For the benefit of those especially interested I give in the appendix the past and present organization of the courts. [495] The subject is too technical to interest the average layman.

The slender salaries paid to judges, the fact that in the majority of cases their appointment and promotion were due to influence and suggestion, their liability to be transferred from one court to another or from the Philippines to the Antilles, as frequently happened, and the further fact that the subordinate personnel of the courts was not a salaried one, caused the administration of justice in the Philippine Islands to be looked upon askance.  There was a general belief, well founded in many instances, that lawsuits were won through influence or bribery.  Clerks and the subordinate personnel of the courts were readily bribed.  Indeed, they frequently demanded bribes from litigants, or from defendants in criminal cases, under promise to expedite the trials if paid to do so, or under threat to commit some injustice if payment was not forthcoming.  For many years after the American occupation justices of the peace received no salaries and had to look to fees for their compensation.  This system worked wretchedly.  The positions were only too often filled by very incompetent and unworthy men, who stimulated litigation in order to make more money.  Now all justices of the peace receive reasonable salaries.

The paying of regular salaries and the furnishing of necessary offices and supplies have done much to improve the work of justice of the peace courts, which are now presided over by men who average far better than even their immediate predecessors.

Until they were put on a salary basis the work of the Filipino justices of the peace left much more to be desired than is lacking at present.  In many instances they allowed gross brutalities, perpetrated by the rich on the poor, or by the strong on the weak, to go unpunished.  The following case furnished me by an American teacher is typical of what has occurred only too often:—­

“On another occasion, I met the brother of my house muchacha, [496] a boy about eight.  He had a sort of protuberance on one side caused by broken ribs which had not been set.  I questioned my muchacha.  She said her step-father had kicked the child across the room some weeks before and broken his ribs.  The next day, I took the child together with Senora Bayot, the wife of the Governor’s secretary, before the local Justice of the Peace.  Senora Bayot translated and the child told the same story as had his sister.  The Justice of the Peace issued an order for the step-father to report to him on the next day.  That night my muchacha told me that her step-father had threatened to kill the child if he did not tell the Justice that he got the hurt by falling out of an orange tree.  The child did as ordered, and the step-father was dismissed.  When I questioned the Justice of the Peace as to why he credited the second tale, he said the child was under oath then, and was not under oath in the first statements.”