amongst us, nor true liberty be enjoyed by us. In fact, we all know perfectly well that the present system of juries operates so unsuccessfully that it was at one time the custom, or at least the frequent habit of our juries to leave cases to be decided by a rubber at cards. And, what is more sad, since our statute was passed, expressly prohibiting the decisions of juries to be determined by games of chance, the uncertainties of our jury verdicts have not at all been diminished. Why under the sun, do we continue such a system? We, all of us, know that under our Grand Jury and Petty Jury systems, forced on us by our Constitution, our able lawyers do manage to get nearly all our criminals free, when they can be induced to earnestly set about it. We all know, or ought to be aware, that so long as the present system is continued, the administration of the laws as a science, or even an approximate science, must continue to be impossible. The very knowledge which the existence of, our insecure system of juries occasions, increases the numbers of crimes amongst us, and multiplies the nnmbers of our criminals; until stealing has long since been made a business for maintaining families, and supporting regular societies of thieves; and until robbery has been made a profession in which children are raised and educated; and until murder itself has been reduced to an offense which can be perpetrated at any time and any where in our midst, and with as well as without witnesses, almost with impunity-by those who have money.

And in civil cases, the assistance of a jury is invariably demanded by those who would never have brought a suit, or who would never have put in a defense were it not for the continual hope of "managing a jury." There is no sense- -I repeat it and insist upon it-in supposing any of these and endless other objections are attributable to the way juries are selected, or to any mere defects in the personnel of juries. Any jury must be composed of human beings. And there are ten million different ways to mislead or influence human beings empaneled and given up to another's control, and all our ablest lawyers understand every one of those ways perfectly well. The practice of the law, under the present jury system, ceases to be the pursuit of a legal science, where the laws and the established principles of human justice only are to be discussed, and impartially, and as nearly as possible uniformly decided; and is now being rapidly degraded into mere struggles to win law suits, legally or otherwise. Juries add immeasurably to the insecurity, the delays, the expenses, and the uncertainties of every trial. I know of no advantage to be gained by their continuance in behalf of any honorable and respectable portion of any community of freemen-except, or unless, possibly, to my respected brothers—the lawyers.

I am tempted to make a rough and sweeping sort of estimate, rather as a matter of illustration, and not even with any pretense towards accuracy in the estimate, and to say of juries: Take them all together from that absurd coroner's inquest jury (radiculed by Shakespeare), to the highest special juries in equity cases, and from Grand Juries all the way down to county Justices' Court Juries, and one might say roughly respecting their unnecessary injuries inflicted on the State, that they cause all our legal business to be doubled; all the delays in arriving at the final decisions of cases to be trebled; all the labor and trouble and anxieties and demoralizing tendencies of our lawyers to be quadrupled, and their costs and charges, in consequence, to be justly about quintupled. I am fully satisfied that the system is bad in every point of view to be taken of it. Neither lawyers nor any other honest and intelligent portion of the community really think the system a good one, so far as I know. The only persons interested, or who may intelligently suppose themselves interested in preserving such a system under our free government, so far as I can judge, are our criminals, and those who have committed, or intend to commit crimes; and that other equally large, and, for the peace and happiness of the community, equally injurious class of persons who are engaging in speculating law suits, a kind of law suits which, I am satisfied, on inquiry, occupies a great portion of the whole time of our courts of justice. And, in my opinion, even these two classes of persons are themselves only seriously injured by the facilities which jury trials extend towards them, and the villainies which the existence of the system tempts them to undertake. It is certain that the country should not support a system of courts of justice which even can be used for any other purposes whatever than to try such cases as the absolute rights of property, or of life, or of reputation, between man and man, render necessary. Persons who practice upon and with our courts of justice for other purposes than these, are easily seen by judges who are not stupid. But so long as our judges are compelled to remain more or less subservient, in order to remain in their places; and so long as our system of juries practically subjects us to personal jury law, instead of our own laws, so long, we can rest assured, we must remain without the enjoyment of true liberty.

A SUGGESTION ON OUR SYSTEMS OF TAXATION,

I have taken the trouble to investigate that other antiquated English contrivance substituting personal will and caprice in place of established and prefixed rules. And this time not as to the protection of property, life, and reputation, but only as to the protection of

