INTRODUCTION. 55 



were suspected as incendiaries. The magistrates, the police, and the common 

 council, were seized with a panic which extended itself to the judges of the 

 supreme court and throughout the city. All the members of the bar, consisting 

 of Bradley, the attorney-general, and Alexander, Smith, Chambers, Nichols, 

 Lodge and Jamieson, were summond to attend and aid the court. The lawyers, 

 sharing the panic, volunteered to assist the public prosecutor by turns, and left 

 the accused defenceless. Convictions were easily procured upon confessions, 

 and the testimony of perjured informers extorted by threats and promises. The 

 court forgot not only its own dignity, but the claims of justice and humanity. 

 Four white persons, implicated in the supposed crimes, were executed. Eleven 

 negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen were hanged, and fifty were trans- 

 ported and sold into foreign slavery. 



The legislature in 1741 manifested a disposition to inquire into the defects of 

 the jurisprudence of the colony, and Daniel Horsmanden, who was then a judge 

 of the supreme court, was authorized to collect and revise the laws in force, with 

 notes and references ; but that duty was not performed. It is asserted that the 

 inconveniences resulting from his continuance in office, in advanced age and 

 under growing infirmities, was the cause of the adoption of a principle still con- 

 tinued in our constitution, which disqualifies a judge on his attaining the age of 

 sixty years — a fact exceedingly interesting, as an illustration of the permanent 

 influence which occasional circumstances may exert upon the legislation of a 

 country. 



In 1743, a law was passed for the relief of imprisoned debtors, and legacies 

 were made recoverable in courts of common law. The practice of instituting 

 prosecutions by information, which had been constantly regarded with jealousy 

 since the trial of Zenger, gave rise to a bill for regulating such proceedings, but 

 it was lost in the council through the influence of the lieutenant-governor. The 

 ministry, distrusting the loyalty of a people so bold in the assertion of their rights, 

 availed themselves of the alarm excited by the renewal of hostilities by France, 

 with a view to place the pretender upon the throne, and required that a law 



