Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

On a very useful Custom which prevails in HOLLAND.

(Extracted from the 17th vol. of the celebrated Voltaire's prose works.)

"THERE are private persons who raise in their gardens the fruits which nature had appointed only to ripen under the line. We have a thousand wise laws, and a thousand excellent customs at our very doors. -- These are the fruits we ought to raise in our own country -- these the trees we ought to transplant; they will thrive in every climate, and will prosper in every soil. The most salutary law -- the most excellent custom, and the most useful I have ever seen, is in Holland. When two persons are about to enter upon a law-suit, they are first obliged to go before a tribunal of reconciling judges called peace-makers. If the parties happen to bring with them a lawyer and a counsellor, the first thing done is to send those gentlemen about their business, as we take off wood from a fire we want to extinguish. The peace-makers tell the parties, "You are certainly great fools to spend your money to procure your own ruin; we will bring you to an accommodation without costing you one farthing." If the rage of chicane happen to be too violent in the parties, they put them off to another day, in order that time may often and mitigate the symptoms of their disorder; after the expiration of which time, the judges summon them before them a second and a third time. -- If their folly is of the incurable sort, they promise them they will consent to having their cause tried in a court of justice, in the same manner as we abandon an incurable member to the surgeon; and then the law has its course. -- There is no necessity to make long declamations, or to calculate how much it would be to the advantage of humanity, were this Law universally adopted -- and besides, I am by no means desirous to follow the traces of the abbe de St. Pierre, whose projects a certain minister, and a man of sense, called the dreams of a worthy man. I know that if a private person of integrity and good sense offers a proposal for the public good, it too often happens that he is abused or laughed at for his pains. -- "What meddling fellow is this?" some will say, "who pretends to make us happier than we chuse to be, and goes about to reform abuses by which so many people get their living?" -- What reply can be made to this? for my part I know of none."