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344 there was not a line in the "Statutes and By-laws" of the State of California which said that a Justice of the Peace should not have and exercise the same power; and until the Supreme Court decided against him, he meant to transact all that kind of business which fell in his way—and he did. The eldest Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, or at least the one longest in office, was by right the Chief Justice of that august tribunal, and he being the first in rank by priority of commission in old Tuolumne, was, as a matter of course, Chief Justice of the Peace of the county, and the other Justices ranked as Associate Justices of the Peace. Could any proposition be plainer than that to the legal mind? Certainly not! So he regarded it, and so he, for a time, at least, half coaxed, half bullied, his colleagues into believing. And this was not all. He was satisfied that a traveling pedlar, who took his goods right to everybody's door, could sell double the amount on the same capital that could be worked off by a merchant tied down to his own store, and the same rule would hold good in his own business. People might object or neglect to come all the way from a distant mining camp to Jimtown to patronize his court, but if his court followed the example vulgarly ascribed to Mohammed, and went to the Mountain, i. e., to them, at stated intervals, the case might be different, and litigation would be made a convenient and easy, not to say popular, amusement for the entire community. Acting on this idea, he dubbed his court "The Circuit Justice's Court of Tuolumne County," and,