should exchange receipts and the constable should pay the costs." Although the veracious historian assures us that the decision diffused general joy throughout New Amsterdam, and that not another law suit took place during the whole of Governor Van Twiller's administration, while the office of constable fell into such decay that there was not one of those losel scouts known in the province for many years, this Utopian state of things was not per manent, either in New Amsterdam, or in the other provinces. We have seen that the fundamental con stitution of the Carolinas sought to prevent the growth of the legal profession, by pro hibiting its members from rendering services for money or other reward. The charter was abundantly successful in this direction. Scarcely a lawyer of reputation made his ap pearance in these provinces while it was in force. But in every other respect it was an abject failure. Although the joint pro duct of the Earl of Shaftesbury and John Locke, one "the first practical politician" and the other "the first philosopher of England," at that time, it has been characterized by all historians as a simple absurdity. The po litical system which it set up was clumsy, complicated and fantastic. Tt imposed upon a primitive community a body of laws ilcvised by a practical politician and a philoso phical thinker. So nearly perfect did their authors deem them, that all comments upon, or expositions of them were forbidden. The evolution of a legal system through private law suits was made impossible. It pro fessed to be framed for eternal duration; and it collapsed within a quarter of a century. While it endured, its fruits were turbulence, faction and failure. Scarcely had it been launched, before a leading colonist besought the proprietaries to send over "an able coun sellor to end controversies and to put the set tlers in the right way of managing the colony." Upon its overthrow, lawyers began
to multiply in the Carolinas. A simple and rude, but effective government grew up, and a legal system was developed, under which criminals were brought to punishment, life and property were reasonably secure and productive industry flourished. A more in structive object lesson in the evolution of law has never been afforded, than by this ex periment of Locke and Shaftesbury. A body of legal rules, in order to be really serviceable to a community, must be of home growth. No statesman has ever been practical enough, no philosopher wise enough, to evolve from his inner conscious ness a successful code. The English com mon law is far from perfect, either in the mother country or in this progressive repub lic; but it is alive with the spirit of justice; it quickly responds to the best moral sense of the people and its general tendency has ever been toward the truth. This is due very largely to the active and influential part taken by the bar of England and of America in the development of our legal system. During the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century a change in the popular estimate of lawyers had taken place, not only in the Carolinas, but also in Virginia, in New York and throughout New England. Massachusetts no longer excluded them from membership in her Great and General Court. The Gov ernor of New York could no longer dispose of law suits in the Van Twiller style. When Governor Cosby, in 1732, secured the indict ment of Peter Zenger, the publisher of the Nciv York Weekly, for crimnal libel, the ac cused did not try the Utopian experiment of pleading his own case, and trusting it to the judge. On the other hand, he secured the services of the foremost lawyer of the colonies to combat the view then generally entertained by the judiciary, that the only function of the jury, in a trial for criminal libel, was to say whether the libel had been published or not. In Zenger's behalf. An
