4 
HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
stituted: the simplicity of life and 
manners prevailing among our 
ancestors, did not afford that com- 
plication of misbehaviour and of 
transgressions, for which such a 
multiplicity of laws have been pro- 
vided ; add to this, that the execu- 
tion of the moderate number of 
Jaws in our more early periods, was 
committed to persons of rank, who 
discharged, with more ease to 
themselves, the functions of their 
office, than could be done at pre- 
sent, amidst the great variety of 
cases perpetually arising from the 
numberless manners of infringing 
the law. Hence the once vener- 
able office of justice of the peace 
became at last too tedious and 
burdensome for people of opulence 
and distinction. Their unwilling- 
ness to accept of so heavy a charge, 
obliged the ruling powers to apply 
to individuals of inferior character; 
who, in accepting it, had an eye to 
the profits and emoluments arising 
from the exercise of the judicial 
powers entrusted to them. 
From the period when that ho- 
nourable and weighty office was 
thus degraded, it -lost by degrees 
the reverence in whieh it had been 
hale : venal and mercenary indivi- 
s were appointed, whose base 
practices became so notorious, that 
they drew general odium and con- 
tempt both upon themselves and 
their functions. Hence the vilify- 
ing appellation of a trading justice 
was at last applied with too much 
reason to many of those who exer- 
cised that office. 
_ Such was the general opinion 
attached to a considerable propor- 
tion of those who were in the com-’ 
mission of the peace in the city of 
London and its vicinity. It was 
to rectify the abuses imputed to 
[157 
them, and to place the office itself 
on a footing of respectability, that 
in the beginning of March, a bill 
was introduced, with the counte- 
nance and approbation of govern- 
ment, into the lower House. The 
plan of this bill was, to open five 
different offices in the metropolis, 
at a convenient distance from each 
other, for the prompt administra- 
tion of those parts of justice within 
the cognizance of justices of the 
peace. Three justices were to sit 
in each of these offices, with a sa- 
lary of 300/. a year to each of 
them. They were to be prohibited 
from the taking of fees individual- 
ly; and the money from the fees, 
paid into all the offices, was to be 
collected and applied to the pay- 
ment of their salaries and official 
expences. In order, at the same 
time, wholly to suppress the name 
and business of a trading justice, 
no fees’ were henceforward to be 
taken by any one in the commis- 
sion of the peace within the Lon- 
don district. 
Notwithstanding the apparent 
fairness of such an establishment, 
the jealousy of freedom was alarm- 
ed at some clauses in the act of its 
institution. Many were the disap- 
provers of the influence arising to 
government from its appointing 
officers, of which the authority ex- 
tended over the whole metropolis. 
No less disapprobation was ex- 
pressed at the power vested in con- 
stables, to apprehend people who 
did not give a satisfactory account 
of themselves, and empowering the 
justices to commit them as vaga- 
bonds. This appeared a dangerous 
novelty in administering the law, 
which had always of old refrained 
from such an infringement on per- 
sonal liberty; it conferred a sway, 
which, 
