THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE. 673

nate branch of the General Assembly; as "trustees of the public."
They would learn, with* suitable and becoming modesty, without
Opposition or inquiry, to register the edicts of the " immediate
representatives of the people;" and the judges, holding their com-
missions only during good behaviour, 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 temperate habits and honourable
deportment; upon the skill and diligence with which they dis-
charged their official duties; and upon the constitutional safe-
guards with which they were surrounded.

Legislative assumptions of original or appellate judicial power
would be applauded as commendable efforts to reach the justice
of the ease; 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 contem-
plated 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 citi-
zen 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 establish-
ment, 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 sub-
jected, would be the same: and in practice, no less pernicious
and absolutely hostile to the temper and spirit of our constitution.
Our government would, in a short time, cease to be a government
of divisions, and restrictions of power; of checks 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 it a mass of
integrity and sound sense among them which no " trustee of the

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