property against unequal and unreasonable forced contributions, for real or pretended public requirements. Our system of assessors and personal assessments is also a relic of the dark ages in England, that we still adhere to, and have a Constitution that requires, for no conceivable reason that I can imagine, excepting only the foolish one that "it was the way our forefathers did it." Though in fact our forefathers did it in a different and infinitely more liberal way. And in this case (also as in the case of juries), instead of adopting some other system more in accordance with our own intelligence and with our own peculiar situation, where, even the "poor laboring classes"-(hardly noticed by the English Government for any purpose except by way of profligate and frequently injurious charities) are with us generally independent and living on their own properties, we have "amended" the duties and privileges of assessors in a manner disgraceful to us. In England it is legally true that a man's private dwelling, however humble is sacred. Nothing but an order of court, upon a sufficient sworn information, can excuse any official or other impertinent or inquisitorial intrusion into a private family, upon any pretext whatever. But here with us a man's home is not his castle. But men are actually sent around nosing into our private dwellings, and private families, and our assessors are sneakingly expected to find out the quality of the beds we sleep on, the chairs and seats we rest on, the vessels we serve our food upon, and the kinds of tables and stands our wives and children sit about at meals, or kneel about at prayers, in order that they may be listed and taxed! The harassing, impertinent, inquisitorial, low, vulgar and nosing, and purely personal, and consequently always irregular and unequal system of taxation in vogue amongst us, justly and properly enrages our people. I would be heartily ashamed of them if they were not enraged by it. Any business man, possessed of common sense and common honesty, and having the power the State possesses, who should adopt the preposterous plan of electing "Assessors and Collectors of town, county, and State taxes," "in every district, county and town,”- -one set of fellows to fix the amount to be paid, and another set of fellows to collect it, and every set of fellows to be re-elected nearly every year and in every place where taxes are to be paid, and no act of judicial inquiry to be had in any case to ascertain values,-would not be considered either wise, or prudent, or just. Why should we encourage our State Government to engage in acts of injustice and inquisitorial meanness and impertinence, which not even a good and generous and honorable man could be guilty of ? The house entering, reckless and scandalous system of attempting to make everything and every creature, and every right to recover, or

supposed right ro recover, or possible right to recover something "to be listed and taxed," is neither decent, nor endurable. No enlightened government tolerates anything of the sort except our own. And the fault certainly does not lie with our people, for they are now, and continually have been, violently opposed to the entire, and entirely ignorant, illiberal, and contemptible system in vogue. The people ought never to be blamed for this state of things; the blame is only due to the ignorance, or incompetency, or littleness of their leaders. In my opinion, and I speak as one of the people, (for I am, and always have remained but one of the people,) they do not desire any such completely scandalous system of raising public revenue as now exists, and as the present Constitution sanctions, and in part, expressly requires. And the new Constitution now before the people, under the false pretense of "Amendments," proposes to so fasten this system upon the people of this State, that even their Legislature itself shall be rendered powerless to afford any relief against it. Under this proposed new Constitution now published, under the pretense of mere "Amendments" for the examination of the people, "everything" having an owner, and every right to sue for the recovery of anything, is to be required by the Constitution, to be listed and taxed at whatever value it has !

No legislature, no court, could afford any relief, or any diminution or change in the plain requirement of such a provision when found in our very constitution of Government. No assessor would be allowed any discretion. He would be required by the Constitution itself to list and value the clothes of beggars, the swaddling cloths and cradles in which babes are laid, the shroud and coffin and grave in which the dead repose, or are buried; the false hair, the combs, the rings, and every stitch of clothing worn by or belonging to any female, high or low, rich or poor, respectable or in prison, and if everything, whatever, in the State, having an owner, should not be listed and valued, the Constitution of the State would not be complied with! Even the man assaulted and battered in the streets would have to be found out, and the amount of his "chose in action" listed at the cash value of his claim for the assault and the battery. Every book account, every due-bill, every bank book, every right to sue, and every suit in any court, would have to be listed at its value, and taxed. And if not done, the lawyers would contend, and not without reasons, that the Constitution of the State not being complied with in its plain, explicit and express requirements, the assessments, must be held void. It is doubtful whether an unreasoning provision in a Constitution, so plain and explicit as not to admit of any doubt, could be modified or changed by any power less than that

which adopted it, even under the specious pretext of giving it "a reasonable construction." Because, to give a plain unreasonable provision a reasonable construction, would be to adopt a new provision in its stead. It seems to me plain, that the object of government is not to torment the people by scramblingly and indiscriminately extorting money from them, and by other trickeries or knaveries, for which the people and universal suffrage are held responsible, but for which neither of them are responsible. Under a proper system of free government, no just complaint could be heard from the people without the means being at hand to apply the proper remedy. We have no right to find fault with foreigners for their increasing censures, upon some of our present systems for managing our public affairs, for we must be stupid indeed if we do not find fault with them ourselves. We are filling all far-seeing minds at home as well as in Europe, with sad regrets and forebodings, by the exhibitions of littleness in our statesmanship which are continually afflicting us on all sides; and by maintaining plans of government, not now fairly to be regarded as the best we can devise, nor even as at all deserving the thought that they are "perfect models of Republican Government." At all events, on this matter of raising funds for the necessary requirments of a more patriotic, and less lazy-man-supporting system of government for California, there are no real difficulties, and no excuses for the littlenesses and meannesses evinced in our plans at present in use, or those now "recommended for adoption," by the blundering proposed new Constitution, hurriedly adopted by our last Legislature. If our constitutional obstructions were removed, there would be no difficulty in providing a simple, harmonious, equal, and unhouse-entering system for collecting all the money needed for public purposes, in all school districts, towns, villages, cities and counties in the State, and for the State itself, which would effect a saving for the people of this State in the one item alone of levying and collecting taxes of more than a million dollars per annum. And which would also create an effectual prohibition against the present monstrous impositions of taxgathering law suits.

OUR MODE OF CHOOSING WHICH OF OUR LAWYERS SHALL BE JUDGES.

There is another contrivance which our Constitution has foisted upon the people of this State, for which neither they nor their universal suffrage, but only their uninformed leaders are justly responsible. I mean the plan of special State elections merely to decide which ones amongst our lawyers are the best ones to preside in our courts. The people never asked for anything of the kind. The