Pray, P. Rutilius R., a native of the State
of Maine, college-educated and with some experience as a teacher
in Winchester county, N. Y., came to Mississippi in the early
days of the State, and made his home at Pearlington, near the
seaboard, where he engaged in the practice of law. He served in
the legislature as representative of Hancock county, in 1827-29,
and was honored with a place on the judiciary committee with
Sharkey and Quitman. In 1832 he was president of the
constitutional convention, and by the following legislature he
was selected to make a digest of the laws of the State.
Influenced by the Napoleonic code of Louisiana he endeavored to
work into his code of Mississippi, in conformity with the
revolutionary spirit of that day, some independence of the
traditions of the “common law” inherited from old England.
He reported to the January session, 1835, that he had relied
much on the aid he had expected “to derive from the
dissertations of those distinguished jurists, who have
introduced such magnificent improvements into recent
legislation, and to whom justice seems fully to have unveiled
her mysteries but he would not be ready to report until a year
later. His work was submitted to the session of January, 1836.
The senate committee reported on the code in 1838 that “it has
some circumstances attached to it calculated to recommend it
favorably.” The laws were written in “a concise and
comprehensive style which evinces great clearness of perception
and legal acquirement in its author.” The principal innovations
proposed by the code were its chief recommendation to the
committee; namely, the abolishment of some old forms of pleading
that belonged to a bygone and barbarous age. The session of 1838
was partly given to the consideration of the code.
In January, 1839, the Pray code had not yet been adopted, and it
never was. Gov. McNutt vigorously observed that many objections
were made to it by people who had never read it. “Some are so
wedded to black letter books and the unwritten or common law as
to be unable to believe that any improvement can be made. We
live in an age which contradicts all such assumptions. . . . It
has been too long the custom to look for the law in the opinions
of jurists. The legislative will, expressed in accordance with
the constitution, is the only law recognized in a free
government. The present is a most auspicious time for the
adoption of an entire new code of laws. Fully one half of our
population have recently emigrated to the State. . . . The
spirit of the age is opposed to hanging, branding, cropping,
whipping and the pillory. . . . The revisor has wisely
recommended that murder and arson, in the first degree, and
treason, alone, should be capitally punished, and that
executions should take place in the prison or prison yard, in
the presence of certain officers.”
In November, 1837, Pray was elected to the High court, as the
supreme court of the State was then called, and he held this
office until his death, at the age of 45 years, at Bay St.
Louis, Dec. 11, 1839.
Source: Roland, Cunbar, Mississippi: comprisig sketches of
towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic
form, (c) 1907, pp. 463-464 |
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