from 1806 T0 1851 115

The changes on the bench, as time went on, may
be seen conveniently in a list of judges appended
to this book, and the facts need not all be repeated.
After 1820, Chief Judge Chase was compelled by
frail health to be absent from sessions with in-
creasing frequency, and he finally resigned in
1824, thus bringing to an end a career of thirty-
five years on the bench of Maryland, for twenty-
five of those in chief judicial position. Judge
Chase was seventy-six years old when he resigned.
There was then no legal limit upon the age of
judges.²⁰ Judge John Buchanan was appointed
Chief Judge of the court to succeed Judge Chase.
After 1824 there were few changes before the
sweeping one under the new constitution of 1851.
Between 1824 and 1844 there were only two:
Judge Richard Tilghman Earle resigned in 1834
because of ill health, and Judge William Bond
Martin died in 1835; and they were succeeded
by Judges Chambers and Spence, respectively.
The Court of Appeals, therefore, seemed for a
long time almost as if permanently settled in
Chief Judge Buchanan, and Judges Earle, Mar-
tin, Stephen, Archer and Dorsey with Chambers
and Spence as additions; and these names appear
on the opening pages of a long row of Maryland
reports. And from this long continuation of the
one group of men in office the state may have de-
rived an advantage in addition to that from the
accumulation of experience in the work; the sal-
aries of the judges remained at the same figure

20. Later in the same year Judge Chase was put at the head of the
committee which went to meet Gen. Lafayette at the Prince
George's County border, and escort him to Annapolis. Gen,
Lafayette greeted him as an old Annapolis acquaintance.