[35] The bridge here mentioned by
Mr. Knickerbocker still exists;
but
it is said that the toll is seldom collected nowadays
excepting
on sleighing parties, by the descendants of the
patriarchs,
who still preserve the traditions of the city.
Among the wrecks and fragments of exalted wisdom which
have floated down the stream of time from venerable
antiquity, and been picked up by those humble but
industrious wights who ply along the shores of literature,
we find a shrewd ordinance of Charondas the Locrian
legislator. Anxious to preserve the judicial
code of the state from the additions and amendments
of country members and seekers of popularity, he ordained
that, whoever proposed a new law should do it with
a halter about his neck; whereby, in case his proposition
were rejected, they just hung him up—and
there the matter ended.
The effect was, that for more than two hundred years
there was but one trifling alteration in the judicial
code; and legal matters were so clear and simple that
the whole race of lawyers starved to death for want
of employment. The Locrians, too, being freed
from all incitement to litigation, lived very lovingly
together, and were so happy a people that they make
scarce any figure in history; it being only your litigatous,
quarrelsome, rantipole nations who make much noise
in the world.
I have been reminded of these historical facts in
coming to treat of the internal policy of William
the Testy. Well would it have been for him had
he in the course of his universal acquirements stumbled
upon the precaution of the good Charondas; or had
he looked nearer home at the protectorate of Oloffe
the Dreamer, when the community was governed without
laws. Such legislation, however, was not suited
to the busy, meddling mind of William the Testy.
On the contrary, he conceived that the true wisdom
of legislation consisted in the multiplicity of laws.
He accordingly had great punishments for great crimes,
and little punishments for little offences. By
degrees the whole surface of society was cut up by
ditches and fences, and quickset hedges of the law,
and even the sequestered paths of private life so
beset by petty rules and ordinances, too numerous
to be remembered, that one could scarce walk at large
without the risk of letting off a spring-gun or falling
into a man-trap.
In a little while the blessings of innumerable laws
became apparent; a class of men arose to expound and
confound them. Petty courts were instituted to
take cognizance of petty offences, pettifoggers began
to abound, and the community was soon set together
by the ears.
