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This new name is mentioned in the instructions from Robert Barclay and the other Proprietors to Gawen Laurie, the Deputy Governor. This Court of Common Right was presided over by "twelve members or six at least ;" and instead of one yearly session, it was to hold four sessions a year at Elizabeth Town. Subsequently, after a severe struggle, in 1686, it was directed that it should be held at Perth Amboy.

To this simple system, thus established more than two hundred years ago, may be traced the present jurisprudence of New Jersey. Justices' courts still exist with limited jurisdiction,—the justices now, as then, elected by the people,-before whom could be tried the smallest, most trivial of causes, meeting the wants of the common people; County Courts, now the Circuit and Common Pleas, with jurisdiction over all disputes arising between citizen and citizen; then the Supreme Court, with original and appellate jurisdiction; then the Governor and Council, who formed simply an appellate tribunal. Until the new Constitution, established in 1844, the Council chosen by the people was the Court of Appeal in the last resort, where the Governor, if he chose, might preside, but which generally had for its presiding officer a President elected by the members.

There was a remarkable fact connected with the legislation respecting these early courts. In the law constituting them there was no provision for their guidance; no rules by which they were to be governed; no mode established by which their judgments were to be enforced; there was no Practice Art, nor anything like it. The statutes constituting them were the simplest possible; the tribunals were created, their titles given, and the times and places when and where they were to meet; and that was all.

An officer, called the High Sheriff, was to be elected in every county; but the act providing for his appointment failed utterly to state what were his duties, or to make any provision concerning him other than his mere title. The following is the act passed in 1682: "An Act to appoint Sheriffs. Forasmuch as there is a necessity of a High Sheriff in every County in this Province, Be it therefore enacted by the Govornor, Council, and Deputies in General assembly met and assembled, that there be yearly a Sheriff constituted and commissioned for each County, and that each Sheriff may appoint his under Sheriff or Deputy."

Grand juries were directed to appear at the County Courts; but what made them eligible, of whom they should be composed, by whom they

should be summoned, and what were to be their duties, was not stated. This all seems inexplicable, and it appears most difficult to understand the apparent inconsistency, or to solve the mystery. These laws can only be explained or interpreted in one way. The early settlers in East Jersey were mostly Englishmen, and as such were thoroughly acquainted with the principles of the common law as it existed in the mother country, where courts of similar name and like character were to be found. These courts in England were governed by the rules of that universal law so dear to every Englishman's heart. The English colonists had drunk deep and long draughts from the fountain of liberty, which had been opened in the time of Charles II. when Selden and Eliot, Pym and Hampden had taught a wicked and sensual king that his subjects had rights which he must respect, and when Sir Matthew Hale was Chief Justice and Lord Nottingham was Lord Chancellor. These colonists had fled from their old home beyond the sea to escape religious persecution; but they brought to their new home those unquenched and unquenchable aspirations for civil as well as religious liberty which impelled then ever to provide for absolute freedom from oppression and for the preservation of their political rights. They were stern and unyielding in their religious views, and they were equally unyielding when their political freedom was endangered, and watchful in guarding against any action by Governor, or State, or Legislature which seemed at all like interference with their rights as citizens. This feeling pervaded all classes and led them to seek to discover what were the best foundations of civil liberty; so, they studied the principles of the common law of England and needed no statute to enable them to understand how to conduct the courts provided for them. They needed only courts properly constituted; and falling back on their knowledge of the modes of procedure in similar courts in the mother country, they required nothing. more. It was remarked by one of the greatest of English statesmen that with the exception of religious books, no volumes were more readily sold in the colonies than those relating to law.

The courts of which mention has been made were those which were established in East Jersey. When the colony was divided into East and West Jersey, a line drawn from Little Egg Harbor extending irregularly northward, a little west of north, and reaching the Delaware River at the 41st degree north latitude, was the boundary between the two new districts.

the Articles of Confederation, in addition to those proposed by the Legislature, in 1783: To give Congress the power to raise a revenue by imposts, stamps and postage; to regulate trade and commerce between the States and with foreign nations; to provide for the adjudication of fines, forfeitures and penalties by the Common Law judiciary, where the crime was committed, subject to an appeal to the Federal Courts; to make requisitions for the payment of money for the expenses of the National government, if necessary, on the several States in proportion to their inhabitants, including three-fifths of those held in servitude, and, in cases of non-compliance, to invest Congress with the authority to compel payment; to elect a Federal Executive, consisting of several persons, whose salaries should be paid out of the public funds, who were to hold office during good behavior and have original jurisdiction of cases of impeachment and appellate jurisdiction in cases of ambassadors, captures, piracy and felonies on the high seas; to have power to impose an oath of fidelity on all Federal officers and legislators and to make treaties, which were to be the supreme law of the land; to summon the military of the States whenever necessary; to enforce the Federal statutes; to provide for admission of new States into the Union; to settle all disputes between the Federal government and the several States, as to territory; to establish uniform naturalization laws. These were the main features of the New Jersey plan, and it will be noticed that, although it did not receive the approval of the Convention, in the form in which it was proposed, as Amendments to the Articles of Confederation, yet, that its most important provisions were incorporated into the Constitution finally adopted.

