Alexandria Gazette

Hustings Court.

The refusal of our application for a Hustings Court has filled our citizens with disappointment and perplexity—and tends greatly to shake the confidence with which they relied on the justice of the Legislature for a redress of their grievances.

They asked a Hustings Court because it forms a part of all municipal organization of the State—because the regulations of our police and the appointment of certain officers of vital importance to their commerce were not safely vested in the County Court—and because, that tribunal was believed to have been corruptly appointed and was destitute of the confidence of the community.

The Committee passes by all these reasons in silence, in order to combat two shadows of its own conjuring up.

The Report says the business of the County does not justify the erection of the Court. If that be a valid reason, how can the Hustings Court of Williamsburg and other places be supported?

But we did not put the application on the ground of a pressure of business—but on the character of the tribunal which now must transact it—on the suspicion and distrust of the community because of its corrupt creation. The facts in proof of this ground—the witnesses to sustain them were furnished: the committee did not doubt the truth of the circumstances detailed—but it gave them the go-by.

This then means—if it mean anything—that no matter how corrupt may be the appointment of a Court, that is no reason for relieving the community of the cancerous excrescence—that if the business is not enough to employ the corruptly and the purely appointed tribunal, the citizen shall be left to the former, and shall not bow to the latter for the protection of his property, character or life!

It is understood to have been urged that a Hustings Court would have been no relief, since its creation would not have done away with the County Court; but this is not accurate, for in relation to the inspectorship, and the police of the town and the revenue, its creation would have entirely exempted the town from the jurisdiction of the County Court: and though parties could still resort to that Court, to sue, they would have had the option of another tribunal of similar powers.

The remark that those aggrieved have their remedy by quo warranto, in a Court of Law, is entirely unintelligible. Who are the parties aggrieved? Surely the sovereign dignity of the state and that alone: and the application was to its representative appointed to watch the use its officers make of their power, and to guard the purity of the public administration.

This is no party contest about rights of office, but concerns the purity of the administration of public justice—and if the Legislature be not its guardian, who is?

An impeachment of the Governor was not asked for—nor was a removal of the justices of the County Court. The citizens stated the circumstances susceptible of full and clear proof, only as reasons why they should be relieved from the incubus which oppresses them, so far as a Hustings Court could effect it.

But whatever prudence may suggest as to the expediency of instituting an impeachment—which it is neither our business nor our intention to urge—that the corrupt appointment of a Court affords no ground in law for impeachment, is too manifestly unfounded to justify an argument.

With the highest respect for the members of the Committee, we cannot but think their course on this matter highly detrimental to the public interest. It proclaims impunity to every corrupt prostitution of the powers of government, it emancipates the unscrupulous from the terrors of legislative animadversion, and leaves them to the tardy, and doubtless retribution of legal process, incumbered by a thousand formalities, impeded by a thousand stumbling blocks, and incapable of reaching the chief offender.

This matter cannot rest here; and if the present Legislature will not even investigate the case we present, we must and will have redress at the hands of its successor.

JUSTICE.