Whence arose, carrying in some things their Uberty into hbertinism, the not unusual sights at one time of chief justice and courtesan promenading the busiest thoroughfare in company; of supreme judge seated behind a gambhng table dealing faro, and surrounded by lawyers, politicians, prostitutes, and friends; of supreme judge drinking to drunkenness, carousing all night in elegantly furnished halls of infamy, fighting duels, assaulting citizens, and burdened so heavily with debts incurred by licentious living as to become the willing tool of whomsoever would buy him up and offer him for cancellation by the easy though conscienceless method of warped judicial decisions.
While such a state of things existed at the fountainhead of justice, we should not be surprised to find its lower channels somewhat turbid in their flow. While Mammon and Gammon sat upon the supreme bench it was not difficult to determine what sort of pleading was required to win a cause before that tribunal. While he who during the morning hours listened as associate justice to the cases brought before one of the upper courts of the metropolis, in the afternoon stood by and witnessed a deliberate murder, of which he had foreknowledge and was accessory, being the murderer's friend he would naturally hurry him to prison as to a place of safety.
Between these two extremes of the best and the worst, in the city and in the country, every shade of character was to be found among the judiciary of California. Nor did personal immorality by any means imply judicial corruption. At a time when the female element was meagre, deference was paid by all classes to the female form, even though its dress covered corruption; nor was it very damaging to any man's reputation, when everything was public, to be seen in conversation with a public woman.
Gambling and drinking saloons were places of public resort; all classes there met and mingled freely. The person so prudish as to hold aloof from such
