held that a public office was the private property of the
incumbent. No other courts in the United States took that view,
and it has, by a recent decision, been repudiated in North
Carolina.[Footnote: Mial _v._ Ellington, 134 North Carolina
Reports, 131; 46 Southeastern Reporter, 961; 65 Lawyers' Reports
Annotated, 697.]

Still more are public interests to be regarded when a question
arises as to reversing a decision as to the proper construction
of a constitutional provision. If a judicial mistake be made in
construing a statute it is easily remedied. The next legislature
can amend the law. But a Constitution can only be amended with
extreme difficulty and by a slow process. If the court falls
into error as to its meaning, the correction must ordinarily come
from its own action or not at all. Hence an opinion on a matter
of constitutional construction is less to be regarded as a final
and conclusive precedent than one rendered on a matter of mere
private right.

It has been the position of some American statesmen and jurists
that judicial decisions on points of constitutional construction
were not binding upon the executive or legislative department of
the government. President Jackson asserted this with great force
in his message to the Senate of July 10, 1832, disapproving the
re-charter of the Bank of the United States. He conceded,
however, that a judicial precedent may be conclusive when it has
received the settled acquiescence of the people and the States.
But while such acquiescence may strengthen the authority of a
decision, it can hardly be regarded as that which gives it
authority. That comes from the fact that it is an exercise of