either side are examined upon oath; after which, the judges taking serious consideration of the whole matter and of all circumstances and proofs therein, at a set time they pronounce their sentence; and commonly the whole process and business is determined in the space of three weeks, except in cases where an appeal is brought.  The judges sit in court usually twice in every week, unless in festival times, when they keep vacations, and with them their holidays are not juridical:  their equal and speedy administration of justice is commended both by their own people and by strangers who have occasion to make trial of it.

[SN:  Municipal Government of Hamburg.]

Their public government, by which their peace is preserved, disorders restrained, and men kept from being wolves to one another, makes them the more to flourish, and consists of four Consuls or Burgomasters and twenty other Senators, of whom twelve were called Overholts, and the other twelve Ricks-herrs.  Upon the death or removal of any Senator, the choice of a new one is with the rest of the Senators.  The choice of the Overholts is by the people, and they are as tribunes of the people; they have power to control the Senate through the supreme magistracy, but they do it with all respect and tenderness, and no new law is made nor tax imposed without their consent.  But the execution of the present laws, and the government of the people, and the last appeal in the city, is left unto the Senate; as also negotiations with foreigners, the entertainments and ceremonies with strangers, and generally the care of the safety of their State.

In cases of extraordinary concernment, as of war and peace, levying of money, making of new laws, and matters of extraordinary weight and consideration, of which the Senate are not willing to take the burden wholly upon themselves, or to undergo the envy or hazard of the consequences thereof; in such cases the Senate causeth the Overholt to be assembled, and, as the weight of the business may be, sometimes they cause to be summoned an assembly of the whole body of the burgesses of the city, before whom the business in the general is propounded, and they are desired by the Senate to make choice of some deputies, to be joined to the Senate and to assist them in the matters proposed.  Then the whole body of the freemen do commonly make choice of eight, sometimes more and sometimes fewer, as they please, out of their own number, and these deputies have full power given to them by this assembly to despatch and determine, together with the Senate and the Overholt, their matters thus proposed to the general consideration of that public assembly; and what this Council thus constituted do resolve in these matters, the same is put in execution accordingly, obligeth, and is freely submitted unto by all the citizens, who look upon themselves by this their election of deputies to have their own consents involved in what their deputies determine.