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Book, page 51 / 313 prosecuting the parties to a sanguinary affray. In the next he was equally successful, but barely escaped drowning in Spoon River. In the third there were but two families at the county-seat, and no cases on the docket. Thence he journeyed across a trackless prairie sixty miles, and at Quincy had one case and gained five dollars. In Pike County our much-enduring jurist took no cash, but found a generous sheriff who entertained him without charge. "He was one of nature's noblemen, from Massachusetts," writes the grateful prosecutor. The lawyers in what was called good practice earned less than a street- sweeper to-day. It is related that the famous Stephen A. Douglas once traveled from Springfield to Bloomington and made an extravagant speech, and having gained his case received a fee of five dollars. In such a state of things it was not to be wondered at that the technicalities of law were held in somewhat less veneration than what the pioneer regarded as the essential claims of justice. The infirmities of the jury system gave them less annoyance than they give us. Governor Ford mentions a case where a gang of horse-thieves succeeded in placing one of their confederates upon a jury which was to try them; but he was soon brought to reason by his eleven colleagues making preparations to hang him to the rafters of the jury room. The judges were less hampered by the limitations of their legal lore than by their fears of a loss of popularity as a result of too definite charges in civil suits, or too great severity in criminal cases. They grew very dexterous in avoiding any commitment as to the legal or moral bearings of the questions brought before them. They generally refused to sum up, or to comment upon evidence; when asked by the counsel to give instructions they would say, "Why, gentlemen, the jury understand this case as well as you or I. They will do justice between the parties." One famous judge, who was afterwards governor, when sentencing a murderer, impressed it upon his mind, and wished him to inform his friends, that it was the jury and not the judge who had found him guilty, and then asked him on what day he would like to be hanged. It is needless to say that the bench and bar were not all of this class. There were even at that early day lawyers, and not a few, who had already won reputation in the older States, and whose names are still honored in the profession. Cook, McLean, Edwards, Kane, Thomas, Reynolds, and others, the earliest lawyers of the State, have hardly been since surpassed for learning and ability. [Sidenote: Ford, "History of Illinois," p. 31.]
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