Price.] 222 [April. 



tunity of business and profit; prepared for that service by long labor 

 and expensive education ; Judges, intelligent, learned, faithful, 

 patriotic, who serve us alike during all the years of war and peace, 

 precisely in that direction wherein our rights, liberties, and Govern- 

 ment are most surely to be protected and maintained. These public 

 servants, in all British and American history, have been the cham- 

 pions of true liberty ; of that liberty which consists in the security 

 of all rights ; have been statesmen, whose legal policy, wisdom and 

 firmness made them staunchest opponents to that aristocracy which 

 would build up family power, at the expense of the welfare of the body 

 of the people, by fettering estates in perpetuity. In this country of 

 constitutions their powers transcend those of all other judges ; for they 

 are the ultimate protectors of the liberties and property of the people 

 against all legislative, executive, and military usurpations. We have 

 Judges of our Courts, who may, perhaps, have listened imprudently 

 to ambitious suggestions of distinction, and thought of the dignity of 

 elevated position, and yet have brought to the discharge of their 

 high and most responsible duties, irreproachable character, ample 

 learning, and exalted talents, who only were unwise in committing 

 themselves and families to the justice of the Commonwealth. Impute 

 this to them as folly, if we will, yet such imputations made by others 

 cannot equal their own often-felt, bitter, self-reproaches; but self- 

 reproaches felt for no wrong of theirs, but only because they had 

 trusted to the public justice, and found it to fail. How tenfold more 

 severe then should be the self-reproaches of that public ! The judges 

 in their younger life may have felt the impulses of an honorable am- 

 bition ; the aspiration to make their lives usefully distinguished. 

 Yet are these the impulses of generous and exalted minds. With- 

 out them human nature would be shorn of its chief glory. They 

 may have expected to make sacrifices, and would bravely bear the 

 penalty of their aspirations, receiving little of our sympathy, had 

 they no family to look upon in sympathy for their welfare; and could 

 they cease to think of what shall become of that family, when by 

 the family's greatest calamity, the present inadequate salary must 

 wholly cease, with no fortune provided for them. Whatever the mo- 

 tive or aspiration of the Judge, we, the public, receive full, laborious, 

 generous service, and not justly to requite that service is a wrong, 

 the responsibility of which we cannot shift from ourselves. We let 

 it fall too lightly upon each of us, as it disperses itself upon the rail- 

 lions of our population ; but we should make it concentrate again 

 upon our representatives in the legislature, until they shall do the 



