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would not allow them to attend to their appellate duties.
Perhaps it was well to let their arguments answer each
other. Each demonstrated the fallacy of the other.
From 1804 to 1851 the system was in operation which
they now propose to reorganize. The judges under that
system performed the full measure of appellate duty
within five months, and ample time was afforded in the
spring and fall, in the recess of the appellate tribunal, to
discharge their circuit duties. He appealed to the gen-
tlemen from the Eastern Shore to say whether the late
Chief Justice from that section had ever been absent from
his circuit duties. The relative figures as to the business
done in ten years under the old and the new systems had
already been given. From 1841 to 1851, under the old
system, where the judges performed circuit duties in ad-
dition, and sat as an appellate tribunal not longer than
five or six months, there were 863 cases disposed of, of
which 755 were from the Western and 108 from the East-
ern Shore, making an average of 78 1/2 in each and every
year. The appellate tribunal from 1851 to 1861, which
had no circuit duties to perform, and whose legal year
was about ten months, had only disposed of an average
of 90 1/2 cases per year, and yet the average in its favor
was only twelve cases per annum over the old system.
Mr. M. here read from a letter addressed to him by the
clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States, that the
number of cases tried at each term of that court, lasting,
generally, about three months, was from 125 to 130.
These cases were argued before the court by the best
talent in America, and involving amounts at times, of
millions, required the greatest labor and attention in their
consideration. In addition to all this the circuit labor
performed by the different judges of the Supreme Court
was immense, and this showed what could be accom-
plished under the plurality of judges.
Mr. Gill offered an amendment to the amendment of
Mr. Archer, making a different distribution of the cir-
cuits.
Mr. Archer hoped the amendment would not be adopted,
as its effect would be to give two judges of the Court of
Appeals to the city of Baltimore instead of one, and this
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