THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE. 645

persons he suspected of treachery to the country, and of having
them tried and executed according to martial law. Nothing could
justify, but the times seemed to excuse the measure.(s)

No one can look over, and meditate upon the condition and cir-
cumstances of Maryland during the first nine years of the Republic,
and say that it would have been entirely safe, and proper, and just,
either to the State, or the officer, to have, at once unchangeably
secured to the chancellor and the judges their salaries, during the
continuance of their commissions. Nor can any one, after atten-
tively perusing the before recited messages and acts of the General
Assembly, assert, that the legislature, previous to the year 1785,
ever intended to claim, in any way, any discretionary power what-
ever, to unsettle, to diminish, or to withhold, the whole or any part
of the salary of the chancellor or of a judge.

On the contrary, these two positions are most clearly and incon-
trovertibly established : first, that the salaries of the chancellor
and judges were not secured during that period, because, and only
because, of the then circumstances of the State. And secondly, that
the legislature always expressly admitted the full force of the con-
stitutional obligation; but, alleged the circumstances of the State as
the only reason for their not securing those salaries as they were
required. Therefore, any legislators who would now assume all,
or any of that discretionary power, then exercised over the salaries
of the chancellor and the judges, must produce reasons as cogent,
an excuse as self evident, and show the present operation of causes
as powerfully overruling and imperative as those which then
existed.

The act of 1785, ch. 27, carefully recites the provision of the
Declaration of Rights respecting judicial salaries; distinctly recog-
nizes the constitutional obligation the legislature were under to
secure to the chancellor and the judges salaries, during the con-
tinuance of their commissions; and then gives to the chancellor a

(s) June 1731, ch. 12, and November 1781, ch. 5, notes Hanson's Laws of Maryland,
It seems that Maryland was not singular in thus leaving her judges without any pro-
perly settled salaries during this period of public distress. In a letter of the 23d of
February 1782 to G. Clinton, governor of New York, from John Jay, he says:
" Mr. Benson writes me that your judges are industriously serving their country,
but that their country had not, as yet, made an adequate provision for them.
This is bad policy, and poverty cannot excuse it. The bench is at present well
filled; but it should be remembered, that although we are told that justice should
be blind, yet there are no proverbs which declare that she ought also to be hungry."
(2 Jay's Life, 93.)