, under every form,
made researches is their houses, and who came to apply the
multiplied demands of the fiscal system. Like Proteus, the
administration could take any shape. To only speak of my
department, which certainly was not the least odious one, for it was
opposed to the habits of the Hamburgers and annoyed all the
industries, no idea can be formed of the despair of the inhabitants,
subjected to perpetual visits, and exposed to be charged with
contraventions of the law, of which they knew nothing.

"Remembering their former laws, they used to offer to meet a charge
of fraud by the proof of their oath, and could not imagine that such
a guarantee could be repulsed. When they were independent they paid
almost nothing, and such was the national spirit, that in urgent
cases when money was wanted the senate taxed every citizen a certain
proportion of his income, the tenth or twentieth. A donator
presided over the recovery of this tax, which was done in a very
strange manner. A box, covered with a carpet, received the offering
of every citizen, without any person verifying the sum, and only on
the simple moral guarantee of the honesty of the debtor, who himself
judged the sum he ought to pay. When the receipt was finished the
senate always obtained more than it had calculated on." (Puymaigre,
pp, 181.)]--

The long and frequent conversations I had on this subject with the
Senators and the most able lawyers of the country soon convinced me of
the immense difficulty I should have to encounter, and the danger of
suddenly altering habits and customs which had been firmly established by
time.

The jury system gave tolerable satisfaction; but the severe punishments
assigned to certain offences by the Code were disapproved of. Hence
resulted the frequent and serious abuse of men being acquitted whose
guilt was evident to the jury, who pronounced them not guilty rather than
condemn them to a punishment which was thought too severe. Besides,
their leniency had another ground, which was, that the people being
ignorant of the new law were not aware of the penalties attached to
particular offences. I remember that a man who was accused of stealing a
cloak at Hamburg justified himself on the ground that he committed the
offence in a fit of intoxication. M. Von Einingen, one of the jury,
insisted that the prisoner was not guilty, because, as he said, the
Syndic Doorma