. In such cases an appeal might be made to a bench of justices if there was question of a fine of more than thirty rubles (fifteen dollars) or more than three days’ imprisonment. Such appeals were rare, as it was found that the hardy peasant preferred a few strokes of the lash, as in the old days, to a loss of his money or his time. In the higher courts, as well as in the army, flogging was abolished. Here again the demands of the liberals were, in theory, generously met; and in practice they were largely evaded. Incompetence was inevitable at the beginning of so large a reform, and some degree of ill-will and abuse of power had to be expected. These defects do not detract from the merit of the Tsar and his liberal ministers. But there was from the first a tendency on the part of the imperial government to regard cases as political and reserve them for the kind of treatment they had always received. As the radical agitation grew, and the Tsar was driven into the arms of the reactionaries at the court, this interference naturally increased. Long before the end of Alexander’s reign the civil courts were habitually ignored in precisely those cases which needed the most impartial consideration, and men were detained and punished in thousands at the whim of brutal and irresponsible servants of the autocracy.