from 1851 to 1867 167

City only 9,189 voted. Judge Ezekiel F. Cham-
bers and Oliver Miller were elected delegates
from their respective counties. The convention
assembled at Annapolis on April 27, 1864.

However the passions of the war affected other
portions of the discussion in the convention, that
on the judiciary article can hardly be said to have
suffered. On the contrary the judicial system ap-
pears to have been carefully and wisely studied.⁴
The fact that the Court of Appeals was behind in
its work produced a general agreement on the ad-
dition of one to the number of judges of the court,
making it five in all. There was still some dif-
ference of opinion on the method of choosing the
judges, by executive appointment or by popu-
lar election; and there was some difference
on geographical representation by the judges
chosen by either method. Early in the course
of the proceedings, William B. Bond, of
Anne Arundel County, proposed that the court
have five judges from five districts, to hold office
during life, and each judge to sit at sessions of
the circuit court in his district. Henry H. Golds-
borough, of Talbot County, proposed that of the
five judges two be elected from the Eastern Shore,
and three from the Western Shore, one on each
shore to be elected by vote of the whole state, and
the remainder to be elected from three guberna-
torial districts. He proposed that the terms of
office be twenty years, and that the judges be re-
quired to reside eight months of each year at An-
napolis. During this preliminary debate, Oliver

4. Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1864, Annapolis,
R. P. Bayly, 1864.