To understand the popularity of the Justice of Peace Courts, we must know something of the old police courts which they supplanted.  The nobles, the military, and the small officials had always looked on the police with contempt, because their position secured them against interference, and the merchants acquired a similar immunity by submitting to blackmail, which often took the form of a fixed subsidy; but the lower classes in town and country stood, in fear of the humblest policeman, and did not dare to complain of him to his superiors.  If two workmen brought their differences before a police court, instead of getting their case decided on grounds of equity, they were pretty sure to get scolded in language unfit for ears polite, or to receive still worse treatment.  Even among the higher officers of the force many became famous for their brutality.  A Gorodnitchi of the town of Tcherkassy, for example, made for himself in this respect a considerable reputation.  If any humble individual ventured to offer an objection to him, he had at once recourse to his fists, and any reference to the law put him into a state of frenzy.  “The town,” he was wont to say on such occasions, “has been entrusted to me by his Majesty, and you dare to talk to me of the law?  There is the law for you!”—­the remark being accompanied with a blow.  Another officer of the same type, long resident in Kief, had a somewhat different method of maintaining order.  He habitually drove about the town with a Cossack escort, and when any one of the lower classes had the misfortune to displease him, he ordered one of his Cossacks to apply a little corporal punishment on the spot without any legal formalities.

In the Justice of Peace Courts things were conducted in a very different style.  The justice, always scrupulously polite without distinction of persons, listened patiently to the complaint, tried to arrange the affairs amicably, and when his efforts failed, gave his decision at once according to law and common-sense.  No attention was paid to rank or social position.  A general who would not attend to the police regulations was fined like an ordinary workingman, and in a dispute between a great dignitary and a man of the people the two were treated in precisely the same way.  No wonder such courts became popular among the masses; and their popularity was increased when it became known that the affairs were disposed of expeditiously, without unnecessary formalities and without any bribes or blackmail.  Many peasants regarded the justice as they had been wont to regard kindly proprietors of the old patriarchal type, and brought their griefs and sorrows to him in the hope that he would somehow alleviate them.  Often they submitted most intimate domestic and matrimonial concerns of which no court could possibly take cognisance, and sometimes they demanded the fulfilment of contracts which were in flagrant contradiction not only with the written law, but also with ordinary morality.*