from 1806 TO 1851 117

The salaries of the judges, in consequence of their great num-
ber, are necessarily so small, that no first-rate lawyer can afford
to take the appointment. I know of several barristers, every
way fitted to do honor to the bench, who have positively refused
to accept office. Consequently these very important stations
are filled by a totally different class of men—many of whom,
undoubtedly, are very excellent persons, but some of them, like-
wise, are quite unsuited for such duties.

And another traveller in 1859²⁴ dwelt upon a want
of dignity in American judges generally, and a
lack of respect for them in the people. But to
apply these descriptions to the Maryland judges
of those times would be to run counter to all
reports that have been found and all tradition.
It will be recalled that Joseph Hopper Nicholson,
in declining another position with a higher salary,
wrote to the President in 1806 that the position
of Chief Judge of a district was one of the most
dignified stations under the government of his
native state.²⁵ And as for a lack of dignity and
absence of respect by the people, we have the testi-
mony of Mr. Severn Teackle Wallis (1816-1894),
one of the most brilliant of Maryland lawyers, a
man of the most exacting standards of gentility
and dignity, and one who had been familiar with
the court from about 1840, that only one of the
judges of that early period made upon him an
impression of roughness and lack of proper judi-
cial bearing, and the deficiencies in that one judge
were attributed at the time to the existence of bad
slavery conditions at his early home. The salary
of the office was still small, $2200 after 1806,²⁶ but

24. T. C. Grattan, Civilized America, London, 1859, I, 271.

25. Supra, page 107.

26. Acts 1805, Ch. 86.