2. All stockholders to be holden for the debts of the company for two years after they have ceased to be such stockholders.

3. A yearly publication of the names of all stockholders to be made in the state paper.

1. No note, bank note, or bill shall ever be made a lawful tender for a debt.

2. Any person passing a bank note for a valuable consideration shall be holden to any subsequent possessor of such note for the genuineness of the same and for the solvency of the bank, for three months after such paying or passing.

1. Any private banker, bank, bank agent, or broker who shall put in circulation in this state any bank bills, notes, checks, or certificates of deposit, shall be held personally liable for their payment if the bank fail, or refuse to redeem the same in specie. And in default of such redemption and payment the said private banker, bank officer, bank agent, or broker shall be liable and subject to the pains and penalties fixed by law for the crime of swindling.

For citizenship, either to be first, native born in United States; second, or naturalized; third, or declared intentions under United States laws; fourth, or file oath with clerk of a court of record to support Constitution of United States and of this state, and abjure allegiance to any foreign power, and actual residence in the state.

All white male citizens of twenty-one years and upwards, having either of the above qualifications and a residence in the territory of six months, shall have a right to vote at all state, county, and town elections, and none but those having a right to vote shall be eligible to an office.

Yours, etc.,

ROUGH HEWER.

30

"ROUGH HEWER'S" SCHEME OF GOVERNMENT
CRITICIZED

[June 30, 1846]

We invite attention to the communication of our correspondent, "Rough Hewer." He has furnished a complete skeleton of a constitution, and many of his suggestions are highly important. But we do not, of course, agree with him upon all of them. The exception in favor of chartering a state bank and branches is, in our judgment, entirely out of the handle.

The war between the Democratic party and the banks is one which we are of opinion admits of no compromise, and can end in nothing short of the utter extermination of one or the other.

The suggestion that "no religious test shall ever be required of persons to hold office under the state government” will meet with universal approbation; but we cannot reconcile this with the suggestion which immediately followsthat we should establish an irreligious test, or a religious disqualification for holding office. We are firmly persuaded that, when the civil authority attempts to establish either, it is stepping beyond its legitimate sphere and entering upon a path which in one direction terminates in intolerance and persecution, and in the opposite direction in ghostly spiritual despotism, and that, when we have once entered upon it, we are as likely to bring up at one end of the route as the other, and no matter whether we begin with religious tests or religious disqualifications.

We question, also, whether the constitution is the proper place for an exemption law of any kind, and especially one of as doubtful expediency as the exemption of a definite quantity of real estate comprising an indefinite value.

We are glad, however, that our correspondent has laid these suggestions before the public. He states in a private

note that his object is merely to bring these points before the public mind that they may be received or rejected, and good-naturedly remarks that "you and your Democratic editors and the Whig editors and the Abolition editors and the bankites and ultras may fire your grape and canister and hot shot at any of the views put forth"; from which we infer that he would not mourn if some of his suggestions should meet with a decided negative.

We hope to hear from him again on some of the provisions suggested.

LEGAL ABSURDITIES-PLEADINGS

[July 7, 1846]

One of the greatest absurdities in courts of law is the present practice of pleading. To be well skilled in drawing a declaration requires great ingenuity in the telling of falsehoods. The written declaration of a plaintiff in an action seldom or never states a fact, and, to save the trouble of writing over a sheet of foolscap, printed blank forms are generally used; these printed forms answer for any state of facts within a certain class of actions, by merely filling up names and dates. A simple statement of facts in a declaration precisely as they occurred is not deemed good and sufficient in our fiction-loving courts; a great number of misrepresentations and perversions of the truth must be inserted in order to gain the favorable ear of the court. Why is it necessary to employ fiction in our courts more than in any other department of business, in order to elicit truth and to promote justice? Does the physician resort to chicanery to cure disease, or the minister to calumny to promote a healthful state of morals? Suppose a doctor were called to see a patient having a fractured limb; he tells the patient his limb is considerably fractured, but in order to effect a cure the patient must consider himself afflicted with a great number of maladies-there must be medical appliances for gout,

spasm, cough, dropsy, colic and blood spitting, to heal the aforesaid fracture.

A declaration to recover on a simple promissory note, drawn up according to the approved form, contains about as many words as the Declaration of American Independence by our forefathers asserting our severance from Great Britain. Such a declaration usually contains a half dozen or more counts, not one of which states the fact at issue distinctly and correctly. The plaintiff avers the making of a half dozen promises which were never made, and which he knows to be false. So, too, in an action of trover, the plaintiff in the statement of his claim, or rather his lawyer for him, must tell deliberate untruths: he must aver that he casually lost the article he seeks to recover the value of, and that it came to the possession of the defendant by finding. The forms of pleading in this case, however, permit the defendant to speak the truth-that he is not guilty of the meanness of refusing to give up a piece of property which he came in possession of by finding. As a general thing neither the court, lawyers, parties, nor jurors can ascertain from the pleadings what the particular controversy is, or what either party claims, denies, or intends to prove, but the pleadings are chiefly made up of statements in solemn verbosity-mere legal fictions, fancies, inferences, and abstractions. As they state things that never transpired or had any real existence, they certainly can furnish no useful information, and are necessarily dark, obscure, unintelligiblefit instruments of injustice.

Again we say, why is it necessary to mystify, to falsify, to establish justice? Is it not contrary to every code of morals throughout the civilized world to employ falsehood and misrepresentation for the purpose of advancing the true interests of society? Why should untruths be permitted in our courts with impunity while they are repudiated everywhere else where regard is had to decency and respectability. We have heard many attempts to explain the necessity for using the present forms of pleadings, but they all amount

to about as much as the assumption that a witness cannot tell the truth, however intelligent or honest he may be, without the help of a member of the legal profession to pump the truth out of him. Some suppose that because fictitious pleadings have been in use so long and date back to so remote a period that they cannot now be dispensed with. A thousand fooleries and absurdities were once in high repute which are now discarded. We have received all our forms of law proceedings from England, without ever having made scarcely any changes. An able writer in the Democratic Review justly remarks:

It is to be regretted that the wise men who engaged in the glorious task of severing the political ties that subsisted between the colonies of this country and Great Britain had not carried their notions of emancipation to a bolder height. They should have declared their independence not only of the government, but of the laws of the mother country.

Wisconsin will soon throw off her territorial form and assume the form of state government; this act of the people will be regarded to be the formation of a new government. But, as preposterous as it may appear, after the people of Wisconsin have formed a new government, they will still have entailed upon them the laws, forms of proceeding, rules of practice, and decisions of the monarchial courts of Great Britain, as contained in a thousand volumes! All this mass of mingled wisdom and folly will doubtless be recognized by our courts as good authority and fit to be observed in the administration of justice. The rights of our citizens will be subjected to legal rules which they never have had any agency in establishing, or have ever understandingly assented to. Now let us for a moment look at its consistency.

"Law," says Blackstone, "is a rule of action prescribed by the superior, which the inferior is bound to obey." This definition involves a manifest absurdity, since according to this principle we have no laws in this country, because we acknowledge no superiors in a land of equal privileges. The most common sense definition of law as applicable to our