They,
as well as the supreme judge, held their offices for life. The
proceedings in the courts were conducted with decency and order. The
judges wore an appropriate dress, and attended to business both
parts of the day, dining always, for the sake of despatch, in an
apartment of the same building where they held their session; a method
of proceeding much commended by the Spanish chroniclers, to whom
despatch was not very familiar in their own tribunals. Officers
attended to preserve order, and others summoned the parties, and
produced them in court. No counsel was employed; the parties stated
their own case, and supported it by their witnesses. The oath of the
accused was also admitted in evidence. The statement of the case,
the testimony, and the proceedings of the trial, were all set forth by
a clerk, in hieroglyphical paintings, and handed over to the court.
The paintings were executed with so much accuracy, that, in all
suits respecting real property, they were allowed to be produced as
good authority in the Spanish tribunals, very long after the Conquest.
A capital sentence was indicated by a line traced with an arrow
across the portrait of the accused. In Tezcuco, where the king
presided in the court, this, according to the national chronicler, was
done with extraordinary parade. His description, which is of rather
a poetical cast, I give in his own words: "In the royal palace of
Tezcuco was a courtyard, on the opposite sides of which were two halls
of justice.
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