Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/283

 court sat there, and had opportunities of hearing the oratory of several barristers, which was delivered in language at once strong, elegant, and polite. A spirit of emulation prevails at the bar, and a gentleman of good taste informed me, that some young practitioners have made vast progress within two or three years past. The United States certainly open an extensive school for eloquence. The number of cases of litigation before the various courts of justice is very great; and there are numerous opportunities for exerting popular talent, as at elections, where the harangues are called stump-speeches, from the practice of candidates mounting the stumps of trees, and there addressing themselves to the people, and in State Assemblies.

{252} The circuit court consists of a presiding judge, who makes a progress over the whole State, and who meets with two associate judges at the several seats of justice. Associate judges are local, and only act in their respective counties. One of these gentlemen opened the court at Charlestown last year in the absence of the presiding judge.—A large jug, for holding cold water, that stood on the bench, had a caricature portrait of a judge painted on it, and several lawyers, on coming forward to open their cases, bowed to the figure, and directed their eyes to it during their speeches, occasioning much laughter in the house. It was not till the arrival of the presiding judge that the contempt was checked. Freedoms on the part of lawyers seem to be promoted in the back-country, in consequence of the bench being occasionally filled with men who are much inferior to those at the bar. The salary of the presiding judge (I have been told) is only seven hundred dollars a-year. As he is engaged in public business and in travelling nearly the whole of his time, that sum can only defray his expenses, even under the most econom