540 NATURAL AND CIVIL 



been, rstrangly rna]:lj:ed with the views and arts of 

 party, politics. The fiicts seem to have been 

 that the judges were of opinion that the fee bill 

 w;9nld justify them in taking such fees as had 

 bj£:en objected to. These fees, were in fact 

 greater, more extensive, and more profitable, 

 thiui any other set of supreme judges had taken 

 before ; or that the judges of the county courts 

 had received or demanded. The fee bill how- 

 ever \yas not perfectly definite, plain, or particu- 

 lar ; and it was not diffi.cult to find reasons to 

 assign to it such a construction, as the judges 

 ga"\'e it. The fees were, taken openly and pub- 

 licly in the courts in e\er3' county, and ^^•ere 

 matters of record in the offices of all the clerks ; 

 there did not therefore seem to be room to de- 

 clare that tliey were matters of designed cor- 

 ruption and extortion ; nor was there any ap- 

 ])eiirance that the judges were acting against 

 their own opinions and judgment. Candor 

 therefore should not complain, that the commit- 

 tee were inclined to believe, that they Vvtre ta- 

 ken ". \\itii upright views." But the reason 

 v.'hich they assigned for a justification, that they 

 v/ere '■ by lav/ made the judges of what is a 

 reasonable and iair construction of the fee bill,", 

 had more, of the appearance of the subtle and 

 evasive distinctions of the schools and Jesuits, 

 than of the language or decision of statesmen or 

 men of business. The question was ^\'hether 

 the fees they had taken in the cases of com- 

 ])laint, were, or were not agreeable to the law. 

 Politicians alone would have ventured to have 

 kept the question out of sight, and derived the 

 justi^cation from the practice ; or to intimate 



