Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/29

10 the laying out of roads, the punishing of runaway servants by stripe or in the pillory, and " causing the Cryer to go to the extent of each street when hee has anything to cry, and to put a check to Horse racing." Equity powers were also conferred. It is to be presumed that such miscellaneous of fices did not tend to foster among the laity any considerable respect for the tribunals which held them. Tobacco smoking, blasphemy, and loud singing in the court's presence required vigilant suppression. And when in 1686, sitting first as a law court and next in Equity, one of these bodies reversed itself, steps were taken to unravel the skeins of jurisprudence : " Ordered y' a Conference be proposed to the Presid" & Prov" Councill, wherein some Laws wch are Lyable to Divers Interpritations . . . may . . . be Explained. . ..

"2. The Law Concerning Quarter Sessions; how far ye County Quarter Sessions may be Judges of Equity as well as Law, and if after a Judgment in Law, whether the same Court hath power to Resolve itselfe into a Court of Equity, and Either Mitigate, alter, or Revers yr said Judgment." This was at a meeting of the Council held the 12th day of the 3d month, 1687. The prejudice against litigation in general and Equity in particular was conspicuous in Pennsylvania in these times. To "get into Chancery " had grown an operation so damaging to the comfort of English subjects, that the phrase became applied to a well known and awkward predicament which occurs in the prize ring, — at least there seems no likelier origin of " getting your head in Chancery." That court had discouraged the Quakers in their old home by its endless intricacy; the Quakers determined to discourage it in the new country. In the Charter of Pennsylvania granted to William Penn by Charles the Second, among the other powers given the Proprietary is "to appoint and establish any Judges . . . and Officers whatsoever, for what Causes soever, . . . and with what power soever . . . and to doe all . . . which vnto the compleate establishment of Justice vnto Courts and Tribunals . . . doe belong." But Penn did not retain this broad power. In his "Frame of the Government," he relinquishes it expressly: "Seventeenth. That the Governor and the Provincial Council shall erect, from time to time, standing courts of justice." This was in April, 1682. Accordingly, the next oldest court to the County Courts appears to be the Orphans' Court, established by an Act of March 10, 1683, for the " Care of the Estates, usage, and Employment of Orphans." The name still survives, and, it may be said with sufficient accuracy, the nature of this court's jurisdiction; though widely extended, of course. There was also established a Vice-Admiralty Court in 1693, when Penn fell into disfavor, and Col. Benjamin Fletcher was made Governor-in-Chief of Pennsylvania, with power to " Erect one or more Court or Courts admirall." There was also the Provincial Council, a body that had many duties both important and incongruous. As a fair example of the latter sort, the following is found in the Colonial Records, July 11, 1693. Upon request, the Council confirmed an order of the Quarter Sessions "ag* the tumultuous gatherings of the negroes . . . on the first dayes of the weeke, ordering . . . anie . . . person ... to take up negroes, male or female, whom they should find gadding abroad on the said first dayes of the week, without a tickett from their Mr or Mris, ... to carry them to goale, there to remain that night & that without meat or drink, & to Cause them to be publickly whipt next morning, with 39 Lashes, well Laid on, on their bare backs, for which their sd M', or Mris. should pay 15" to the whipper att his deliverie of ym to yr M- or Mris."

The jurisdiction and procedure of all these bodies was of a haphazard and capricious stripe, as what has been instanced sufficiently shows. And what one chiefly feels when it is remembered that we have not reached a single lawyer yet on the bench, is astonishment that they had any system