1 Lord Chancellor £10,000 4 Lords of Appeal (£6,000) £24,000 1 Master of the Rolls £6,000 5 Lords Justices (£5,000) £25,000 5 Chancery Judges (£5,000) £25,000 1 Lord Chief Justice £8,000 13 Common Law Judges (£5,000) £65,000 2 Admiralty Judges (£5,000) £10,000 1 Judge Court of Arches £5,000 -- -------- 33 £178,000 There are, besides, a great number of highly paid officials known on the Common Law side as masters, and in the Chancery Division as chief clerks, who assist the judges by performing minor judicial functions. These gentlemen receive £1,000 a year each. There are also Clerks of the Crown and Associates on the various circuits who receive liberal salaries, as well as a multitude of clerks and other officers who are paid out of the public funds. But it is not our present purpose to consider these minor functionaries, our object being to afford a general conception of the working of the High Courts of Justice without going into unnecessary details. For the information of the curious, however, we may state that the total expenditure for law and justice last year was more than four and a half millions sterling, a sum which it should be understood includes the charges for maintaining prisons and other expenses incidental to the administration of justice. In face of such stupendous figures the intelligent foreigner may well imagine that we have a judicial system well-nigh perfect, or at least quite adequate to the requirements of a great commercial community. And yet what are the facts? Among members of the legal profession it is a matter of common observation and lament that commercial cases are year by year growing less frequent. For a long time they consoled themselves by attributing this to commercial stagnation. But of late their eyes have been opened to the real cause, and neither by their smiles nor their tears can they win back the vanished litigation that once so satisfactorily brought grist to their mill. On all hands business men declare that, so far from being satisfied with their expensive legal machinery, they absolutely dread the law. They dare not risk its dignified delay, they fear its endless expense, they are terrified at the prospect of being dragged from Court to Court on Appeal, and they have no confidence in the ability of a large proportion of our judges to decide rightly on commercial disputes, especially those involving technical matters. [Illustration: MR. JUSTICE STEPHEN.]