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taking life under certain circumstances, extorted the admiration of all present.

So fully and fairly had the case been presented, that it was allowed to go to the jury, both by the prosecuting officer and Mr. Hoffinan, without any summing up, and after a few minutes a verdict of acquittal was rendered.

In 1838 Mr. Maclay was married to Antoinette, daughter of Mark Walton, merchant, of New Orleans. He has, living, two sons and one daughter. In the same year he was nominated by the Democratic party as a candidate for the Legislature, but was defeated, the Whigs having obtained a great triumph in the election of all their candidates, both in the state and national Legislatures, for the city. His friends consoled themselves by appealing to the vote which he received on that occasion (among the highest given to any of the defeated candidates) as an evidence of the estimation in which he was generally held by the members of his party and the community.

At that time the city of New York elected its members to the Legislature by a general ticket. The city has since been divided into single districts. In the following year Mr. Maclay was again nominated for the Legislature, and elected by a large majority. He took an active part in the business of the ses sion, particularly in every matter affecting the interests of the city he in part represented.

The Democrats were in a minority. Two bills were passed by the majority, to which, although local in their character, much attention was drawn and much importance attached. The one provided for the registration of all the voters in the city of New York, and the other for the reorganization of the criminal court of that city.

To both of these measures Mr. Maclay made a strenuous opposition. His objections to a registry law, which good men of all parties have frequently approved, seemed to have been formed on the supposition that it would prove oppressive in its practical operation in the city, where the relation is so general of employer and employed. "The people," he said, "would be harassed by a set of political spies and informers, their names would be known, their persons marked, their residence recorded, their circumstances ascertained, their opinions ferreted out, and the alternative presented of a violation of their conscien

tious convictions on the one hand, or hardships and suffering to themselves and their families on the other." Such, he contended, would be the operation of a system which proposed to ascertain, not so much who voted, as how they voted. It is known that the law was repealed within two years after it had gone into operation, and that it has not since been revived.

The bill for the reorganization of the criminal court, to which we have alluded, was also passed into a law. By its provisions the aldermen of the city, who, by its charter, had always acted as judges in the Court of Sessions, in connection with the recorder, were excluded from the bench, and authority given on the part of the governor for the appointment of two permanent judges.

Mr. Maclay dwelt much on the fact that the representatives of the city, in the popular branch of the Legislature, were unanimous in their hostility to the proposed measure, and detailed many circumstances to illustrate that the change was neither expected nor desired, and that, in whatever motives it had its origin, it could not result in the furtherance of the public good. The constitutionality of the law was tested, and it was finally pronounced unconstitutional by the highest tribunal of the State of New York, to which an appeal had been taken.

During this session Mr. Maclay introduced and procured the passage of an act in relation to the Superior Court and Court of Common Pleas in the city and county of New York, which is entitled to notice for the novelty of its provisions. The courts referred to are the two principal courts of the city, and, in consequence of its increase in wealth and population, their business had greatly augmented. It had accumulated so rapidly after the panic of 1837, that the courts were found inadequate to discharge it. Although sitting constantly for ten hours every day, they advanced but slowly. In the Court of Common Pleas alone, the calendar had increased to nine hundred causes. In this state of things, the Legislature was called upon to create new courts. To this it was objected that the great accumulation of business was but a temporary evil, that resulted from the deranged financial condition of the country, and that the new tribunals, if established, would be found wholly unnecessary when the temporary difficulty was removed. In this exigency Mr. Maclay introduced his bill. His plan was

novel and simple. It empowered each court to hold double sessions, or, in other words, instead of the judges holding the court together, it authorized each judge to hold a separate branch of the court, with a separate jury, for the trial of causes. By this means three trials could be carried on at the same time, by the same court sitting in different rooms. Instead of the two courts being occupied with but two causes, they might be engaged at the same time in the trial of six.

This simple contrivance worked admirably. In less than a year the great mass of the business was cleared off, and since that period the judges have been enabled, by holding their separate and extra courts, to prevent any accumulation beyond the regular and ordinary business.

In the same year he introduced another bill, marked by the same remedial features.

