No.  V

Justice Pettifog.

In the morning the Clockmaker informed me that a Justice’s Court was to be held that day at Pugnose’s Inn, and he guessed be could do a little business among the country folks that would be assembled there.  Some of them, he said, owed him for clocks, and it would save him a world of travelling, to have the Justice and Constable to drive them up together.  If you want a fat wether, there’s nothing like penning up the whole flock in a corner.  I guess, said he, if General Campbell knew what sort of a man that are magistrate was, he’d disband him pretty quick:  he’s a regular suck egg—­a disgrace to the country.  I guess if he acted that way in Kentucky, he’d get a breakfast of cold lead some morning, out of the small eend of a rifle, he’d find pretty difficult to digest.  They tell me he issues three hundred writs a year, the cost of which, including that tarnation Constable’s fees, can’t amount to nothing less than 3,000 dollars per annum.  If the Hon. Daniel Webster had him afore a jury, I reckon he’d turn him inside out, and slip him back again, as quick as an old stocking.  He’d paint him to the life, as plain to be known as the head of Gineral Jackson.  He’s jist a fit feller for Lynch law, to be tried, hanged, and damned, all at once—­there’s more nor him in the country—­there’s some of the breed in every county in the Province.  Jist one or two to do the dirty work, as we keep niggers, for jobs that would give a white man the cholera.  They ought to pay his passage, as we do with such critters, tell him his place is taken in the Mail Coach, and if he is found here after twenty four hours, they’d make a carpenter’s plumb-bob of him, and hang him outside the church steeple, to try if it was perpendicular.  He almost always gives judgment for plaintiff, and if the poor defendant has an offset, he makes him sue it, so that it grinds a grist both ways for him, like the upper and lower mill stone.

People soon began to assemble, some on foot, and others on horseback and in waggons—­Pugnose’s tavern was all bustle and confusion—­Plaintiffs, Defendants, and witnesses, all talking, quarreling, explaining, and drinking.  Here comes the Squire, said one—­I’m thinking his horse carries more roguery than law, said another; they must have been in proper want of timber to make a justice of, said a third, when they took such a crooked stick as that; sap headed enough too for refuse, said a stout looking farmer; may be so, said another, but as bard at the heart as a log of elm; howsomever, said a third, I hope it wont be long afore he has the wainy edge scored off of him, any how.  Many more such remarks were made, all drawn from familiar objects, but all expressive of bitterness and contempt.