THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE. 659

It may, therefore, be laid down, from the whole course of the
government; and from these solemn and well considered acts of
the legislature, as a firmly established constitutional principle, that
the chancellor's salary is a debt due to him from the State; gua-
ranteed, not by any ad of Assembly, but by the constitution; the
appropriation for the payment of which is to be made by the legis-
lature; that is, the amount being fixed, it is to be paid, to use the
words of the Declaration of Rights, " in such manner, and at such
times as the legislature shall hereafter direct." Bearing in mind
these three important, and settled distinctions, between the amount,
the duration, and the appropriation for a judicial salary, let us now
proceed cautiously to consider the act under which the present
chancellor claims his salary.

The council proceedings will show, that on the sixteenth day
of August, eighteen hundred and twenty-four, the present chan-
cellor was unanimously appointed by the governor and council;
and, that, on the eighteenth day of the same month, he took the
oaths of office, had the great seal of the State delivered to his
keeping, and entered upon the duties of his office. What was
then the salary assigned to the chancellor, he contends does now,
constitutionally, belong to him; on the ground, that whatever was
then declared, by law, to be the amount of the chancellor's salary,
was, by force and operation of the Declaration of Rights, secured
to the chancellor, who then came into office, during the continuance
of his commission.

The present chancellor claims his salary under and by virtue of
the act of 1798, ch. 86, and the thirtieth article of the Declaration
of Rights. This act of Assembly is entitled " A supplement to
the act entitled an act for establishing and securing the salary of

law would have implied, if the office had been granted for life. And in like manner
are the rest of the barons of the exchequer constituted, and the patents of the attor-
ney general and solicitor, are also quamdiu se bene gesserit."—(4 Inst. 117.)

But notwithstanding what is here said by Coke, it would seem that any of these
officers might have been removed at the pleasure of the king, without the institution
of any judicial proceeding, or the interposition of parliament; for all the lawyers
and historians of England speak of the constitutional independency of the judges as
an improvement which was not finally established until the year 1700, long after the
death of Coke, (ante 615, note (h.); 3 Hal. Const. Hist. Eng. 262; Smollet's Hist.
Eng. ch. 6, 14, & 16.) It is most likely, that the provision of our original constitu-
tion, (art. 40,) which declares "that the chancellor, all judges, the attorney general,
&c. shall hold their commissions during good behaviour," &c. was suggested by what
is here said by Lord Coke; which provision as to the attorney general has, how-
ever, been since altered, 1816, ch. 247, confirmed by 1817, ch. 69.