630 THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.—1 BLAND.

* co-ordinate branch of the General Assembly; as " trustees

673 of the public." They would learn, with suitable and be-
coming modesty, without opposition or inquiry, to register the
edicts of the " immediate representatives of the people;" and the
Judges, holding their commissions only during good behavior,
would be taught to rely more on the extent, and the power of their
family connections, and the number of their friends among "the
immediate representatives of the people," than upon their tem-
perate habits and honorable deportment; upon the skill and dili-
gence with which they discharged their official duties; and upon
the constitutional safeguards with which they were surrounded.

Legislative assumptions of original or appellate judicial power
would be applanded as commendable efforts to reach the justice of
the case; poetical imaginations would be taken for historical facts;
and the most incoherent verbiage, respecting the true intent and
meaning of the great charter of our rights, would be contemplated
with approbation, as eloquent commentaries, founded in the
soundest sense and the closest logic. Contracts might be impaired;
individual rights might be legislated away, from haste, from mere
ignorance, or a worse cause. And it would be in vain for the
citizen to seek, or to expect justice, from a dependent, interested,
and intimidated judiciary. The theories of our Constitution
might remain; but, in practice, its principles would be destroyed.
The Judges of our Republic would not, as under the colonial estab-
lishment, be reduced to a subserviency to a foreign king; they
would not be subjected to precisely the same kind of corrupting
judicial dependence, so strongly denounced by the sages of the
Revolution; but in principle, the subserviency to which they would
be subjected, would be the same: and in practice, no less per-
nicious and absolutely hostile to the temper and spirit of our Con-
stitution. Our Government would, in a short time, cease to be a
Government of divisions, and restrictions of power; of cheeks and
balances; and, losing every other feature, would become, at once,
a Government consisting altogether of a House of Delegates elected
annually.

But, there is not, nor there cannot be, any just foundation for
these painful forebodings, these gloomy anticipations. The aber-
rations of the day are not proofs of the waywardness of the times;.
nor is the conduct of a house, characteristic of a branch of the
General Assembly of the State. The people of Maryland are not
unmindful of the principles of their fathers. There is a mass of
integrity and sound sense among them which no "trustee of the

* public" can elude, or will dare openly to defy and insult.
674 The people constitute that august American tribunal, in the
last resort, before which every case may be brought, and whose
final determination is altogether irresistible.