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VOL. XII.

No. IQ.

BOSTON.

OCTOBER, 1900.

THE HON. JEREMIAH MASON AND AN EPISODE OF LEGAL HISTORY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

THE transition to the form of govern ment of a republican state from the colonial form in our country, in which the Legislature was the General Court, and its members the Supreme Judiciary, was marked by many anomalies. Some of these were in consequence of the inability of the members of the Legislature to divest themselves of the idea that the judicial system established by the new constitution was of such a nature that it could not stand alone as an independ ent department of government. Even up to the present time there are, in the country at large, frequent appeals to the Legislature by one or another party in a liti gation, demanding that a court be restrained, or ordering certain action out of the usual course; or petitions making vengeful charges against justices. Persons of a cast of mind apprehending imperfectly the principles of justice, and having but a meagre conception of the political measures necessary to public safety and thrift, arc greatly given to plans of having the courts so reconstructed that they will sustain the action of their class, however narrow and partial it may be. We have escaped for the present the debase ment of the Supreme Court of the nation, distinctly threatened in the late, and in the present, political campaign; but the mis chievous taint still remains, endangering the future of the country. In earlier times this element in the body politic was sometimes too impatient to seek a remedy for their supposed grievances through the orderly routine of elections or of constitutional reform; and when the Legisla

ture could not be induced to interfere with the courts, violent action was taken against them directly, as in Shays' Rebellion in Mass achusetts, the whiskey insurrection in Penn sylvania, and the anti-rent disorders in eastern New York State. In New Hampshire the contest between sound principles and presumptuous ignorance did not reach the stage of civil violence be cause the latter happened to be in a majority in the Legislature for several years, during which time it frequently interfered with the regular conduct of the courts. Perhaps the most glaring instance of this kind occurred in 1792 and 1793, in the so-called " pig acts," which proved a crisis in fatuitous action in this direction; and in it the noted Jeremiah Mason was a prime factor. Mr. Mason, then under twenty-four years of age, had recently opened a law office in the town of Westmoreland, having been ad mitted to practice in the -New Hampshire courts in September, 1791. Admission at that time was regulated by the rules of the bar, which required three years of study within the State; but Mason had not studied at all in New Hampshire. On graduating from Yale College he had entered the office and the household of Mr. Baldwin, in New Haven, whose son was subsequently Governor of Connecticut. Becoming persuaded that Ver mont would prove a more profitable field, young Mason, a year later, entered the office of Gen. Stephen Rowe Bradley, in West minster, who was afterward a Senator from Vermont in the National Congress. Gen eral Bradley's principal law competitor in