at st. mary's 9

peals, the dependence during the whole of the pro-
vincial period was upon the leading gentlemen of
the country, serving as justices of the peace. And
except for a few lawyers who served on the Coun-
cil, all these were without special training in the
law. This was an adoption or continuation of the
old English institution of justices of the peace, of
course, but a somewhat different and broader use
of it was made here. And in view of the subse-
quent decay and comparatively low esteem of the
office it may be well to emphasize its greater im-
portance in England and Maryland in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. It had its origin
in England as far back as the twelfth century,¹⁸
and it became within two hundred years, and long
remained, one of the most important features of
the English governmental system. George M.
Trevelyan, in his recent "History of England"
speaks of it as,

that peculiarly English system of government whereby the
Crown depends largely on the amateur services of the local
gentry for the enforcement of the King's Peace, instead of de-
pending wholly on the sheriff and Judges or on a centralized
bureaucracy of the later continental type.¹⁹

For four hundred years their powers continued to increase,
both in variety of function and in personal authority, till in the
Eighteenth Century they were in a sense more powerful than
the central government itself. This would not have happened
if they had not responded to the needs and character of the
English over a long period of time.²⁰

And, says Maitland,

a history of the eighteenth century which does not place the
justice of the peace in the very foreground of the picture, will

, 18. Holdsworth, I, 286, 288.

19. Page 166.

20. Ibid, 199.