ce of organization remits them to their own exertions for
safety)--and it was, therefore, impossible that any artificial system
should be at once adopted. The people had been accustomed to such
primitive associations, as they had entered into "for the common defence
and general welfare" of their infant communities; the rule of action had
been swift, and sometimes very informal punishment, for every
transgression; and this rule, having very well answered its purpose,
though at the expense of occasional severity and injustice, they could
not immediately understand the necessity for any other course of
proceeding.

One of the characteristics of the early justice, then, was a supreme
contempt for all mere form. He called it "nonsense" and could never
comprehend its utility. To him, all ceremony was affectation, and the
refinements of legal proceeding were, in his estimation, anti-republican
innovations upon the original simplicity of mankind. Technicalities he
considered merely the complicated inventions of lawyers, to exhibit
their perverse ingenuity--traps to catch the well-meaning or unwary, or
avenues of escape for the guilty. The rules of evidence he neither
understood nor cared for; he desired "to hear all about" every cause
brought before him; and the idea of excluding testimony, in obedience to
any rule, he would never entertain. He acted upon the principle--though
he probably never heard of the maxim--that "the law furnishes a remedy
for every wrong;" and, if he knew of none in positive enactment, he
would provide one, from the arsenal of his own sense of right. He never
permitted anything to obstruct the punishment of one whom he had
adjudged guilty; and, rather than allow a culprit to escape, he would
order his judgment to be carried at once into effect, in the presence,
and under the direction of the court.

He had a strong prejudice against every man accused of crime; and
sometimes almost reversed the ancient presumption of the law, and held
the prisoner guilty, until he proved himself innocent. He had unbounded
confidence in the honesty of his neighbors and friends, and was
unwilling to believe, that they would accuse a man of crime or
misdemeanor, without very good cause. When it was proven that a crime
_had been committed_, he considered the guilt of the prisoner already
half established: it was, in his judgment, what one, better acquainted
with legal terms, might have called "a _prima facia_ case," devol