The condition of business in the courts of the United States is such that there seems to be an imperative necessity for remedial legislation on the subject.  Some of these courts are so overburdened with pending causes that the delays in determining litigation amount often to a denial of justice.  Among the plans suggested for relief is one submitted by the Attorney-General.  Its main features are:  The transfer of all the original jurisdiction of the circuit courts to the district courts and an increase of judges for the latter where necessary; an addition of judges to the circuit courts, and constituting them exclusively courts of appeal, and reasonably limiting appeals thereto; further restrictions of the right to remove causes from the State to Federal courts; permitting appeals to the Supreme Court from the courts of the District of Columbia and the Territories only in the same cases as they are allowed from State courts, and guarding against an unnecessary number of appeals from the circuit courts.

I approve the plan thus outlined, and recommend the legislation necessary for its application to our judicial system.

The present mode of compensating United States marshals and district attorneys should, in my opinion, be changed.  They are allowed to charge against the Government certain fees for services, their income being measured by the amount of such fees within a fixed limit as to their annual aggregate.  This is a direct inducement for them to make their fees in criminal cases as large as possible in an effort to reach the maximum sum permitted.  As an entirely natural consequence, unscrupulous marshals are found encouraging frivolous prosecutions, arresting people on petty charges of crime and transporting them to distant places for examination and trial, for the purpose of earning mileage and other fees; and district attorneys uselessly attend criminal examinations far from their places of residence for the express purpose of swelling their accounts against the Government.  The actual expenses incurred in these transactions are also charged against the Government.

Thus the rights and freedom of our citizens are outraged and public expenditures increased for the purpose of furnishing public officers pretexts for increasing the measure of their compensation.

I think marshals and district attorneys should be paid salaries, adjusted by a rule which will make them commensurate with services fairly rendered.

In connection with this subject I desire to suggest the advisability, if it be found not obnoxious to constitutional objection, of investing United States commissioners with the power to try and determine certain violations of law within the grade of misdemeanors.  Such trials might be made to depend upon the option of the accused.  The multiplication of small and technical offenses, especially under the provisions of our internal-revenue law, render some change in our present system very desirable in the interests