Price.] 218 [April. 



tablished, with three judges, learned in the law. The court last 

 named was, in 1840, superseded by the Court of General Sessions, 

 composed of three Judges, learned in the lawj and in 1843 that 

 court was, in turn, abolished, and its jurisdiction restored to the 

 Court of Oyer and Terminer and Quarter Sessions, with the addition 

 of a fourth Judge, learned in the law, for those criminal courts and 

 the Common Pleas; which number was reduced to three in 1851, and 

 so has since remained, during all the judicial life of Judge Thomp- 

 son. The jurisdiction and powers of the Mayor's Court had been 

 absorbed by the criminal courts established in 1838 and 1843, and 

 were conferred upon the Court of Quarter Sessions in 1843. We have 

 had, since 1851, but the same number of courts that we had in 1811, 

 and in that time have had but six Local Judges, learned in the law. 

 In 1850, the population of our county had risen to 408,762, and in 

 I860, to 565,529. Counting but the Law Judges of former times as 

 eflFective for the despatch of business, the two for the average of the 

 populations of 1790, 1800, and 1810, would give, in proportion to 

 population in 1860, fourteen Judges, instead of the six we have. 

 The three Law Judges, from 1811 to 1821, would give, by the same 

 rule, in 1860, thirteen Judges; the five, in lS30, would, in 1860, 

 give fifteen ; and there being, in 1840, nine Law Judges for a popu- 

 lation of 258,037, these, by the same proportion, would give, in 

 1860, twenty Local Judges, instead of the six we have. If, then, 

 former numbers had any just relation to the business to be transacted, 

 we have been grievously unjust and oppressive in the amount of the 

 labor we have heaped upon the Judges of the Court of Common 

 Pleas and District Court of the County of Philadelphia. We have 

 alike been unjust to ourselves; for when the Judges are compelled to 

 do more than they have time to do, business cannot be so well done; 

 justice to some extent is sacrificed; and rather than wait the delays 

 necessarily incident to the choked channels of justice, people submit 

 to unjust compromises; they abate their just rights, rather than en- 

 dure the law's delay. 



Can any one imagine a position more painful to a cultivated and 

 sensitive mind than that of Judge Thompson, during the latter years 

 of his life? He had no adequate resources for his family, while his 

 salary was consumed by the necessary current expenses. He labored 

 on with a keen sense of his duties to the public ; felt the keener as 

 failing health increased his nervous sensibilities; and determined that 

 none of his labors should fall upon his overtaxed brethren ; yet per- 

 ceiving, from day to day, that bis bodily constitution was fast failing 



