McKIM v. THOMPSON 170

"The committee cannot believe that it will comport with the
separate and independent power, which the Constitution has cau-
tiously secured to the legislative an4 judicial departments of the
government, that the legislature should erect itself into an appellate
tribunal for the revision of a judicial opinion. The organization of
the legislature, and its mode of proceeding, are certainly by no
means calculated to ensure to parties litigant, a correct or intelli-
gent decision. If in the progress of the judicial return, and the
developement of legal principles, and their application to peculiar
circumstances, they shall be found productive of results which the
people of the State deem to be oppressive or inconvenient, it
will at all times be the legitimate province of the legislature,
to repeal or modify the law. Some of the most salutary provi-
sions of our code have originated from the inconvenient operation
of general principles in their application to particular cases. But
in this, as in all other instances, individual injury is to be sub-
mitted to, when it can only be avoided by endangering the public
weal.

" The committee are entirely satisfied, that it will be inconveni-
ent, and may in very many cases be extremely oppressive to defend-
ants in chancery, to be compelled to bring money into court until
a final decision upon their claims to it; and still more inconveni-
ence and oppression, they believe, might grow out of the principle,
that an order to bring money into court can be used by the Chan-
cellor as a compulsory process, whereby litigant defendants shall
be coerced into an early decision of their rights; and they would
suggest the propriety of legislation upon the subject. But they
still retain the opinion, that injurious as may be the consequences
of this decision to the petitioner, yet the mischief of special legis-
lation to interrupt the regular operation of the course of judicial
proceeding, and the assumption of powers which by the Constitu-
tion have been declared to belong exclusively to an independent
department, is of much greater concern to the community. Such
a precedent would open the door to the introduction of a class of
cases not more to be dreaded by the number, than by the difficulty
of distinguishing their various grades. From a state of perfect
certainly, through all the intermediate stages of conviction, to a
state of perfect doubt, as to the correctness of the judicial deci-
sion which shall become the subject of relief, the legislature may
expect to find itself called on to execute this portion of its newly
assumed power.