general relation between the lawyers
and the ruling class. Burn tells the justice for his comfort that the
judges will take a lenient view of any errors into which his ignorance
may have led him. The discharge of such duties by an independent
gentleman was thought to be so desirable and so creditable to him that
his want of efficiency must be regarded with consideration. Nor, though
the justices have been a favourite butt for satirists, does it appear
that the system worked badly. When it became necessary to appoint paid
magistrates in London, and the pay, according to the prevalent system,
was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading
justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were some of the
'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be hard upon a
poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of
the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were
on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of
legal authority in the country.

The justices, again, discharged functions which would elsewhere belong
to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the
justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole
administrative system.[12] Their duties had become so multifarious and
perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads.
Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate
detail, and showing how large a part they played in the whole social
structure. An intense jealousy of central power was one correlative
characteristic. Blackstone remarks in his more liberal humour that the
number of new offices held at pleasure had greatly extended the
influence of the crown. This refers to the custom-house officers, excise
officers, stamp distributors and postmasters. But if the tax-gatherer
represented the state, he represented also part of the patronage at the
disposal of politicians. A voter was often in search of the place of a
'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest poet of the day could only
be rewarded by making him an exciseman. Any extension of a system which
multiplied public offices was regarded with suspicion. Walpole, the
strongest minister of the century, had been forced to an ignominious
retreat when he proposed to extend the excise. The cry arose that he
meant to enslave the country and extend the influence of the crown over
all the corp