It was modified further by the civil law and by the
needs of a developing world commerce, and after the action of the Long
Parliament and the Revolution it was no longer used as an instrument of
tyranny.
In this country, however, the Puritans and the Pilgrims approved of
neither the common law nor the English judicial system, and as lawyers
were only part of that system, they considered the abolition of the
profession from their society as an end devoutly to be wished for and
promptly sought. Among the Pilgrim fathers there was not a single
lawyer, while among the Puritans there were only four or five who had
been educated as lawyers and even they had never practiced. The
consequence was that during the seventeenth century and far into the
eighteenth, lawyers had little place in the social or political
institutions of the colonies. In New England there was a theocracy. The
judges--none of them lawyers--were all either ministers or directly
under the influence of the clergy. A colonial common law grew up among
them, based on a theological reasoning and was really administered
without lawyers.
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