Homicide rates in the US remain well below where they were 25 years ago, and stubbornly high homicide rates are a regional — and not a national — problem.
In the early years of the United States, legal systems were far more localized and flexible. But elites preferred consistency over flexibility, and the rich could afford the more bureaucratic legal institutions that ordinary people could not.
With printing of the Continental notes in 1775, Webster feared people would think you could finance the Revolutionary War by printing paper money. We should have listened!
