James Michie, 1759; William Simpson, 1761; Charles Skinner, 1762; Thomas Knox Gordon, 1771; William Henry Drayton, 1776; John Rutledge, 1791. Since the year 1791 there has been no appointment of a chief justice; the senior judge acting as such.

It does not appear from the records that there were any assistant judges prior to 1736. In the previous infancy of the province, a single chief justice presided over the courts in Charlestown, which were then, and for thirty-three years after, the only ones held in the province. About that time the middle country began to be settled. An increasing population required an increase of judges. Since that year the following gentlemen have been appointed assistant judges:

Thomas Dale, 1736; Robert Austin, 1737; Thomas Lamboll, 1736; Benjamin De La Conseillere, 1737; James Mazyck, 1739; William Bull, Jr., 1739; Robert Young, 1739; Othneil Beale, 1740; John Lining, 1744; John Drayton, 1753; William Simpson, 1760; Robert Pringle, 1760; William Burrows, 1764; Rawlins Lowndes, 1766; Benjamin Smith, 1766; Geo. Gabriel Powell, 1769; John Murray, 1770; Edward Savage, 1771; John Fewtrell, 1771; Charles Matthew Cosslett, 1772; William Henry Drayton, 1774; William Gregory, 1774; Thomas Bee, John Matthews, Henry Pendleton, 1776; Edanus Burke, 1778.

Since the evacuation of Charlestown, in 1782, the following gentlemen have been appointed judges of the Court of Common Pleas and of Sessions, in the following order: 1. John Faucheraud Grimkè; 2. Thomas Heyward; 3. Thomas Waties; 4. William Drayton; 5. Elihu Hall Bay; 6. Ephraim Ramsay; 7. William Johnson; 8. Lewis Trezevant; 9. Joseph Brevard; 10. Samuel Wylds; 11. William Smith. The first, third and three last, are the judges in 1808. Since the year 1784, when appropriate judges were first appointed by the Legislature to preside over the Court of Chancery, the following gentlemen have been appointed to that high office:-John Rutledge, Richard Hutson and John Matthews, in 1784. These have been succeeded by Hugh Rutledge, James Green Hunt, Edanus Burke, William James, Waddy Thomson, Theodore Gaillard, and William Henry DeSaussure. The last four, with Hugh Rutledge, are at present, 1808, judges of the Court of Equity. Each of them can hold a court, but an appeal may be made from its decisions to the bench of judges.

On a retrospect, the gradual improvement of the judiciary system must be obviously striking. For ninety-nine years there were no courts, judges or lawyers beyond the limits of Charlestown. For two-thirds of that period the Courts of Common Pleas and of King's Bench were held by one and the same single judge, from whom there was no appeal but to

himself on a new trial. In the year 1719 the government and people, by their representatives, remonstrated to the lords proprietors against Nicholas Trott, as being not only sole judge of the Courts of Common Pleas, of King's Bench, but also of the Court of Vice-Admiralty, and at the same time as a counsellor, one of the judges of the Court of Chancery; but they could not effect his removal from any one of these incompatible offices. For the first sixteen years of the royal government, the Courts of Common Pleas and of Sessions were both held by one and the same person by the name of Chief Justice, and without any appeal to any other than to himself. All this time, and till the year 1769, no suit could be commenced but in Charlestown, and no officer but the provost marshal could serve a process in any part of the province; by which means the expenses of a suit were often half the amount of the debt. Some relief was obtained by the Circuit Court Act, but that was only partial. These Circuit Courts were not courts of original jurisdiction, nor of record, for the first twenty years after they were constituted. Since the revolution, the former districts have been successively subdivided till the same portion of country, with the addition of Pendleton and Greenville, has been formed into twenty-five districts, and the number of judges increased from one to six. Every cause may now be reexamined by a bench of judges, of whom, at least, three out of four take it up as new, and without any prepossession. The same successive reforms have attached to the Court of Chancery: for the first 114 years of provincial Carolina, justice was dispensed in that court by the counsellors of the executive authority, who were generally destitute of competent legal knowledge. From 1784 to 1808 three appropriate judges presided over this court; but from their decisions there was no appeal but to a full bench, of which they, from whose decision the appeal was made, constituted a majority. At present an appeal can be made to a bench of five, or at least of four judges, all of whom, except one, takes the case up as new, and without any bias from having presided over the court from whose decision the appeal was made. Before the revolution, and for five years after, there was but one ordinary for South Carolina; but since the peace of 1783, the twenty-five districts have been accommodated with one for each. The good of the people was the object of these modifications of the several departments of government. The end has been obtained with respect to a great majority of the inhabitants, who are orderly and well disposed; but nevertheless, the increased facility and decreased expense of going to law has fostered a spirit of litigation. The number of suits in the State courts exceeds the number instituted in provincial Carolina in a much greater proportion than can be supposed to arise solely

