^ggg THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.

At November session, 1782, the Senate, on the 11th of Decem-
ber, sent to the House of Delegates the following message:—
" Gentlemen—The bill entitled, an act to settle and pay the civil
list, and the other expenses of civil government, may be considered
by you as a money bill, to which our assent or dissent only can be
given; and as you might have deemed it improper in us to make
any alteration, we have returned it with a negative; we might other-
wise have offered such amendments as would have met with your
approbation; we are therefore under the necessity of communicating
to you, by message, the reasons of our dissent.

" You will readily believe, gentlemen, that we do not mean to
leave the officers of government unprovided for; on the contrary,
we would willingly bestow upon them liberal, though not profuse
salaries; but when the weight of taxes, already so severely felt by
the people, is likely to continue, and even to be increased by a
heavy accumulating interest upon a large debt, for which no funds
are yet provided, and our quota of the continental debt and interest
remains also unprovided for, the strictest economy in all our affairs
is certainly become necessary; we therefore think that the salaries
of the gentlemen of the council might be lowered to three hundred
pounds each, the auditor-general three hundred and fifty pounds,
and his deputy one hundred and fifty pounds; and the clerk of the
council two hundred pounds; the treasurer's office, we are of opi-
nion, may well be executed for six hundred pounds to the princi-
pal, out of which he might employ assistant clerks.

" We have another objection to the bill, more weighty than that
already mentioned. The independency of the judges is essential
to the impartial dispensation of justice; this principle cannot be
questioned, and is recognized by the Declaration of Rights; far,
in pursuance of the principle that declaration provides,' that salaries
liberal, but not profuse, ought to be secured to the chancellor and
judges during the continuance of their commissions.' Their sala-
ries have hitherto been settled annually by the civil list bill; and
consequently cannot be said to be secured to them during the continu-
ance of their commissions.—It may not be improper to settle
annually the salaries of officers annually chosen; nothing at least
in our Constitution expressly militates against an annual regulation
of the salaries of such officers; but an annual regulation of the
judges' salaries, is repugnant, as we conceive, to the letter and
spirit of the Constitution, which meant that they should really be
independent, and superior to every undue influence. In our judg