96 court of appeals of maryland

December 28, 1804, passed and transmitted to the
Senate, a bill, (act 1804, chapter 55), to ef-
fectuate the change. The Senate passed it on Jan-
uary 2, 1805, by a vote of nine to three. It then
lay over until the November session, 1805, after an
election of that year, and soon after the opening of
the session it was finally confirmed, without dis-
cussion.

The constitutional amendment thus made pro-
vided that all original jurisdiction above that of
magistrates should be vested in the county courts,
and that these should be grouped into six judicial
districts, each to be presided over by a chief judge
and two associate judges, all of whom were to be
lawyers, and that the chief judges of the six dis-
tricts should constitute the Court of Appeals.
This arrangement, it will be observed, approxi-
mated closely to that of the federal judiciary act
of September 24, 1789,⁵⁷ and was ultimately de-
rived from the system in England. The new dis-
tricts were not entirely the same as those arranged
in 1790; the first was, after 1805, to comprise St.
Mary's, Charles and Prince George's Counties;
the second, Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne's and Talbot
Counties; the third, Calvert, Anne Arundel and
Montgomery Counties; the fourth, Caroline, Dor-
chester, Somerset and Worcester Counties; the
fifth, Frederick, Washington and Allegany Coun-
ties; and sixth, Baltimore and Harford Counties.
The Court of Appeals was to exercise all the ap-

57. Frankfurter and Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court of
the United States, 17. Chancellor Bland, 1 Bland, Chancery, 678,
note, remarked that it involved a return to the practice of having
one man sit as judge in more than one court, intended to be pro-
hibited by the Declaration of Rights of 1776.