REPORT OF SELECT COMMITTEE ON EXPENSES OF COURTS.

The select committee to which was referred the answers from the county clerks and so much of the Governor's message as relates to the expenses of courts, has had the same under consideration and directed the chairman to submit the following report:

We have received answers to our Senate interrogatories from twenty-eight counties, leaving three counties not heard from. As the law organizing the county courts went into operation on the first of March, 1847, and these answers are principally dated about the middle of Jan., 1848, it leaves one month and a half to complete the year. In order that we may have under contemplation the operation of the system for one whole year, we have have added by estimate for one and a half months, at the same ratio as is afforded us by the returns. To this also we have added by estimate, for the counties not heard from in the ratio of their population,

A striking feature of the preceding table is the great number of causes that have been finally disposed of by the county courts, though all the suits were commenced since the first of last March, and the large number which those disposed of bear to the whole number brought into these courts. The number undisposed of, we may well suppose are those which have been commenced within

the last few weeks before the dates of the returns, and in a few weeks more these will have been disposed of, with the same unprecedented facility and dispatch.

If these suits had been commenced in the circuit courts at the rate of about one hundred and thirty three a month, not a tithe of them would have been ready for a hearing by this time; a majority of them would have continued in that court for years, and many of them would have remained there, at great expense, until they had outlived the witnesses and the parties, and then expired themselves of old age.

Where the expenses of juries could be distinguished from the other costs, it turns out that they have averaged about six dollars. But the comparatively few instances in which juries have been called, goes to establish in some degree, the general confidence which the public reposes in the county judges in the several counties of Michigan. The right of trial by jury should still be regarded as a sacred right; but it seems, practically, that suitors hold in much higher estimation still, the right to do without juries.

When courts were but the degraded instruments of the despotic power, it was a great advantage gained by suitors to have a jury of their peers to shield them from the caprices and corruptions of tyranny. But the reasons for which juries were instituted have nearly ceased to exist under our free and liberal government. Our judges have no incentive to oppress any portion of our citizens, or to show favoritism to others. We all feel conscious that in most instances there is a sufficiency of the popular element on the bench to shield us from oppression and wrong.

This willingness on the part of suitors to dispense with a jury has been remarkably exhibited for many years in our justices'

courts.

Since these officers have been made elective by the people, and endowed with a civil jurisdiction of one hundred dollars, besides a criminal jurisdiction of some importance, juries in these courts have fallen almost into disuse; so much so that a jury is called, on an average, but once in about seventy causes. We elect from fifty to eighty of these officers in a county, and notwithstanding they must be very inferior in experience and legal learning to the judges of our higher courts, and notwithstanding a jury as good

as we have in our higher courts can be obtained for $1 50 in a justices court, yet it is very rare that one is called.

Experience has taught us that the absence of technical rules in pleadings and practice, and the abandonment of useless and mischievous formalities, so facilitates the attainment of justice before these tribunals, that a cause in litigation may safely be entrusted to an honest man of sound mind, whose only object is to do right; and if every vestage of these technicalities was strictly forbidden in these courts, they would answer the purposes for which they were instituted still better than they now do. And even now, notwithstanding our proverbial jealousy of our rights, and the pertinacity with which we pursue them, there are but about four causes out of every hundred brought into these inferior courts, which are ever removed to a superior tribunal; and even then, full one half of the judgments of the courts below are confirmed, leaving but two per cent of our justices' decisions that are ever reversed; and perhaps not half of these are reversed on the merits of the case in contro

versy.

The number of decisions which have been removed from the county courts to the circuit courts is unexpectedly small. The friends of the county court system had reason to anticipate that a large number of causes would be removed to the higher courts during the first year of its continuance, for the following reasons: The law organizing our county courts contained many new and untried provisions, new in the practice of the bar, and to all others. The whole of the new Revision, too, had just come into operation, and the county courts, without any more authoritive decisions, were called upon to construe for the first time, statutes which the most experienced members of the bar and even the justices of the supreme court were puzzled to expound. Add to all these real difficulties, there were several irreconcilable and impracticable provisions in chapter 92, organizing these courts, which some say were placed there by the inadvertance of the friends of the system, and others say they found their way and have been kept there by the hands of its enemies.

With all these difficulties of a new court, with a new jurisdiction, with new, and in some instances, impracticable provisions, and new

statute laws throughout, we had inexperienced judges of the county courts; and the bar in many instances were too much disposed to attribute all the evils and difficulties which arose to the county court system; when, very likely it had nothing to do with it, and when the same or greater difficulties were constantly embarrassing them in the circuit courts. Notwith standing all these just and valid reasons to anticipate a large number of certioraris, yet it turns out by the returns that only about seven out of every one hundred of the causes disposed of, have been taken up. This would compare favorably with the number of causes taken up from the decisions of most of our justices of the supreme courts at the circuits. After the judges of our county courts have had a year's experience and the law has been properly amended, and the judges of our higher courts and the bar have settled upon the construction of the main body of our new Revision, we may expect results much more favorable still, and an almost universal acquiescence in their decisions, and a unanimous concurrence in the expediency of the system.

The returns from the county clerks show a very favorable result in most instances absolutely, and in all comparatively, as it respects the costs which accrue in the disposal of causes in the county courts. It will be perceived from the footing that the average costs whieh have accrued for the judges', clerks' and juries' fees have been $5 25 per cause disposed of. In many of the counties these costs have hardly exceeded $3 per cause! The sheriffs' costs for serving prc cesses being the same in the county as in the circuit courts have no been taken into account. In some of the counties the boards of supervisors have allowed the sheriffs $1 50 per day for attendance on the county court; but this is unauthorized by law, and is entirely unnecessary, for in the county courts there are seldom more than a half a dozen or a dozen persons present, and consequently he cannot be needed to keep order, and if he be employed to serve a precept, or summon and attend on a jury, he is paid for his services, and that is sufficient, as persons enough are always ready to perform official services for pay. But it is necessary that the sheriff and his deputies and constables should be in attendance on the