izing them to try all causes brought before them, although the parties might come from beyond the limits of their respective towns. This, however, was a questionable exercise of power; and, at all events, these Courts proved themselves entirely too feeble to quell the disturbances and repress the disorders that ensued. For the first, and I may add, the last time in the history of New Jersey, the laws were silent, and anarchy reigned supreme.

But in 1675, when the next Assembly met, one of the very first acts that was passed provided for the establishment and maintenance of Courts of Justice throughout the Province. There was to be, in the first place, a monthly Court of small causes for the trial of all matters under forty shillings. This Court was to be held on the first Wednesday of every month, in each town of the Province, by two or three persons, to be chosen by the people, of whom a Justice of the Peace was to be one.3 Then, there were the County Courts or Courts of Sessions, to be held twice a year in every county,* the Judges

1 Whitehead's East Jersey, 55. 2 Grants and Concessions, p. 96. The officers of the Court were to be a clerk and a messenger, and upon the recovery of a debt, if the defendant were a poor man, the Court was empowered to give "time and space for the payment thereof." This,

no doubt, was the origin of that stay of execution which has always been a distinguishing feature in our Courts for the trial of small causes.

No formal division of the Province into counties had yet been made, but it was provided in the act constituting Courts of Sessions, that Bergen and

of which were also to be elected out of the county to which the Court belonged. In these Courts were directed to be tried "all causes actionable," terms certainly very comprehensive, and which would seem to have conferred unlimited jurisdiction. No appeals were to be granted from their judgments under the sum of twenty pounds, “except to the Bench, or to the Court of Chancery." By the "Bench" was meant, undoubtedly, the Court of Assize, which was a Provincial Court, directed to be held once a year in the town of Woodbridge, or where the Governor and Council should appoint. This was the Supreme Court of the Province; but from it appeals would lie to the Governor and Council, and from them in the last resort to the king.

Such were the first Courts established in the Province by act of Assembly; and they are interesting from the fact, that in them we may trace the germ of our present admirable judicial system. The monthly Courts of small causes was the original of our Justice's Court, that most useful and convenient tribunal, by which justice is literally brought home to every man's door, and controver

the adjacent plantations should be one county; Elizabethtown and Newark another; Woodbridge and Pisca

taway a third; and the two towns of Navesink a fourth county.

sies of small moment adjusted, without the expense and delay incident to the proceedings of our higher Courts. It was, in fact, the revival, in an improved form, of those ancient common law Courts of inferior jurisdiction, which had long before fallen into disuse in England, and the loss of which has been felt and lamented to the present day.1 Such were the Hundred Courts, and the County Courts of the Anglo Saxons, the beneficent fruits of the genius of the great Alfred. Such was the Court of Piepoudre, so called, as we are told, from the dusty feet of the suitors; or, as Sir Edward Coke fancifully supposes, because justice was administered in them as speedily as dust falls from the feet. We are so fa

1 As early as the reign of Henry the Seventh, these inferior local tribunals had in a great measure gone into disuse in England. But, as Mr. Hallam observes, " though the reference of every legal question, however insignificant, to the Courts above, must have been inconvenient and expensive in a still greater degree than at present, it had doubtless a powerful tendency to knit together the different parts of England, to check the influence of feudality and clanship, to make the inhabitants of distant counties better acquainted with the capital city, and more accustomed to the course of government, and to impair the spirit of provincial patriotism and animosity." --Hallam's Constitutional Hist. of England, I. 5.

Of late, however, efforts have been made in England to supply the place of these ancient Courts. Public attention was called to the subject by Lord Brougham, in his speech upon Local Courts delivered in the House of Commons in 1830. And the evils which he complained of have in some measure been remedied by the statute of 3 and 4 William IV, cap. 42, which, in cases where the debt or demand does not exceed twenty pounds, authorizes a trial to be had before the sheriff instead of a judge at Nisi Prius.-See Lord Brougham's Speeches, II. 489.

23 Black Com., 32; 4 Co. Ins.,

272.

1

miliar with these humble tribunals, they are so noiseless and unobtrusive in their operations, that we are apt to be insensible to their benefits; nor do we realize the extent to which they have cheapened justice, and made law, instead of being the "patrimony of the rich," "the inheritance of the poor." The judges of these monthly Courts, we have seen, were chosen by the people. In providing therefore for the election of Justices of the Peace, under our new Constitution, we seem to be returning more nearly to this primitive model of a Court for the trial of small causes. In the county Courts or Courts of Sessions, exercising as they did both civil and criminal jurisdiction, we see shadowed forth our present Courts of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions. The Court of Assize corresponded with our Supreme Court, while the Governor and Council were at that early day, what

1 By a return made to the House of was not much out of the general Commons in 1827, it was ascertained that for a period of two years and a half, there had been 93,000 affidavits of debt filed in the King's Bench and Common Pleas, and of these, 29,800, or about one-third, were for sums under £20. Of fifty verdicts taken at one of the assizes in England some years ago, it was found that their average amount was something less than £14; and it was stated upon high authority in the House of Commons, that this

course. The costs of each of these verdicts was estimated to have been not less than £80. In New Jersey all these cases, where the amount in controversy does not exceed £20, or $100, would fall within the jurisdiction of our Courts for the trial of small causes, and to compel parties to resort to the higher Courts would in very many instances amount to a denial of justice.

they have continued to be ever since, until the adoption of our new Constitution, the highest Court of Appeals in the Province. The existence of a Court of Chancery as a separate and distinct tribunal was also recognized, showing plainly that it was from the wells of English law that our fathers drew their ideas of jurisprudence.

1

These Courts were somewhat modified in 1682, after the transfer of East Jersey to the twenty-four Proprietors. In the Court for the trial of small causes, either party was to be at liberty to demand a jury. So sacred was that mode of trial deemed, that no man was to be denied the benefit of it, even in the smallest matter. East Jersey was divided into four Counties, Bergen, Essex, Middlesex, and Monmouth; and the County Courts were directed to be held four times a year in each County.3 The

1 Grants and Concessions, p. 229. 2 It was not until 1692, that Counties were first subdivided into Townships. In Bergen but one Township was created, called Hackensack, besides which there was the "Corporation Town" of Bergen. Essex was divided into three Townships; the first was called Aquackanick and New Barbadoes, the second Newark, and the third Elizabethtown. Middlesex was divided into the " Corporation Town" of Woodbridge, and the Townships of Perth Amboy and Piscataway; and Monmouth into the

Townships of Middletown, Shrewsbury, and Freehold.-Grants and Concessions, p. 328.

3 In Essex they were to be held alternately, at Newark and Elizabethtown; in Middlesex, at Woodbridge and Piscataway; in Monmouth, at Middletown and Shrewsbury.

Middlesex, however, was soon divided, the County of Somerset being formed out of a portion of it, in 1688. The reason assigned for the division is a whimsical one. It was because the uppermost part of Raritan River was settled by persons who, in the