Justice was administered as follows:--Each Podestà could decide in cases not exceeding the value of ten livres. In conjunction with the Fathers of the Community, he could determine causes to the value of thirty livres. Cases involving more than thirty livres were tried before the tribunal of the province, where the court consisted of a president and two assessors named by the Consulta, and of a fiscal named by the Supreme Council. This tribunal was renewed every year.
An appeal lay from it to the Rota Civile, the highest court of justice, consisting of three doctors of laws, who held office for life. The same courts administered criminal justice, assisted always by a jury consisting of six fathers of families, who decided on the merits of the case from the evidence furnished by the witnesses, and pronounced a verdict of guilty or not guilty.
The members of the supreme council, of the Syndicate, and of the provincial tribunals, could only be re-elected after a lapse of two years. The Podestàs and Fathers of the Communities were elected annually by the citizens of their locality above twenty-five years of age.
In cases of emergency, when revolt and tumult had broken out in some part of the island, the General could send a temporary dictatorial court into the quarter, called the War Giunta (_giunta di osservazione o di guerra_), consisting of three or more members, with one of the supreme councillors at their head. Invested with unlimited authority to adopt whatever measures seemed necessary, and to punish instantaneously, this swiftly-acting "court of high commission" could not fail to strike terror into the discontented and evil-disposed; the people gave it the name of the _Giustizia Paolina_. Having fulfilled its mission, it rendered an account of its proceedings to the Censors.
Such is an outline of Paoli's legislation, and of the constitution of the Corsican Republic. When we consider its leading ideas--self-government of the people, liberty of the individual citizen protected and regulated on every side by law, participation in the political life of the country, publicity and simplicity in the administration, popular courts of justice--we cannot but confess that the Corsican state was constructed on principles of a wider and more generous humanity than any other in the same century. And if we look at the time when it took its rise, many years before the world had seen the French democratic legislation, or the establishment of the North American republic under the great Washington, Pasquale Paoli and his people gain additional claims to our admiration.