The judiciary system is less prepared than any other part of the plan;
however, they will abolish the parliaments, and establish an order of
judges and justices, general and provincial, a good deal like ours, with
trial by jury in criminal cases certainly, perhaps also in civil. The
provinces will have Assemblies for their provincial government, and the
cities a municipal body for municipal government, all founded on
the basis of popular election. These subordinate governments, though
completely dependent on the general one, will be intrusted with almost
the whole of the details which our State governments exercise. They will
have their own judiciary, final in all but great cases, the executive
business will principally pass through their hands, and a certain local
legislature will be allowed them. In short, ours has been professedly
their model, in which such changes are made as a difference of
circumstances rendered necessary, and some others neither necessary nor
advantageous, but into which men will ever run, when versed in theory
and new in the practice of government, when acquainted with man only
as they see him in their books and not in the world. This plan will
undoubtedly undergo changes in the Assembly, and the longer it is
delayed, the greater will be the changes; for that Assembly, or rather
the patriotic part of it, hooped together heretofore by a common
enemy, are less compact since their victory.
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