POPULAR TRIBUNALS. CHAPTER I. ABERRATIONS OF JUSTICE, ANCIENT AND MODERN. At Halifax the law so sharpe doth deale, That whoso more than thirteen pence doth steale, POPULAR TRIBUNALS, wherein is attempted the illegal administration of justice by the people, have become quite prominent among those social paroxysms incident to rapid progress. The principle in its several phases, and as at present existing, is essentially a latter-day development. Dangerous or otherwise, it is the outgrowth of enlightenment, of intellectual emancipation. While the doctrine of the divinity of law, that is of statutory or other than natural law, held bound men's minds, there were comparatively few examples of illegal justice; but when it came generally to be felt that statutes were no more sacred than the men who made them, legal impositions and vicious technicalities were less patiently endured. Not that antiquity was wholly without its rightcompelling powers, but they were of a different order from our modern demonstrations. But neither the old nor the new were such as Plato would have chosen for his Republic, or Saint Augustine for his City of God, or VOL. I. 1 |