We trust that the great body of the people will think this matter well over, remembering that to the rich they are holding out a certainty of competence in case of misfortune, while to the poor, they are offering an object so important that each will make heavy efforts to attain that independence that will induce them to devote more serious thought to higher matters than those merely pertaining to their daily bread. They will also remember that, by thus holding out inducements to the industrious and prudent, they adopt the only plan that can drive from their state the indolent and visionary, who can never live among those who are too independent to be tempted from their comforts by the false hopes of idle or vicious experimentalists. THE JUDICIARY [April 28, 1846] Nothing, perhaps, can be more important to a state than a well-paid, independent judiciary. In this department, and in that of common schools, liberality is the greatest possible economy, and it is only by paying both well and forcing both to avoid entanglement in politics that we can assure ourselves of the pure administration and understanding of the laws. We observe that in New York an effort is making to allow all persons to go into courts of justice without expense. To us this seems as certain a mode as could be devised of increasing encouraging-litigation, and of taxing the main part of the people not only heavily, but in the worst possible manner. Of course, in such case, every man who gets in a little pet would have recourse to a court and jury, and a large portion of our citizens would be called as jurors to settle the quarrels of their neighbors. This kind of cheap law would be the dearest possible, and with an illy paid judiciary in the bargain the spirit of quarreling would be very apt to be shared by bar, judge, jury, and the people at large. This would, indeed, be a mode of encouraging litigation, a spirit that we all want to see abate rather than increase. In order that the administration of justice should be pure, it seems to us necessary that the office of judge should be considered one to which none ought to aspire and none could be called, except such as were well known for both probity and talent, and to such men you must hold out more inducement than the mere empty honor of a name. They must be liberally, not exorbitantly paid, else the name of judge will soon cease to be evidence of even a moderate degree of talent. As a general rule throughout the Union the judges are not sufficiently remunerated, and the consequences are that none but third-rate lawyers will accept the offices. Members of the bar who have real talent are sure, even though the profession is overstocked, of doing better than they can if promoted to the bench, and we often find judges actually electioneering for some office of less dignity but greater emolument, that they may provide for increasing families and advancing years. In New York it has become quite an object of ambition among them to look with an anxiety for a quiet descent to the clerkship of a court, and, when reduced to such a necessity, how is the dignity of the office to be kept up? When judges become electioneerers for recording offices that require no higher abilities than a decent handwriting and a moderate knowledge of business, such as any common dry goods clerk is supposed to possess, how is the bench to be held in proper respect by any? When Wisconsin becomes a state we trust this system will be done away with, and that inducements will be held out to men of the highest talent in the legal profession to seek promotion to the bench. We trust ample and certain provision will be made for their wants, with the certainty of being able by decent prudence to accumulate competence for their families, and then you may place on the office such restrictions as will compel judges to avoid the excitements that attend the lives of all politicians. Men now study and practice law not with the intention of rising to the dignities alone in the grasp of the profession, because those dignities are worth nothing in themselves. The law to them is only the means of attaining political power and distinction, and when they accept judgeships you may be sure, if they are men of talent, they deem them only stepping-stones to other offices sought after with more avidity, because either more profitable or leading to much greater distinction. Now it would be our desire to see all judges deprived of even a voice in political affairs. Elect them by the people, let their selection be as democratic as you choose, but make it a rule that when they mount the bench they throw aside at once all party, all political prepossessions, and place themselves above and beyond those feelings that cannot fail to make him a partisan who takes a warm interest in politics, or [that] look beyond the high office he has assumed, to some one that may be more brilliant, but cannot be more important. Place such other restrictions on him as you may deem fit, oblige him as far as possible to seek no reward out of his profession, and even there to look for it only from a fearless discharge of his duties and a constant exertion of the talent he possesses. All will at this day concede the impropriety of a judge being a party politician, and this feeling precludes him from making displays at popular meetings, but do not we all know that judges are often, very often, the leading men of a party, and many of them paltry wireworkers, who look to the success of party measures as a success that will reward them with not a better but a fatter office? And is this to be wondered at? Can we expect talents and worth when we refuse them a decent compensation? Can we look for self-denial where want exists, not the want that starves, perhaps, but the want that keeps a man below that level he deems he is entitled to? If we want purity in our judiciary we must pay for it. If we want talents of a high order we must pay for them; and if we want men who will be uncontrolled by the prejudices of the hour, we must place them out of the influence of those ⚫ prejudices. We want but few judicial officers in a young state, and if a proper system is pursued, and one that will tend to discourage litigation, and especially small litigation, we shall never want many, but then those we do have must be well paid, or else we may soon look for an increase in the number of such officers that will in the end tax us infinitely more than high salaries. Look at the army of unpaid judges, as they are often called, in many of the old states. Does any man suppose those men work for nothing? We imagine not. Do not most men know that such numbers must be paid, somehow, much more than would pay the best men for the same services? We think they do. And have not all perceived to how low a point the bench has been brought where these hordes of insufficiently paid and ill-qualified officers have been introduced? We know they have. Let us, then, make an effort to obtain in Wisconsin a judiciary that will be endowed with high talent and great purity. This can be secured if we choose, and will be, not in the end only, but at the very outset, the most economical mode of administering justice. When every judge looks upon his office as one of which he has a right to be proud, and looks upon legal promotion as his sole aim, and an end that can only be reached by convincing all that he has the high attributes to fit him for it, we shall see our own courts looked upon with respect and we may be sure that any improper outbursts of feeling will be calmed by the dignity of those we have elevated to stations where they are presumed to stand, like the laws they administer, above all reproof. BANKS [May 5, 1846] We believe that at the present day there are few, even of the Whigs of Wisconsin, who are not opposed to state banks or banking, if not even to a United States Bank, and yet it is but a few years since the general cry of the whole Whig party was that without banks we should lose all hope of prosperity throughout the Union. It is curious to look back a few years and see the expansions and contractions that took place under the old system, and it is still more strange to see how men could sit so calmly under them, fawning upon the very hand that scored them without mercy. It is true that some men made money by them, and would fain have persuaded all that they, too, were aided. Many, too many, believed this, and banking was extolled to the skies as a panacea for all the evils of poverty, a sure way to make capital plenty, even though there might be none, and in fact looked upon as the "tree of life" whereupon all business was to quicken and grow. An extract from Milton's Paradise Lost, with a shrewd query by Coleridge, will place it in its old point of view, as it stood with the Whigs. And all amid them stood the TREE OF LIFE High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit, Of vegetables gold (query, paper money?) and next to life They deemed banking, indeed, the tree of life, and held, too, that upon one tree alone could the true fruit be brought to perfection, and that tree was the United States Bank. Another opinion, also, was that Mr. Biddle alone could pluck the fruit from the tree, and so, to use the words of Milton 'Nicholas Biddle, famous financier and president of the United States Bank. Against him and his bank President Jackson waged the famous "bank war" of the early thirties. |