This is a question which has an interest not only for Russians, but for all students of social science, for it tends to throw light on the difficult subject as to how far institutions may be successfully transplanted to a foreign soil.  Many thinkers hold, and not without reason, that no institution can work well unless it is the natural product of previous historical development.  Now we have here an opportunity of testing this theory by experience; we have even what Bacon terms an experimentum crucis.  This new judicial system is an artificial creation constructed in accordance with principles laid down by foreign jurists.  All that the elaborators of the project said about developing old institutions was mere talk.  In reality they made a tabula rasa of the existing organisation.  If the introduction of public oral procedure and trial by jury was a return to ancient customs, it was a return to what had been long since forgotten by all except antiquarian specialists, and no serious attempt was made to develop what actually existed.  One form, indeed, of oral procedure had been preserved in the Code, but it had fallen completely into disuse, and seems to have been overlooked by the elaborators of the new system.*

     * I refer to the so-called Sud po forme established by an
     ukaz of Peter the Great, in 1723.  I was much astonished
     when I accidentally stumbled upon it in the Code.

Having in general little confidence in institutions which spring ready-made from the brains of autocratic legislators, I expected to find that this new judicial organisation, which looks so well on paper, was well-nigh worthless in reality.  Observation, however, has not confirmed my pessimistic expectations.  On the contrary, I have found that these new institutions, though they have not yet had time to strike deep root, and are very far from being perfect even in the human sense of the term, work on the whole remarkably well, and have already conferred immense benefit on the country.

In the course of a few years the Justice of Peace Courts, which may perhaps be called the newest part of the new institutions, became thoroughly acclimatised, as if they had existed for generations.  As soon as they were opened they became extremely popular.  In Moscow the authorities had calculated that under the new system the number of cases would be more than doubled, and that on an average each justice would have nearly a thousand cases brought before him in the course of the year.  The reality far exceeded their expectations:  each justice had on an average 2,800 cases.  In St. Petersburg and the other large towns the amount of work which the justices had to get through was equally great.