and as counties were established, the territorial legislature increased the places in each district for holding the district court.  Either on account of the expense or for some other cause congress has just stepped aside from the doctrine of non-intervention (ch. 124, sec. 5), and abrogated the territorial legislation so far as to provide that there shall be but one place in each of the three districts for holding a district court.  The act applies to all territories.  In a territory of five or six hundred miles in extent it is of course inconvenient to have but three places for holding courts.  The Minnesotians complain that it is an interference with popular sovereignty.  It is possible the legislature might have gone to an extreme in creating places for holding courts; and I suppose the judges were kept on the march a good deal of the time.  It also looks as if the remedy by congress was extreme.  The people say it is a coercive measure to drive them into a state organization.

The administration of justice is secured by a system which is now common to all the territories, with the exception of Kansas.  The supreme court consists of the three district judges in full bench.  They hold nisi prius terms in their respective districts, which are called district courts.  The judges have a salary of $2000 each, and are appointed for a term of four years, subject to removal by the President.  The district courts have chancery jurisdiction in matters where there is not a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law.  (Stat. of Min. ch. 94, sec. 1.) There are also probate courts.  Each county has two justices of the peace, who are elected by the people.  And I cannot but remark how much better the practice is to elect or appoint a few justices of the peace rather than to allow the office to be degraded by wholesale appointments, as a matter of compliment, according to the usage too common in some Eastern States.  The justices of the peace have jurisdiction in civil cases where the amount in question does not exceed $100; and when the amount at issue is over $20 either party may demand a jury of six men to try the case.  But there would be little demand for juries if all magistrates were as competent as our enlightened friend Judge Russell.

Special pleading never flourished much in the West.  It was never “a favorite with the court” out this way; while the regard which the lawyers have cherished for it has been “distant and respectful.”  It has been laid on the shelf about as effectually as bleeding in the practice of medicine.  The science of special pleading, as it is known in these days—­ and that in some of the older states—­ exists in a mitigated form from what it did in the days of Coke and Hale.  The opportunities to amend, and the various barriers against admitting a multiplicity of pleas, have rendered the system so much more rational than it once was, that it is doubtful if some of the old English worthies could now identify it.  Once