expedite the
trials if paid to do so, or under threat to commit some injustice
if payment was not forthcoming. For many years after the American
occupation justices of the peace received no salaries and had to look
to fees for their compensation. This system worked wretchedly. The
positions were only too often filled by very incompetent and unworthy
men, who stimulated litigation in order to make more money. Now all
justices of the peace receive reasonable salaries.

The paying of regular salaries and the furnishing of necessary
offices and supplies have done much to improve the work of justice
of the peace courts, which are now presided over by men who average
far better than even their immediate predecessors.

Until they were put on a salary basis the work of the Filipino
justices of the peace left much more to be desired than is lacking
at present. In many instances they allowed gross brutalities,
perpetrated by the rich on the poor, or by the strong on the weak,
to go unpunished. The following case furnished me by an American
teacher is typical of what has occurred only too often:--

"On another occasion, I met the brother of my house _muchacha_, [496]
a boy about eight. He had a sort of protuberance on one side caused by
broken ribs which had not been set. I questioned my _muchacha_. She
said her step-father had kicked the child across the room some weeks
before and broken his ribs. The next day, I took the child together
with Senora Bayot, the wife of the Governor's secretary, before the
local Justice of the Peace. Senora Bayot translated and the child told
the same story as had his sister. The Justice of the Peace issued an
order for the step-father to report to him on the next day. That night
my _muchacha_ told me that her step-father had threatened to kill the
child if he did not tell the Justice that he got the hurt by falling
out of an orange tree. The child did as ordered, and the step-father
was dismissed. When I questioned the Justice of the Peace as to why
he credited the second tale, he said the child was under oath then,
and was not under oath in the first statements."

It was not deemed wise at the outset to appoint a Filipino judge for
the city of Manila, as it was feared that there would be a lack of
confidence in a Filipino who had occasion to decide cases involving
large sums of money in which Americans or foreigners on the one hand
and Filipinos on the other were interested; but a few years a