All for a Quarter.
We read in the daily prints that a gentleman by the name of Hoey, while returning from Rockaway, in company with a gentleman and lady, in passing a turnpike gate, gave the girl, attending the bar, a coin which he presumed to be a good American quarter dollar, but which the girl pronounced to be bad. The turnpike man, who chances to be a justice of the peace, immediately caused the arrest of all parties, who were forced to send to Rockaway for bail. Even after the arrival of the bail the party were detained several hours from lack of the necessary printed blanks, while Mr. Justice and turnpike man Pearsall, copied the process from a musty law tome. It is needless to add that upon the appearance of Mr. Hoey and counsel from New York, all proceedings were dismissed as frivolous.
Gross as this outrage may appear at the first blush, and intense as was the stupidity of the Long Island Dogberry, it can be daily paralleled by the actions of our own law courts, especially when we extract our police magistrates from barrooms and grogeries. Now one question: Have we one single police magistrate in this city who ever swept out a lawyers office, much less ever studied the profession? They are doubtlessly intelligent and well-meaning men, but then they are not lawyers, and consequently unfit to be entrusted with the custody of our personal independence. No right can be dearer than that of free locomotion, and therefore we should be more particular in the selection of these judges, than those controlling the right of property. Imprisonment, like the dew of heaven, falls alike upon the rich and the poor, and no citizen should be jeopardized as to personal liberty and representation without the strongest possible precaution.