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Carolina; and Judge Bacon, I submit, is not the man whose name should be held up for imitation, on a question of judicial integrity, and independence.

Last, in this list of personal authorities, a name was introduced, which I have already said, I think should have been left out of view on this occasion. But, as it has been made the subject of an eloquent appeal to the emotions and reverence of this assembly, I shall not hesitate, as I do not fear, to meet such eloquence by simple argument, and plain fact. I, too, sir, like the learned judge, have seen that god-like man.-God-like, he was, in size, aspect, presence, and behaviour, as much as in the noble properties of his spirit, and the admirable discipline of his temper. I can see him now, with a vivid recollection of his personal appearance, as eloquently described by the venerable judge, when he stood up in congress, with, if I mistake not, a sword by his side, and what in Europe is called, a court dress, that is, the garb worn by persons who appear in the presence of monarchs. I never can forget the impressions of such a scene, which might effect a youthful imagination with sentiments that maturer years may somewhat change. Without pretending to determine what is right on such occasions, I shall simply state the fact, that when WASHINGTON's first and favorite secretary, succeeded him in the American chief magistracy, he abolished the royal custom of personal address, and sent a message to congress, which reform whether right or wrong and I give no opinion on the subject, but, resting my argument on the mere fact, has probably, proved acceptable to fourteen hundred thousand, of the sixteen hundred thousand voters in the United States.

One of the learned judge's illustrations, was remarkably characteristic of the intense directness, with which he goes straight, may I venture to add, and I might say, headlong, to any conclusion he believes in. His wish is, often father to his thought. He set up for our example, the constitution of Massachusetts, from which he read a part to bear the testi'mony, of such men as Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, and Mr. Story, to the necessity of that judicial independence, which he thinks we should cherish. But we go to a different school. We do not worship at that shrine. We do not presume to desecrate it. On the contrary, I repeat my profound respect for it. But by instinct, I am unable to bow down before it. Its religion may be the true one. We, who deny it, may all come to repent our error. But till we do, such arguments, shall I be excused for saying, are in a vein of downright simplicity. At all events they fully justify, that by which I would shew, that on great principles, we must sometimes agree to differ.

Such, then, is the platform, on which we propose to place our contemplated reform of the judiciary—to bring that branch of government, in better acceptance with the sovereign power, according to what we believe, is its will. And, really, there is but one difficulty connected with this movement, which is, simply, to ascertain, what is that will. This is no party question, but, purely popular. To quote the learned judge, the people must be the democracy, and the democracy must be the people, in such a question. The candid and manly concession of the gentleman from Union, (Mr. Merrill) spares me much an argument in

together, but by the will of the people, expressed in its most ligitimate forms? We, the representatives, are here to deliberate, and to devise: they, the people, are there, to ponder, and determine such reforms, as may be submitted to them. The venerable judge has, himself, in strong terms, declared, that it would be madness to resist the people's will, when once properly made known. And can there be a doubt, that they desire their sovereignty to be plenary? Do we not, ourselves, each one, and all of us, wish it to be so? The remarkable quarrel between the speaker and the governor, in 1706, as read, form one of those curious manucripts, which the gentleman from Union, (Mr. Merrill) has brought to light, the colonial acts of 1727, and 1759, the constitution of 1776, the petitions and remonstrances, as shown by the gentlemen from Philadelphia and Luzerne, (Messrs. Brown and Woodward) to have been, continually pouring into the legislature, from the people, complaining of the high judicial tenure, as attempted for the first time, by the present constitution, and our own votes, by one of which, the foundation of the system. Justices of the peace, have been broken up by change, from the irresponsible, to a very dependent tenure, together with the vote of yesterday, by which a considerable majority of this convention, would seem inclined to limit the tenure of all our judges, without exception-all this concurrent testimony, from the very beginning to the end, proves, beyond a cavil, that the people desire to be their own masters, that this conven tion think they should, and not to give that mastary to the judges. The people of Pennsylvania, have always been a peculiar people, in their jealousy of judicial supremacy. They never could be brought to tolerate a court of chancery, which acts arbitrarily, and without what may be called the popular branch of the judiciary department-a jury; and when, at last, within a short time, some chancery powers have been confered by the legislature, on the courts, they take care to associate a jury, with the chancellor; and even so, this power was interpolated at a special session of the legislature, certainly, without the people, or even the profession, being advised beforehand, or prepared for its reception.