from an increase of population.* Such is the imperfection of all things human, that every earthly good has an alloy of evil mixed with it. The disposition to bear and forbear, and to accommodate disputes, has been lessened by the multiplication of courts and diminution of the expenses, and other inconveniences of seeking legal redress for small matters.†

The mode of admission to practice law in the courts' of Carolina, has varied with times and circumstances. Before the revolution it depended on a rule of court, and was rarely conferred on any others than regularly bred European or native Carolinian lawyers. Since the year 1785 the door of admission has been widened, particularly in favor of citizens of the United States. The last law on the subject was passed in 1806. By the rules therein laid down, an examination of the candidate on legal subjects, and also a year's residence, not only in the State, but of actual study in the office of some practicing attorney or judge, is in every case indispensably necessary. This is required of American citizens, though they have studied and been admitted to practice in other States; but from graduates commencing their legal studies, three years, and from others four years study of law is required before they can be admitted. In the year 1808 there were forty-eight practitioners of law in Charlestown. The whole number admitted to the bar, for the twenty-seven years which immediately preceded the revolution, was fifty-eight; but in the twenty-five years subsequent to its termination, in 1783, no less than 238 were admitted in Charlestown, exclusive of those who passed their examination in the country. Of these several never practiced nor intended to practice.

For the seven years before the courts were disturbed by the revolution, the greatest number of judgments entered up in Charlestown in one year was 390, and the average of these seven years was 236 judgments for each. In seven years since the revolution, or from 1500 to 1806 inclusive, 5,858 judgments have been entered up, which is an average of 838 for each year. There were 1,850 causes at issue for the January term, 1809-and 1,150 causes were tried in the May term of 1806. This disparity of nearly one for four, previous to and since the revolution, will be more obvious when it is known that all the judgments, obtained in the country districts before the year 1789, were entered up in Charlestown; and that, in the latter period, the judgments entered up in Charlestown are only those obtained in Charlestown district, which is no more than one of the twenty-five into which the State is divided: and it will be still more striking when it is known that the whole population of the State in 1765 was 130,000, rather more than double of the whole population of Charlestown district, which, in 1800, was only 57,486. For much of these details the author and his readers are indebted to James Nicholson.

†The Methodists, in South Carolina, manage these matters in a way peculiar to themselves. In some cases they prohibit, and in all, discourage their people from going to law. They reprobate their contracting debts without a fair prospect of paying them according to contract. In the case of failure to pay, if the debt was contracted wantonly and with improper views, the debtor is left to himself or dismissed from their society. If its non-payment is the effect of unexpected misfortunes they lend him money to discharge it. Though this can only be done to a limited extent, yet their funds are so prudently managed as to save most of their followers from the expenses of law-suits, which are often ruinous to the poor of other societies.

FISCAL HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA,

FROM 1670 TO 1808.

CHAPTER IV.

