New Jersey as a colony and as a state : one of the original thirteen . Peaceable and Healthy: long may it so continue andnever have occasion for the Tongue of the one, nor the Pen of theother, both equally destructive to Mens Estates and Lives; besidesforsooth, they, Hangman like, have a License to Murder and makeMischief. There was, however, in West Jersey at thisperiod a man of excellent parts, a certain JamesNevill, clerk of Salem court, who in his manu-script book of surveys, under date of 1687, leavesfor posterity his impressions concerning trials byjury. Though written in the stilted lan
New Jersey as a colony and as a state : one of the original thirteen . Peaceable and Healthy: long may it so continue andnever have occasion for the Tongue of the one, nor the Pen of theother, both equally destructive to Mens Estates and Lives; besidesforsooth, they, Hangman like, have a License to Murder and makeMischief. There was, however, in West Jersey at thisperiod a man of excellent parts, a certain JamesNevill, clerk of Salem court, who in his manu-script book of surveys, under date of 1687, leavesfor posterity his impressions concerning trials byjury. Though written in the stilted language ofthe time, his comments show a clear and readyappreciation of the value of an ancient Englishinstitution. Of jury trials Nevill says: The fairest flower that now grows in ye garden of English mensliberties is a fair tryall by peers or twelve men of his neighborhood,which so much artifice is used by some of this age to pluck up bythe roots. Justice ought to be measured by the straight meta-wandofthe fundamental laws of England, and not by the crooked lines of. OLD MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE. ONY AND AS A STATE 309 discretion. . It is my opinion that a jury of twelve goodand honest men of the neighborhood are as good judges of theequitable sense of the law and the intent and meaning of the law-makers as they are of the letter of the law. There is a touch of Blackstone in this critique,a flavor of sturdy independence in a desire to sub-mit to ones peers the question at issue and a will-in«» determination to abide by the had Thomass Account been given tothe world ere there arrived in New Jersey RogerMompesson, first colonial chief justice, who inspite of his political complications with the infa-mous Lord Cornbury merited Logans praise that Mompesson is ingenious, able, and honest. Whatever may have been the uncertain statusof lawyers, it is true that the Legislature tookcognizance of the actual or future presence ofmembers of the profession. As early as Octobe
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