Let others say what they may, I subscribe, most cordially, to the patriotic, if you will, the provincial self complacency of the venerable judge, than whom his country, and his state, contain no truer lover, that Pennsylvania is foremost in rational improvement, and not behindhand in intelligence, of all other commonwealths and countries. If this is a prejudice, so be it. It is, at any rate, an honest and delightful one, which I cherish and inculcate, and without which. I certainly would not live in Pennsylvania. Let the lawyers of other states, and it is chiefly they, who, regarding with affected contempt, our palmy democracy, and, I must add, as they deem it, our judicial degradation, have denounced us, as a population of stupid Dutch, and wild Irish, the beotia of America -let them show greater improvements in any of the arts and sciences, of good government, and good society, if they can. I assert, with confidence, and this is part of my political creed, in which, I am very happy to have the concurence of the venerable judge, himself, that Pennsylvania is a model state, and that more universal suffrage than other states enjoy, more popular sovereignty, than their constitutions allow, the constant promotion of the greatest good, of the greatest number, a system, of which

though it may deprive them of some of the public honors and distinetions that these are the springs of our pre-eminence, the pure, popular fountains of our prosperity. By their fruits, shall ye know them. Within a few years past, New York, on one of our borders, and Ohio on another, by rendering their right of suffrage, still more universal, and their judicial officers still more responsible to the people, than ours, together with other organic improvements, have taken the lead of us in the race of advancement, and it is the duty, as it should be the delight, of this convention, to submit to the people, for their adoption, such improvements, as all experience has testified to be desirable, so that Pennsylvania may regain, by the renovated republicanism of a still more democratic constitution, that rank in the scale of states, which the least rottenness of arbitrary government, will be sure to make her lose.

And here, let me answer, not without deferential respect to that venerable gentleman, but with the most explicit contradiction of his unfounded assumption, the claim which he has set up, of the constitution, to be the parent of the prosperity of this noble commonwealth. Sir, I pronounce it to be grand larceny, to rob liberty and equality of what belongs to them, and ascribe it to government. All the blessings we enjoy, are the offspring of freedom. Too many of the evils we endure are the inflictions of government, government not strictly and generously popular, which, whenever it undertakes to regulate, whatever may be safely left to the people to do for themselves aud, of themselves, is always a grievance and often a curse. I must be permitted, here, Mr. Chairman, to read from a late publication, this first of all political truths, so much better explained by a German, than I am capable of expressing it, that I take shame to myself, that an American must be indebted to that enslaved, yet enlightened empire, for its admirable elucida

tion.

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Liberty is nothing positive; it is but the absence of slavery. Liberty cannot, liberty will not establish any thing but itself; it cannot and will not destroy any thing but despotism. Liberty cannot change a people; it cannot give to a people qualities and virtues denied them by nature; it cannot change them from faults which are born with them, or occasioned by climate, education, history, or ill-fate: Liberty, is in itself nothing, yet every thing, for it is THE HEALTH OF A PEOPLE. As the healthy beggar, with his stony crust of bread, is happier than the rich man at his luxurious banquet, so is a free people, were it to dwell in the icy regions of the north, without arts, without science, without hope, without a single enjoyment of life, and, wrestling with the bear for its food, happier still than a nation without liberty, though it should have inherited a paradise in its sky, and enjoy a thousand flowers and fruits, spontaneously produced by the soil, or offered by the cultivation of the arts and sciences. Liberty alone can develope all the powers and resources of a nation, in order to make her attain the end for which she was created. Liberty alone can ripen the hidden genius of a people's virtue, as indeed it reveals all its faults, showing which of them are to be ascribed to natural causes, and which to degeneration; separating thereby its healthy qualities from those which, under a semblance of vigor conceal but weakness, or a morbid developement of a certain organ at the expense

So much for general principles, Mr. Chairman; and now for their practical application. The judiciary is the earthly providenee. It is, first, to secure personal liberty, secondly, to preserve property, and, thirdly, to maintain all other constitutional and natural rights. According to the 10th section of the 9th article of the constitution, to do justice, remedy and right, without sale, denial, or delay, and more especially as the 5th section of that article enjoins, to keep inviolate that first of all judicial rights, the right of trial by jury.

