Some Pertinent Questions

How many judicial districts in this state? [Footnote:  Consult Legislative Manual.] How many counties in the largest?  In the smallest?  How many have more than one judge?  Why not let each county constitute a judicial district?

If some one owed you $40 and refused to pay, in what court could you sue?  If he owed you $250?  If the suit involved $1,000,000?

What is the relation of the plea to the action?  Can anything be proved which is not alleged in the plea?  Show the purpose of each rule of pleading.  Of each rule of evidence.

What are the differences between a grand jury and a petit jury?  Why is each so named?

If a person accused of crime is examined and held by a justice of the peace, as stated in a previous chapter, must he be indicted by a grand jury before he can be tried?  Why?  May a person’s acts be inquired into by the grand jury without his knowing anything about it?  May grand jurors reveal the proceedings of the jury?  Why?

Why is there such a thing as a peremptory challenge of a juror?  Why so many given to a person accused of crime?

Are lawyers officers of the court?  What oath does each take on admission to the bar?

Questions for Debate

Resolved, That trial by jury has outlived its usefulness.

Resolved, That capital punishment is not justifiable.

References.—­Dole’s Talks about Law; Lieber’s Civil Liberty and Self Government, 234-6; The Century, November 1882; Atlantic Monthly, July 1881; North American Review, March 1882 and July 1884.

[Illustration:  Papers—­Prepare with care the “tabular views” of the town, village, city and county, as follows]

CHAPTER VIII.

HISTORICAL.

Old England.—­Not only our language but also very many of our political institutions we have inherited from England.  But the country now called by that name is not the real old England.  The fatherland of the English race is the isthmus in the northern part of Germany which we now call Schleswig.  Here dwelt the old Angles or English.  To the north of them in Jutland was the tribe called the Jutes, and to the south of them, in what we now call Holstein and Friesland, dwelt the Saxons.  “How close was the union of these tribes was shown by their use of a common name, while the choice of this name points out the tribe which at the moment when we first meet them, in the fifth century, must have been the most powerful in the confederacy.” [Footnote:  Green’s History of the English People.] Among themselves they bore in common the name of Englishmen.