52.
69
$3
It lacks the precision and certainly the clearness of the old Common Law and Equity procedure, especially as regards pleading. It is a very long way from being the same as the present procedure and practice at home; so far removed from it that decided cases reported in the books on the English Judicature Act and the Rules and orders thereunder are valueless here. And no rules and orders have ever been drawn up under the Act here so as to establish a practice. At present it is a chaos of little better. It must be revised soon and when it comes under revision, I would venture to suggest that trial by Jury in civil cases where Chinese are concerned should be done away with. The Jury have not an idea in common with the Chinese. They have no common standpoint from which to view him and his transactions. All that interplay between Counsel and witness that so instructs a Jury when both are English is lost on a Jury in Hongkong in Chinese cases. The witness is impossible. There is no play of feature to enable judge and jury to read between the lines of his evidence; all the equivocations, evasions, verbal fencings with the question deemed so valuable at home are useless here. The interpreter and the...