It may be reasonably doubted whether this system of judicial administration can anywhere give satisfactory results.  It is everywhere found by experience that in tribunals from which the healthy atmosphere of publicity is excluded justice languishes, and a great many ugly plants shoot up with wonderful vitality.  Languid indifference, an indiscriminating spirit of routine, and unblushing dishonesty invariably creep in through the little chinks and crevices of the barrier raised against them, and no method of hermetically sealing these chinks and crevices has yet been invented.  The attempt to close them up by increasing the formalities and multiplying the courts of appeal and revision merely adds to the tediousness of the procedure, and withdraws the whole process still more completely from public control.  At the same time the absence of free discussion between the contending parties renders the task of the judge enormously difficult.  If the system is to succeed at all, it must provide a body of able, intelligent, thoroughly-trained jurists, and must place them beyond the reach of bribery and other forms of corruption.

In Russia neither of these conditions was fulfilled.  Instead of endeavouring to create a body of well-trained jurists, the Government went further and further in the direction of letting the judges be chosen for a short period by popular election from among men who had never received a juridical education, or a fair education of any kind; whilst the place of judge was so poorly paid, and stood so low in public estimation, that the temptations to dishonesty were difficult to resist.

The practice of choosing the judges by popular election was an attempt to restore to the courts something of their old popular character; but it did not succeed, for very obvious reasons.  Popular election in a judicial organisation is useful only when the courts are public and the procedure simple; on the contrary, it is positively prejudicial when the procedure is in writing and extremely complicated.  And so it proved in Russia.  The elected judges, unprepared for their work, and liable to be changed at short intervals, rarely acquired a knowledge of law or procedure.  They were for the most part poor, indolent landed proprietors, who did little more than sign the decisions prepared for them by the permanent officials.  Even when a judge happened to have some legal knowledge he found small scope for its application, for he rarely, if ever, examined personally the materials out of which a decision was to be elaborated.  The whole of the preliminary work, which was in reality the most important, was performed by minor officials under the direction of the secretary of the court.  In criminal cases, for instance, the secretary examined the written evidence—­all evidence was taken down in writing—­extracted what he considered the essential points, arranged them as he thought proper, quoted the laws which ought in his opinion to be applied, put all this into a report, and read