FIRST-The chairman of the judiciary committee read, as he told us from Clarendon's* account of it, one of the many similar instances that might be fetched from such histories of Cromwell's contumelious treatment of a court of justice. It were to be wished, that, instead of such authority, that of a romance, as it may be called, composed in Holland, or in France, at a great distance from the scenes described, seen through the medium of the most distorting animosity, the learned judge had favoured us with even Cromwell's actions, as much more faithfully depicted in Goodwin's excellent history of that absurd but glorious English commonwealth, which begat, at the same time, the founders of the English revolution of 1688, and the American revolution of 1776. The time has come when the history of those days is better understood, and their giants less disparaged than they used to be by Clarendon, Hume, and all that class of tory fabricators of it. I shall not deny the judicial irregularities of any of the cases that have been referred to. Ship money, the seven bishops, Penn's prosecution, and the many other instances of English wrong, any more than those of the decemvirs and Virginia, for which we were carried all the way to Rome, to learn to dread responsible or popular magistrates. But I shall come at once to our own business and bosoms, in Pennsylvania, selecting a few from the innumerable instances that might be mentioned of those egregious judicial misdeeds that our vicious system has teemed with. I consider them the infirmities of the system, not of those judges who ministered under it. The system leads into temptation; it provokes indolence and insolence, cruelty and folly, and those who have been betrayed by it into the excesses, some of which I shall call to mind, are not to be deemed subjects of my personal censure, while speaking of the workings and vices of the system itself.

The gentleman from Northampton, (Mr. Porter) reminded us of Passmore's case, and delivered an eulogium on the judges arraigned for that affair. I shall not detract from the characters of the dead; but it belongs to the scope of fair argument to state that a large majority of both branches of the legislature tried in vain to remove a judge for implication, to call it by the mildest term, in a stretch of power, so shocking to the sense of the community, that the legislature, not only of this state, but of many others, and of the United States, have, by special enactment, taken from courts' and judges' authority ever to perpetuate again what, whether right or wrong, was extremely odious and shocking to the feelings of all free people. As in former instances throughout this argument, I content

"We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the keenness of Clarendon's observation, and by the sober majesty of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the historian"-is the elegant condemnation of Judge Hopkinson's authority, by a passage

myself with stating facts, leaving conclusions to be drawn by others, without presuming to give any opinion of my own. My friend from Luzerne, (Mr. Woodward) mentioned an act of despotic judicial impropriety committed by Judge Cooper, and the gentleman from Union, (Mr. Merrill) read, as strongly appealing to our best feelings against the dangers of a dependant judiciary, the detected letter, for which Sidney was condemned, and the remarkable case of a quaker imprisoned, for not taking off his hat. Did it not occur to that learned gentleman, that one of the charges of which Judge Cooper was accused, was committing a quaker to prison for not taking off his hat, exactly like the English instance referred to as so abhorrant to our feelings, and that Judge Chase, was impeached, and defended by Judge Hopkinson, for the prosecution of that self same Judge Cooper, for writing a paper not much more obnoxious to just punishment, than that for which Sidney suffered? It is not long since a judge in the western part of this state, struck a long list of the members of his court from its rolls, and stopped their livelihood for alleged misconduct, which the supreme court adjudged to be undeserving that severe infliction. And not many years before, in another part of the state, two respectable members of this convention were confined in prison, for a considerable period, by a like abuse of judicial authority, not imputable, I repeat, so much to the judge as to the system by which he was betrayed into it. A bishop of the episcopal church was, on another occasion, as I understand while a member of the bar, imprisoned by another judge, under somewhat similar circumstances. These, Mr. Chairman, are extracts from the catalogue of judicial mishaps, to say the least of them, in Pennsylvania, into which respectable judges have fallen, by a system that tends, inevitably, to such aberrations.

SECONDLY-That property has not been well secured, I vouch the judicial vindications of the gentlemen from Northampton and Beaver, (Messrs. Porter and Dickey) who have both declared that so fluctuating were the adjudications of the supreme court, as to occasion great insecurity and inconvenience: and I vouch, with still greater assurance, than even the unquestionable assertions of those gentlemen, several acts of assembly to show that it has been necessary to pass special laws for correcting judicial errors. The delays of justice were such, that my colleague from Philadelphia, (Mr. Brown) stated yesterday that he understood from one of the judges of the supreme court, that there were, at one period, eight hundred undecided causes in a single district. When the eight hundred suits in one district were mentioned by Mr. Brown, as stated to him by a judge, the delegate from Allegheny, (Mr. Denny) interposed to remove its effect, by saying that there are but eight remaining undetermined there. To be sure-we are in the midst of a revolution. We have been assured that even when the moon has come more near the earth than she was wont, prodigies have been the consequence: and when the comet of the convention shakes its fiery tail, it would be very strange if some warmth were not imparted to the earth, and perhaps some unea

siness.

I learn from the gentleman from Luzerne, (Mr. Woodward) that when Judge Mallary undertook the office, in which my friend from Northampton, (Mr. Porter) says he so much distinguished himself, there were four hundred causes at issue, and untried, in a single county of his district.

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