work terminated. All
orders asked for by a responsible attorney were granted _ex parte_, the
judge remarking that if the order was not a proper one, the other party
would soon appear, and then he could ascertain the real merits of the
case. The grand feature of this court was the facility with which an
injunction could be obtained, and the rapidity with which it could be
set aside.

CALIFORNIAN COURTS.

Crime was almost unknown until we got a state government and a code of
laws, which, with misplaced philanthropy, had made the legal practice
so easy upon criminals that a conviction was next to impossible. Then
it was that crime stalked abroad in the face of day, and Sidney
convicts plied their trade in San Francisco after it had become a city.
Shops were entered and robbed in business hours; and by night, men were
murdered in the streets; and thefts escaped punishment. Then it was
that men, caught in the commission of crime, were hanged in the open
streets, and combinations were formed for self-defense. But when a new
Legislature gave efficiency to the laws, the community yielded a
willing obedience to the magistrate. From an early day there had been
"miners' courts," which, with their alcaldes, had conciliated
differences. But when magistrates were elected, these courts
disappeared. This was a change from bad to worse, for no condition is
so deplorable as that of a people whose magistracy are powerless.

Such is a fair picture of California in its worst estate, when the
worst and the best of all nations were there congregated, and kept in
subjection by the law-abiding spirit of an Anglo-Saxon immigration--a
state of society in the first year of its existence, yet infinitely
superior to that existing in the city of Mexico a hundred years after
the discovery of the mines of Haxal and Pachuca. But we may complete
the contrast by adding the more deplorable part of the picture which
Friar Thomas Gage has drawn.

"It seems," says he, "that religion teaches that all wickedness is
allowable, so that the churches and clergy flourish. Nay, while the
purse is open to lasciviousness, if it be likewise open to enrich the
temple walls and roofs, this is better than any holy water, or water to
wash away the filth of the other. Rome is held to be the head of
superstition; and what stately churches, chapels, and cloisters are in
it! What fastings, what processions, what appearances of devotion! And,
on the other side, what liber