| Volume 190, Page 846 View pdf image (33K) |
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846 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 14, of any kind shall be allowed to any Judge for the discharge of his official duty. The 17 section of Article XI., of the Code, prohibits in the same spirit, the Judges from acting as attorneys or solici- tors in any Court of Law or Equity in the State, whilst such restriction and limitations have been thrown around the Judges to insure the most faithful and. impartial administra- tion of justice, and their perfect independence is intended to be secured, it is manifest that wisely to insure this result, and to do justice to the Judges themselves, they should be provided with an ample salary to enable them to subsist comfortably, and be freed from the disturbing pecuniary anxieties of life, without such. provision, the principle avowed in the deceleration .of rights, would seem to be un- meaning and a mere idle abstraction; apart from this con- sideration, it is but sheer justice in itself that Judges who are set apart for the performance of high and responsible du- ties, who have carefully to settle and determine upon the law and the dearest rights of the people of the State, high and low, rich and. poor, according to the principle of the most impartial justice, should be paid for their services, not by a narrow and contracted standard, but by reasonable and lib- eral compensation, adequate to their respectable support un- der Article IV., section 31, the temporary salary of each Judge of the City of Baltimore, was filed at $3,500 per year, with the authority to the Mayor and City Council to increase it. By virtue of that provision, soon after the wisdom and justice of the local authorities of the City increased it to (4,000 for each Judge. Thus under our judicial system, whilst the good. sense of the City of Baltimore has allowed to the Judges there the sum of $4,000, but $3,500 are paid out of the State Treasury to each Judge of the Court of Ap- peals. The Constitution, when providing for the salaries of the Judges, aware that the allowance could not be properly fixed to meet the exigences that might arise, wisely left it to the Legislative discretion, as the guardian of the great inter- ests of the people and their Treasury to increase the salaries of the Judges, as experience might show to be just and nec- essary, and. at the same time to guard against any invasion of their independency, prohibited any diminution of their salary during their continuance in office. Whilst by section 38, of Article III., provisions as to other officials, is made against the increase as well as dimi- nution, showing by these different provisions the care of the framers of the Constitution, that this essential branch of the Government should, according to the spirit and language of the declaration of rights, be independent of the vagaries of short-sighted economists or the vicissitudes of party. Article 4, section 2, requires that the Judges of the Court of Ap- |
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Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1872
| Volume 190, Page 846 View pdf image (33K) |
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