The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-06-30

~ ullDIOSSOu ny UlIO ACd1 IN 1AOOAAA
gence with which this profession has
sought the truth. By experiment, by
theory, by observation, they have
patiently and arduously sought to dis
cover the true connection between the
body and it's laws, between health and
disease, between pain and its remedy.
Their success has been phenomenal and
their science is advancing every day.
Sometimes it may be hard to remem-
Der this and believe. For instance,
when we see an owIish ''old field" doc
tor going about seeking whom he
may devour," and frequently finding
what he is hunting for, it gives ones
faith in the general rule a backset.
The Scotch doctor, who always threw
his patients into fits because he was
hell on fits" is an illustration which
may be funny when one is in health,
but loses it's humorous aspect when
one is sick-because we are mortally
afraid our doctor is going to do sub
s~tantially the same thing.
Practitioners of law, in the same
manner, are supposed to search for the
truth. 1t is certainly their duty to do
so. Moreover, it is their paramount
duty to do so.
From a time ages in advance of
Moses, it has been the task of states
men to write the law in conformity
with the truth. When they have
done so their work was immortal.
Errors fourished and persisted, but a
cardinal truth, nee discovered, sur
vived ven the people who discovered
it, and carried its precious freight, like
another Mayfower, across unknown
seas to bless unborn peoples.
The Hindoos r a decayed nation
ality-utterly PROSTATE beneath British
rule, but in their code of laws were
some regulations SO wise, so just, so
beautiful, that they have made the
circuit of the globe and have embedded
themselves in every system which de-
serves honorable mention. The laws
like the nations, have come from the
East, and the Hindoo laws will outlive
the race that named them.
The Cloths and the Vandals could
beat down the frontier guards of the
Roman Empire, sack it's cities and
divide it's provinces, but they could
not conquer it's laws. Upon the other
hand, if there is any Jurisprudence
which may be said to govern the affairs
of men to-day it is the Roman. You
will hear much said about the English
common law. You will hear it praised
as if it were some divinely-inspired
oracle. Don't believe a word of it.
The English common law was the
brutal code of half-naked savages.
The truth was not in it, and it fell. 1t
deserved to fall. Under it, a woman
was a serf, and a poor man a slave. It's
land tenure was Infamous, it's methods
Of trial were heathenish and idiotic; it's
punishments were revolving in their
infinite cruelty.
Superstition hung like a murky pes
thence on every principle of the un-
written law. Some tyro fresh from
his Blackstone will claim the jury sys-
tenn as the pride of the common law.
The jury system had no existence till
after the Norman conquest, and was
totally inefficient for general good until
love ofliberty, general intelligence and
higher ideas left the old common law a
stranded wreck.
It's principles, it's purposes and it's
methods had to surrender because they
were false-fa1se to the true relation
between government and people, be-
tween master and servant. between
husband and wife; false to the true re-
lation between innocence and guilt, be-
tween crime and punishment.
l do not mean to say that our code
of to-day speaks the truth upon all
subjects. It dues not do so. But it is
an immense Improvement upon the
code of n hundred years ago.
When you go into one of those judi
cial mills called a court of justice, you
may have these ideas weakened. You
may find it difficult to remember that
the law seeks the truth.
There is the judge-the fountain of
justice, the judicial guardian of the
right of the parties litigant. He is
supposed to be. an able man. He him
self has no doubt upon that subject.
He is supposed to be impartial, and
the fact that he tries a railroad case
with a free ticket in his pocket while
the jury have none) does not for one
moment shake his conviction that the
Jury is "preiudiced."