THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE. 685

The chancellor now claims the payment of his salary, under the
act of 1798, ch. 86, at the rate of twelve hundred and seventy-five

Junius, in his letter of the 14th of November 1770 to Lord Mansfield, says,
" Instead of those certain, positive rules, by which the judgment of a court of law
should invariably be determined, you have fondly introduced your own unsettled
notions of equity and substantial justice. Decisions given upon such principles do
not alarm the public so much as they ought, because the consequence and tendency
of each particular instance is not observed or regarded. In the meantime, the prac-
tice gains ground; the court of king's bench becomes a court of equity; and the
judge instead of consulting strictly the law of the land refers only to the wisdom of
the court, and to the purity of his own conscience. "

Lord Redesdale speaking of the same judge says, " Lord Mansfield had on his
mind prejudices derived from his familiarity with the Scotch law, where law and
equity are administered in the same courts, and where the distinction between them
which subsists with us is not known, and there are many things in his decisions,
which shew that his mind had received a tinge on that subject not quite consistent
with the constitution of England and Ireland in the administration of justice. It is
a most important part of that constitution, that the jurisdictions of the courts of law
and equity should be kept perfectly distinct; nothing contributes more to the due
administration of justice. And though they act in a great degree by the same rules,
yet they act in a different manner, and their modes of affording relief are different;
and any body who sees what passes in the courts of justice in Scotland, will not
lament that this distinction prevails. But Lord Mansfield seems to have consid-
ered, that it manifested liberality of sentiment to endeavour to give the courts of law
the powers which are vested in courts of equity; that it was the duty of a good
judge ampliare jurisdictionem. This I think is rather a narrow view of this subject;
it is looking at particular cases rather than at the general principles of administering
justice, observing small inconveniences and overlooking great ones. "—(Shannon v.
Bradstreet, 1 Scho. & Lefr. 66; Sugden's Letters, 4. )

As has been observed in relation to this matter by our own great sage, " the only
natural improvement of the common law, is through its homogeneous ally, the chan-
cery, in which new principles are to be examined, concocted, and digested. But
when, by repeated decisions and modifications, they are rendered pure and certain,
they should be transferred by statute to the courts of common law and placed within
the pale of juries. "—(4 Jeff. Corr. let. 104. ) And in relation to those alterations of
our code, so frequently made by the most crude and ill digested scraps of legislative
enactment, he observes, that " the instability of our laws, is really an immense evil.
I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions, that there shall always be a
twelvemonth between the engrossing a bill and passing it; that it should then be
offered to its passage without changing a word; and that if circumstances should be
thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two-thirds of both houses, instead
of a bare majority. "— (2 Jeff. Corr. let. 117. )

In these points of view then, a court of chancery is not only a useful, but an
indispensable part of our judicial system. And, when the proper judicial duties of a
chancellor are thus compared with those of a judge of a court of common law; and
especially with those which are, alone, properly assignable to a court of the last
resort, it cannot fail to strike every one, that those of a chancellor, independently of
all his other irregular and incidental duties, must require a vast deal more skill and
labour than those of a common law judge in any situation whatever; and that the
larger amount of salary which has, at all times, been allowed to the chancellor affords
the most satisfactory proof, that this matter has been always so distinctly understood
by the people of Maryland.