The question of representation in Congress, one of the most troublesome and, at the same time, of the utmost importance, was referred to a Committee of which Paterson was a member, and the report of this Committee was finally supported with some rather unimportant changes.

Fortunately for the young Republic, a spirit of harmony and conciliation prevailed among the members, of whom, thirty-eight out of the fifty five, including all the New Jersey delegates signed the Constitution. There were others who would have done so, but they were necessarily absent.

A very small minority of the citizens of New Jersey opposed the new Constitution; there was, in fact, no organized opposition to it within the State. The Legislature exercised the greatest prudence in the

measures taken for the submission of the Constitution to the people, for their deliberation upon the question of its adoption. The delegates in the national Convention reported its action on the 25th of October, 1787. The House on the 29th of the same month, unanimously recommended to the legal voters of the State to meet on the 4th Tuesday in November then next and elect three delegates from each County to meet in a State Convention on the 11th of December, 1787, to determine whether to approve or reject the Constitution. This Convention met at the time appointed and organized by the appointment of John Stephens, as President, and of Samuel William Stockton, as secretary. It seemed impressed with the gravity of the occasion; adopted rules for its government and then solemnly resolved: "That the Federal Constitution be read by sections, and that, as so read every member make his observations thereon; that after debating such section, the question be taken whether further debate be had thereon; and if determined in the negative, that the Convention proceed in like manner to the next section, until the whole be gone through; upon which the general question shall be taken, whether the Convention in the name. and on the behalf of this State do ratify and confirm the said Constitution." All this was done without haste, with due deliberation and on the 18th of December, just one week from the first day of the Convention, the Constitution was unanimously adopted without a single amendment. On the next day the members marched in solemn procession to the Court House where the new organic law of the Republic was read to the people.

Since that time fifteen amendments to the Constitution have been passed, in pursuance of its fifth clause, twelve of which have received the assent of the Legislature of New Jersey. The majority of the Assembly withheld its approval of the XIIIth, XIVth and XVth amendments, but they were ratified by a sufficient number of States to give them the full force of Constitutional law.

The advantageous results of this Constitution to New Jersey have been incalculable. Her position between the two large preponderating States of New York and Pennsylvania, connected with the fact that although she has a large extent of sea coast, there is no port on her ocean front into which foreign commerce enters, has made her citi. zens dependent for many necessary supplies on the two cities of New York and Philadelphia.

The Federal Constitution of 1787 has received much consideration

from subsequent historians, but it is doubtful whether any one of these. has succeeded in tracing the origin of this remarkable document to its real source. It was by no means the invention of the sages and statesmen who composed the Convention that finally wrought out this grand work. Its beginning must be traced to a period long prior to the close of the XVIIIth century-to the germ and growth of that indomitable spirit of the Anglo-Saxon which wrested the Magna Charta from the despicable John Plantagenet, at Runnymede; which impelled Hampden, Selden, Pym and their fellow patriots to antagonize Charles I, in their battle for the rights of British subjects; which mercilessly decapitated that same Charles and raised Cromwell to be ruler of England and which sent good men and true from home and country and friends to rear in the wilds of a western home an empire dedicated to freedom.

That same spirit which incited the English patriot to such glorious deeds in the cause of freedom came to this western world and more than two hundred years before the adoption of the Constitution, in 1787, made itself heard here, faintly, it is true, at first, but in louder and more forceful tones as time went on. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh came to Virginia with a charter containing the first germ of that recognition of popular rights, which by a process of evolution through the succeeding two centuries, finally culminated in that palladium of liberty sent out to the world from the new Republic on the 17th day of September, 1787. During those two centuries the establishment of the rights of the people through charters, concessions and constitutions had been constantly going on; none of them more strongly expressed the doctrine that all government must come from the people than did those two immortal documents, the "Grants and Concessions" of Berkeley and Carteret and the "Concessions and Agreements" of West Jersey; none of those which were granted to the American colonies so fully recognized the inherent rights of the citizen and none made more ample provision for the protection of those rights.

But, while all this may be true, the Constitution of 1787 was forced in many instances upon unwilling States, who adopted it from stern necessity and not because it was approved. Subsequent experience, however, has taught the descendants of these opposing citizens that it was the wisest gift ever made to any people. What, most of all, led to its formulation was the calamitous results arising from the adoption of the Articles of Confederation.

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