deprecated; but I think I speak within limitation when I say that
neither in the history of Great Britain,--the mother of Parliaments--nor
in the history of the United States, has any modification which the
people, on sober second thought, have considered to be for the best,
long been deferred. Action, revolutionary in character, has not, as a
rule, been needful, or, when taken, proved salutary. This is a record
and result that no careful student of our history will, I take it, deny.

Such being the case, so far as our Judiciary is concerned, I do not
hesitate to say I would adhere to older, and, as I think, better
principles, or revert to them where they have been experimentally
abandoned. It took the Anglo-Saxon race two centuries of incessant
conflict to wrest from a despotic executive, practically an autocracy,
judicial independence. That was effected through what is known as a
tenure during good behavior, as opposed to a tenure at the will of the
monarch. This, then, for two centuries, was accepted as a fundamental
principle of constitutional government. Of late, a new theory has been
propounded, and by those chafing at all restraint--constitutionally
lawless in disposition--it is said the Recall should also be applied to
the Judiciary. Having, therefore, wrested the independence of the
Judiciary from the hand of the Autocrat, we now propose to place it, in
all trustfulness, in the hands of the Democrat. To me the proposition
does not commend itself. It is founded on no correct principle, for the
irresponsible democratic majority is even more liable to ill-considered
and vacillating action than is the responsible autocrat. In that matter
I would not trust myself; why, then, should I trust the composite
Democrat? In the case of the Judiciary, therefore, I would so far as the
fundamental law is concerned abide by the older and better considered
principles of the framers.