Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/422

 a poor woman named Sherman came to see the stray and to decide if it was one that she had lost; not recognizing it as hers, she forthwith laid claim to the slaughtered pig. The elders of the church sat upon the case and decided that the woman was mis taken. Mrs. Sherman then accused the captain of theft, but a jury exonerated him and ordered her to pay three pounds costs. The irate captain then sued the woman for defamation of character and recovered a verdict of forty pounds damages. But ere this it appeared clearly that Mrs. Sherman had many friends and partisans; it had be come a political question, a case of the masses against the classes. Thus backed the warlike lady appealed to the General Court. . The length of the hearing shows the importance which was attached to the

case. After seven days of discussion 38 1a vote was taken. Seven assistants and eight deputies approved the former decisions, two assistants and fifteen deputies disapproved, while seven deputies did not vote. In other words, Captain Keayne had a decided majority among the more aristocratic assist ants, while Mrs. Sherman seemed to pre vail with the more democratic deputies. Regarding the result as the vote of a single body, the woman had a plurality of two; regarding it as the veto of a double body, her cause had prevailed in the lower house, but was lost by the veto of the upper. No decision was reached at the time, but after a year of discussion the legislature was per manently separated into two houses, each with a veto power upon the other. (Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, p. 106.)