From the settlement of Carolina, taxes were uniformly the free gifts of the people. For the first twelve years none were imposed. The earliest on record is in the year 1682. This appears in the form of an act of the Legislature, "for raising a tax of £400 for defraying the public charges of the province." But the mode of raising that sum has not descended to posterity. The largest sum imposed in any one year of the first thirty-two, was £800; and the whole which appears to have been raised by taxes during that time did not exceed £2,320: but in that period a new principle of revenue was introduced. In 1691 a duty was imposed on skins and furs. These were then the principal exports from the country. The amount of this duty is unknown, but it must have been considerable, perhaps adequate to the public exigencies; for no tax act appears on record for the ten years next after that duty was imposed.

With the new century there were new calls for money and new modes of raising it. Taxes on the former plan were also continued and enlarged. In 1702 an act was passed "for raising £2,000," to provide for an offensive expedition against St. Augustine. Though the expedition failed, this sum was not sufficient. To supply its deficiencies, acts were passed in each of the two following years for raising £2,000; and about the same time a tax of ten per cent. was laid on furs, skins, liquors, and other goods and merchandize imported into and exported out of the province.

In 1708 an act was passed for raising the sum of £5,000, and in 1710 for raising £3,000, and in 1713 for raising £4,000. In 1714 a specific duty was laid on all negro slaves imported, but the amount charged on each is not mentioned. An act for raising £30,000 from the estates real and personal of the inhabitants, was passed in 1715, and in the year 1716, there was an act for raising 35,000 in that year, and 30,000 for each of the two ensuing years. Of these taxes, £1,600 were apportioned among the merchants and other inhabitants living within the limits of the plat of Charlestown. This is the first instances of a tax laid expressly on merchants and the inhabitants of Charlestown. In the year 1719 an act was passed for raising the sum of £70,000 on lands and negroes.

The

The

augmentation of taxes from £2,320 for the eighteen last years of the seventeenth century to £215,000 in the first eighteen years of the eighteenth century needs explanation. It was not the consequence of increasing wealth or accidental sudden prosperity, but proceeded from causes directly the reverse. commencement of the eighteenth century was uncommonly disastrous to Carolina. The abortive expedition against Augustine the invasion of the province by Feboure-the expedition under Col. Barnwell against the Tuscaroa Indians of North Carolina-the Yamassee war and the suppression of the pirates, all took place between 1701 and 1719, and drew after them debt, taxes, paper-money and depreciation. Such are the consequences of war, whether offensive or defensive, successful or abortive, injurious to all establishments, but doubly so to such as are in their infancy. The first link in this chain of evils, was Gov. Moore's expedition against St. Augustine in 1702. To lessen the burdens resulting from it, £8,000 in bills of credit were issued by the Assembly which were to be sunk in three years by a duty laid on liquors, skins and furs. The credit of this paper-money was for some considerable time undiminished; and it would have continued so to the end if it had stood alone, for it was well received by all and ample funds were provided for its redemption. But a new plausible project, contrary to the expectation of its friends, diminished the value of the bills. Interest was then ten per cent., and lands were increasing in value from the successful culture of rice. These circumstances suggested the idea of a land bank as an easy and practicable mode of obtaining, money and of supporting the credit of paper. In the year 1712, the enormous sum of £52,000 was issued in bills of credit to be loaned out on interest to such of the inhabitants as could give the requisite security and agreed to pay interest annually in addition to the twelfth part of the principal. These land bank-bills came into circulation under circumstances similar to those which introduced the late paper medium sanctioned by the Legislature in 1785; but their fate was different. On their emission, the rate of exchange and the price of produce quickly increased. In the first year it advanced to 150, and in the second to 200 per cent. In ten years after, 1722, it was fixed by law at four for one. In addition to the injury done by the land bank-bills, a further depreciation resulted from a further emission of £15,000 by the Legislature in 1716, to assist in defraying the expenses of the Yamassee war. The people lost confidence in bills of credit, the multiplication and extension of which was so easy and tempting.

In Carolina, as a British province, sterling was the legal