The two deemsters--a name of obvious significance, deem-sters, such as
deem the laws--were then the only judges of the island, all other legal
functionaries being of more recent date. On entering into office, the
deemster took an oath, which is sworn by all deemsters to this day,
declaring by the wonderful works which God hath miraculously wrought in
six days and seven nights, that he would execute the laws of the island
justly "betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring's
backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish." But these laws down to the
time of the second Stanley existed only in the breasts of the deemsters
themselves, being therefore called Breast Laws, and thus they were
supposed to be handed down orally from deemster to deemster. The
superstition fostered corruption as well as incapacity, and it will not
be wronging the truth to say that some of the deemsters of old time were
both ignorant and unprincipled. Their jurisdiction was absolute in all
that were then thought to be temporal affairs, beginning with a debt
of a shilling, and going up to murder. They kept their courts in the
centres of their districts, one of them being in the north of the
island, the other in the south, but they were free to hold a court
anywhere, and at any time. A deemster riding from Ramsey to Peel might
find his way stopped by a noisy claimant, who held his defendant by the
lug, having dragged him bodily from the field to the highway, to receive
instant judgment from the judge riding past. Or at midnight, in his
own home, a deemster might be broken in upon by a clamorous gang of
disputants and their witnesses, who came from the pot-house for the
settlement of their differences. On such occasions, the deemster
invariably acted on the sound old legal maxim, once recognised by an Act
of Parliament, that suits not likely to bear good costs should always be
settled out of court. First, the deemster demanded his fee. If neither
claimant nor defendant could give it, he probably troubled himself no
further than to take up his horse-whip and drive both out into the road.
I dare say there were many good men among deemsters of the old order,
who loved justice for its own sake, and liked to see the poor and the
weak righted, but the memory of deemsters of this kind is not green. The
bulk of men are not better than their opportunities, and the temptations
of the deemsters of old were neither few nor slight.