A special term was held in Albany, the capital of the state, every month, for the dispatch of that large class of business known to lawyers as non-enumerated. One third, or nearly one half, of this business originated in the city of New York, and the lawyers of that city were compelled to go to the former place to attend to it. This system subjected them to considerable expense and great loss of time. Still it had been submitted to for a long series of years, and no attempt had been made to alter it. Mr. Maclay's bill empowered the judge of the New York circuit to hear and determine all business of this description arising within his circuit. Parties were permitted to bring in their motions before him at the city of New York upon a notice of four days: a change which greatly facilitated the dispatch of business, and materially lessened the expense of suitors.

As a member of the Legislature, Mr. Maclay also made a report, upon an application by petitioners from several counties in New York, for a change in the existing mode of apportioning the literature fund of the State of New York. It was contended that the income of this fund ($40,000), then divided into eight equal parts, and given to the eight Senatorial Districts into which the state was divided, should be distributed to the whole state without reference to these districts. The highest sum apportioned the previous year to one student had been eight dollars and thirty-six cents, and the lowest three dollars and forty-three cents, while, upon the plan proposed, the rate

per scholar would have been four dollars and fifty-two cents. Mr. Maclay gave a history of the fund, by which, as appears from his report, the mode of distribution asked for had been tried and abandoned, upon the discovery that the more sparsely-settled districts of the state were not reached by it. He contended that if such districts now received more, they needed more; and that the object of the state being, not to endow, but to encourage academies, its bounty was rightly bestowed where most required, and "diminished only where the well-managed institution could spare a portion without injury to the younger and weaker seminaries." He showed conclusively that the expectation entertained that the inequality in the apportionment would be gradually reduced and ultimately destroyed, had been in part realized, inasmuch as the disparity had fallen from eight times to twice the amount received. These conclusions were sustained by the Legislature.

During the same session a committee of three was chosen by ballot, to sit during the recess of the Legislature, with power to send for persons and papers, for the purpose of investigating the affairs of the New York and Erie Rail-road Company. Grave charges had been preferred against the company, to whom the state had loaned its credit to the amount of three millions of dollars, and much hostility had been excited against it from its supposed participation and interference in the political struggles of the day.

Mr. Maclay was chosen one of the committee, and, as appears from their report (a document of one thousand pages, which was printed by order of the Legislature), took a prominent part in the examination of witnesses and in the other labors of the committee, which extended over a period of six months.

In the autumn of the year 1841 Mr. Maclay was again elected a member of Assembly of the State of New York, for the city and county of New York.

Occupying the station of chairman of the Committee of Schools and Colleges during the session of 1842, he introduced and procured the passage of the "Act to Extend to the City and County of New York the Provisions of the General Act in relation to Common Schools," which passed April 11, 1842. A brief sketch of the features of the school system existing in the state and the city of New York respectively, may not be uninteresting.

In the year 1812, a board of commissioners, appointed by the Legislature to devise a suitable system for the organization and establishment of common schools in the State of New York, submitted a report, which was adopted by the Legislature, who enacted a general school law in accordance with its provisions, whereby the several towns were divided into school districts, and trustees elected in each, to whom were to be confided the care and superintendence of the schools established therein. The interest of the school fund was to be divided among the different counties and towns according to their respective popu. lations, and the proportions received by the respective towns were to be subdivided among the districts into which such towns should be divided, according to the number of the children in each between the ages of four and fifteen years. Each town was required to raise by tax, annually, as much money as it should have received from the school fund, and the gross amount of moneys received from the state and raised by the laws was to be appropriated exclusively to the payment of the teachers.

The provisions of the general law for the State of New York, above set forth, have been continued, without any material change, until the present time, the titles and duties of the school officers annually chosen in the counties, towns, or districts having been altered or modified, to keep pace with constant improvements suggested by experience.

The city and county of New York, however, were excepted from the provisions of this act; the interest of the school fund to which, according to its proportion of population, it was entitled, being paid to an incorporated body, called the Public School Society, and being by them appropriated to the support of Public Schools, in such a manner as, in the opinion of the trustees, was deemed most expedient. This society was founded in the year 1805, before an efficient general system had been devised for the state at large, and when the city of New York, in an especial manner, was suffering from the many evils resulting from the want of a suitable system of education for the poor. De Witt Clinton, whose philanthropy equaled his intelligence, and in whose public and private life they walked hand in hand together, was the originator and first president of this society, which, from the date of its incorporation to the present time, has been a fruitful source of good to the city, the educa

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