64 court of appeals of maryland

in Maryland when nearly every other state uses
that of Chief Justice for its judge in a correspond-
ing position, may be due to this custom dating
from the provincial period. The Chief Judge is
perhaps wearing a title of His Lordship's Wor-
shipful Governor and Commander-in-Chief. The
title of Justice was still, up to 1806, appropriated
to the judges of the county courts. But perhaps
none of these titles were regarded as official, or
were invariably used. In the report of the case of
Harper v. Hampton, 1 Harris & Johnson, 671,
before the General Court, the reporters have in-
cluded a note that:

The Chief Judge observed that Mr. Done, not hearing all
the arguments of counsel, did not give any opinion, but that
Mr. Sprigg and himself concurred upon all the points submitted
by the counsel.

And Done and Sprigg were judges sitting in the
case.

It may assist to an understanding of the diffi-
culty in securing these early judges, and explain
others facts concerning them and their court, if,
again, modern conceptions are put aside and some
conditions now altogether past are recalled. In the
eyes of contemporaries this court after the Revo-
lution was to continue what had been merely one
of the activities of the Governor and Council of
pre-Revolutionary days. It seems not improbable
that the sole reason for separating that activity
from the Governor and Council now, was the de-
sire to have men of legal training on the higher
courts. The work of this court had never required
much of the time and attention of the former coun-
cillors, and there was no reason for supposing it