Such were the men who knew no fear, and dreaded no labor or fatigue, and who have made California in five short years a state more powerful than the Republic of Mexico.
In an interior town I was called to practice as an attorney. My first client was the driver of an ox-team, who was suing for extra services in addition to his regular wages of five hundred dollars a month and board (Doe vs. Pickett). My office was a space of four feet by six, partitioned off by two cotton sheets, in the corner of a canvas store. The ground was for a while the floor; yet I paid in advance the monthly rent of two ounces of gold, and never had occasion to regret the outlay. The heavy winter rains at length compelled my landlord to lay a floor of rough boards, which cost him seven hundred dollars for a thousand feet.
Before the establishment of the state government, there was a judiciary created by an autocratical edict of General Riley; and a pamphlet, extracted and translated from the Mexican Constitutional laws of 1836, constituted the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Territory of California. The remainder of the law was made up of the judge's ideas of equity, and of the law he had read before leaving home. Inartificial and rude as was this system, still it was wonderfully efficient; and it was well for the people of California that it was so, for an unparalleled immigration had brought with it an unparalleled amount of litigation.
With the daily occurring causes of litigation, crowds assembled at the school-house on the Plaza, where from morning to night sat a judge dispensing off-hand justice. In front of him sat three or four clerks conducting the business. The crowds of lawyers, litigants, and witnesses that surrounded the court were not idle spectators, but represented the ordinary accumulation of business for the day, which was to be disposed of before the adjournment of the court. Speedy justice was more desirable than exact justice, where labor was valued at a gold ounce a day; and none were more desirous of speed than the lawyers, whose prospects of compensation depended much upon the promptitude with which judgment was rendered.
The moving spirit of the whole scene, Judge A——, watched from behind the desk all that was said or done, seldom withdrawing his attention unless to administer an oath for the consideration of one dollar, or to sign an order for the consideration of two dollars. Sometimes he would change his position; but, whether warming his uncovered feet at the fire-place, or drawing on his boots, or replenishing his stock of tobacco, there was the same unalterable attention on his part. As soon as he comprehended a case, his authoritative voice was heard, closing the discussion, and dictating to a clerk the exact number of dollars and cents for which he should enter up a judgment. And then another, and another case was called up, and submitted to this summary process, until about nine o'clock at night, when the day's work terminated. All orders asked for by a responsible attorney were granted ex parte, the judge remarking that if the order was not a proper one, the other party would soon appear, and then he could ascertain the real merits of the case. The grand feature of this court was the facility with which an injunction could be obtained, and the rapidity with which it could be set aside.
CALIFORNIAN COURTS.
Crime was almost unknown until we got a state government and a code of laws, which, with misplaced philanthropy, had made the legal practice so easy upon criminals that a conviction was next to impossible. Then it was that crime stalked abroad in the face of day, and Sidney convicts plied their trade in San Francisco after it had become a city. Shops were entered and robbed in business hours; and by night, men were murdered in the streets; and thefts escaped punishment. Then it was that men, caught in the commission of crime, were hanged in the open streets, and combinations were formed for self-defense. But when a new Legislature gave efficiency to the laws, the community yielded a willing obedience to the magistrate. From an early day there had been "miners' courts," which, with their alcaldes, had conciliated differences. But when magistrates were elected, these courts disappeared. This was a change from bad to worse, for no condition is so deplorable as that of a people whose magistracy are powerless.
Such is a fair picture of California in its worst estate, when the worst and the best of all nations were there congregated, and kept in subjection by the law-abiding spirit of an Anglo-Saxon immigration—a state of society in the first year of its existence, yet infinitely superior to that existing in the city of Mexico a hundred years after the discovery of the mines of Haxal and Pachuca. But we may complete the contrast by adding the more deplorable part of the picture which Friar Thomas Gage has drawn.
"It seems," says he, "that religion teaches that all wickedness is allowable, so that the churches and clergy flourish. Nay, while the purse is open to lasciviousness, if it be likewise open to enrich the temple walls and roofs, this is better than any holy water, or water to wash away the filth of the other. Rome is held to be the head of superstition; and what stately churches, chapels, and cloisters are in it! What fastings, what processions, what appearances of devotion! And, on the other side, what liberty, what profaneness, what whoredoms, nay, what sins of Sodom are committed in it, insomuch that it could be the saying of a friar to myself, while I was in it, that he verily thought there was no one city in the world wherein were more Atheists than in Rome. I might show this much in Madrid, Seville, Valladolid, and other famous cities in Spain and in Italy; in Milan, Genoa, and Naples; relating many instances of scandals committed in those places, and yet the temples are mightily enriched by those who have thought their alms a sufficient warrant to free them from hell and purgatory. But I must return to Mexico, which furnishes a thousand witnesses of this truth—sin and wickedness abounding in it—and yet no such people in the world toward the Church and clergy. In their lifetime they strive to excel one another in their gifts to the cloisters of nuns and friars, some erecting altars to their best-devoted saints, worth many thousand ducats, others presenting crowns of gold to the pictures of Mary, others lamps, others golden chains, others building cloisters at their own charge, others repairing them, others, at their death, leaving to them two or three thousand ducats for an annual stipend.
MEXICO TWO CENTURIES AGO.