Wisconsin Herald, And Grant County Advertiser

Litigation.
Mr. Editor:—If the court calendar is a good thermometer, the spirit of litigation is rapidly declining in Western Wisconsin.—You know what poor picking the Grant calendar presented last term—at Prairie du Chien, but two cases were tried, and no jury called! The war-spirit among nations is dying away—you see some of its froth in the letter-writing: but the surface of society is no longer broken into huge black rollers, crested with white caps and dashing themselves to fragments in vain rage. The world is quiet, and has been for the last twenty years, so far as war is concerned. And litigation which is a kind of civil war, is becoming an antiquated thing.—A lawsuit is a declaration of war between two spunky individuals—the bar is the battle-field—the lawyers the hireling, disciplined soldiery; of course as national wars diminish, so will individual wars become infrequent. The pugnacity of mankind is certainly everywhere in every theatre where it formerly displayed itself, on the wane—chivalry and knight errantry no longer challenge the acclamations of the multitude. I remember the time when every neighborhood had its bully whose fists and teeth had made indubitable marks of renown on the cheeks and fingers of his vanquished rival. Nat Swales has whipt Reub Fugate—Nat after this was regarded in the neighborhood as a hero like Hercules and Theseus of yore. But who now honors the laurels won in kicking and boxing? The hero is not half so much honored as a game cock; he is a drunken dog whom every body despises. How public opinion has changed. In Homer's day the trader was called the 'merchant mean;' now the competitors for Olympic honors are cooped up in a circus, and show their nonsensical pranks for a bit! A few years ago, and Dick's dog worried Daniel's hog—Daniel erected his bristles in a rage—ran off to the squire, sued Dick for trespass and paid a lawyer $5. Dick also fee'd a lawyer. The plaintiff's attorney made a forcible speech, got into the very spirit of the matter, and seized his client by the flanks and shook him with his teeth, to represent the fury of the dog—his client had lost divers flitches of bacon to his incalculable damage. Dick showed that he and his dog were distinct individuals. The sequel was, that the squire, the witnesses, the constable and the lawyers got the 'whole hog,' and Daniel concluded that if such was legal redress, he would do without it thereafter; and so he taught his children. Indeed there are few claims that can stand the depletion necessary to a course of litigation, and this has induced men to become their own lawyers and judges, just as they have become their own doctors.
J. T. M.
WAR.
With regard to war, you can get nations to threaten—but since General Jackson's death, there are few men rash enough to shoot down others in a sic volo sic jubeo way, in cold blood,—They would be paralysed by the sight. John Bull is busy in providing ale and beef steak for his table—Brother Jonathan in enlarging his plantations and purchasing quarter sections for his grand children. Both are coming to their senses. Says John, if I should kill some of those scheming Yankees, I couldn't eat them, roast 'em or jerk 'em. And Jonathan says that killing the red coats was the most expensive business he ever tried. Then should pride or revenge plunge us into this losing game called war? Only let peace and its improvements continue for twenty-five years more, and your Herald may record the royal weddings at the court of St. James, and advertise the commerce of Astoria. The world is a bee hive, but war has robbed it so often, it could never fill with either bees or honey. So you see how the consideration of individual war led to that of national, and there are powerful, silent causes pledged to the extinction of both. Let me here correct the error made by our Prosecuting Attorney in his late address to the grand jury. His opinions are generally good when he forms them himself, but Mr. Cobbett has made him believe that a flitch of bacon is worth a thousand sermons to moralize a community—and therefore he credited our morality to bacon—to our superabundance for our back and belly. Mr. Cobbett ought to know that horses seldom kick till they get fat, and so it is with men. And when every man's pocket book was swollen with shin plasters, were his morals better than his money? Where necessity imposes too little on men, they become idle, indolent and inhuman. A flitch of bacon is not the best nostrum to cure criminal propensities.
J. T. M.