ments designed to avenge society or reform the morals of the people. "We present the towns of Kittery, York, the Isle of Shoals, Wells, &c, for not attending the Court's order, for not making a pair of stocks, cage, and ducking-stool." These instruments, one after another, long since disappeared from the criminal code and public observation; the ducking-stool first, then the cage, and last of all, the stocks and the whipping-post. The "oldest inhabitant" may perhaps have an indistinct memory of the latest apparitions of the last two mementos of a departed age,—the moss-covered post to which culprits were occasionally tied for castigation, and the stocks, with their neck and arm and leg holes staring vacantly at his wondering childish gaze. But the ducking-stool! Ah, why was that salutary discipline abandoned? Has the race of scolds and brawling women, for whose especial accommodation it was invented, passed away? Oh no; but the age has become more refined, and more tolerant of the abuse. This machine was a chair suspended by a crane over the water, into which the offender was plunged repeatedly, until her impatience and fretfulness was moderated. This species of punishment was very popular, both in England and this country, in early times.
One of the subjects of this antiquated remedy, the ducking-stool, was an inhabitant of Falmouth, whose name occurs in the following record: "We present Julian Cloyes, wife of John Cloyes, for a tale-bearer from house to house, setting difference between neighbors." The abolition of the ducking-stool unfortunately does not seem to Have been followed by any perceptible diminution in the offences to which it was applicable.
The common penalty for swearing or railing was putting the offender's tongue in a cleft stick; a very painful as well as humiliating punishment.
One other mode of punishment peculiar to that age may be noticed in conclusion of what we have to say of the olden customs in the law. In 1667 one Elinor Bonythorn, in consideration of her offence, was ordered "to stand three Sabbath days in a white sheet in the public meetings, or otherwise to pay five pounds into the treasury of this division." We know not which most to admire, the singularity of this punishment or the easy manner in which it was commuted. We need not say that on this occasion the penitential sheet was not worn.
We have thus carried our readers back to some of the customs of a former day. From the greatest simplicity in legal forms which amounted to almost no form at all, our ancestors passed to the opposite extreme, and the whole skill and power of the professors of the law were exhausted in puzzling their adversaries, and the courts and themselves, in a maze of special pleading which darkened and marred every case of any importance. Pleas in abatement, demurrers, general and special, rejoinders and surrejoinders, so entirely smothered up causes, that the merits were almost lost sight of, and many a case was driven out of court, upon the mere technicality of pleading, without one thought of the parties or the merits of the suit. The bar became an arena for the trial of the ingenuity of counsel and the display of forensic subtlety. But thanks to the progress of sound principles and a diffusion of the gladsome light of jurisprudence, the profession has got off its stilts, and is now walking upon the solid ground of good sense, untrammelled justice, and enlightened jurisprudence. Free discussion and profound research have opened their ample resources, and the profession of the law now comes to adorn and bless the age. It has passed from the boldness of one era and the subtlety of another, and has reached the open and broad field of free inquiry and simple truth. Let the profession be faithful to its high vocation, "Do nothing against the truth, but for the truth," and in these times of recklessness, radicalism, and wild visions, it will stand a barrier against them all, the palladium of our country's safety.
