Jeremiah Mason, who declined the position of Chief Justice of New
Hampshire on this account, and William Wirt. Wirt in 1802 was
made one of the Chancellors of Virginia at the age of
twenty-nine. The salary and fees amounted to about five hundred
pounds a year. He married on the strength of it, but in a few
months found that his income was insufficient to maintain his
family, and resigned.[Footnote: "Memoirs of William Wirt," I, 91,
99.]

Dignity and power, however, are strong attractions. Theophilus
Parsons in 1806 left a practice worth $10,000 a year--the largest
in New England in his day--to take the place of Chief Justice of
Massachusetts on a salary of $2,500. After three years he sent
in his resignation, saying that he found that this sum was
insufficient for his support, even with the addition of the
income from such property as he possessed. The legislature
thereupon raised the salary to $3,500, and he remained on the
bench through a long life.[Footnote: "Memoir of Chief Justice
Parsons," 194, 228, 230.] In 1891, Richard W. Greene of Rhode
Island, who then had a practice of $8,000 a year, gave it up for
the Chief Justiceship of the State, though the salary was then
but $750, supplemented by some trifling fees. In a few years,
however, he resigned the office on account of the inadequacy of
the compensation.[Footnote: Payne, "Reminiscences of the Rhode
Island Bar," 75.]

The qualities of a judge are by no means the qualities of a
politician. The faculty of looking at both sides of a question
and the power of forming deliberate and well-considered judgments
do not tell for much in a campaign speech. The politician's