In Massachusetts, are some very striking peculiarities. The _supreme court_, consisting of four judges, sits once a year _in each county_, to decide questions of law, in the last resort. Some one of these judges, besides, holds annually a _Nisi Prius_ term in each county, to try appeals from an inferior grade called "courts of common pleas," original suits in chancery, and upon the bonds of executors and administrators. The appeals to them from the common pleas, are _as to both law and fact_: a jury being empanneled, witnesses examined, &c., as if it were an original proceeding. The latter courts are held twice a year in each county, by some one of four judges; who hold office (like those of the supreme court) during good behavior. They have cognizance of all causes, except what I shall designate as vested elsewhere. Presentments and indictments for all offences, are found only in the _common pleas_; where, also, they are tried--_except in capital cases_. These, after the indictment is found, are certified and removed from the common pleas to the _supreme court_; at whose bar the culprit is tried by a jury: a special term being held on purpose, in any county where the judges are notified that a prisoner awaits trial for life or death. _En passant_--though _eight crimes_ are, by the laws of Massachusetts, punishable with death, _only twenty-six persons_ in the whole state have been capitally convicted, _in thirty years!_ The number of trials (I do not exactly remember it) bears an immense disproportion to the number of convictions: so immense, as to prove that either an undue severity in the laws, or the unreasonable and too common lenity of juries, aided by the overwhelming superiority of defending advocates--or (what is most probable) all three causes together--have well nigh made those laws a dead letter. Prosecutions are conducted by _district attorneys_, of whom there are four in the state; each prosecuting within his allotted district. In the supreme court, however, the attorney general is counsel for the commonwealth.