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. again (though we must apologize for the harsh epithet that rounds off the last line) they gave him a strong boost, and So clomb this first grand thief— Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life Sat like a cormorant. It was then that Mr. Biddle was the great man of all great men, the only one who could wield the banking scepter, and of course the only one who could control the destinies of the nation. But Mr. Biddle fell to rise no more, and with him fell the long cherished hopes of the "bankites." Since that time the feeling in favor of banks has been growing less and less daily, and now we trust that in general it is lost. Some old bank editor will occasionally break forth in a fit of querulous grumbling, but he scarce dare breathe a bank article boldly and freely, as he was wont to do in times past. Let us hope, then, that the feeling in favor of banks has passed away entirely. But at the same time let us guard against its renewal at some future period. Let us, when Wisconsin is a state, see that all banking privileges be made unconstitutional, so that, even should our people become for a brief period as crazy as we all were throughout the United States during the prevalence of the speculative mania, we should be obliged to revert to the full sober second thought before we could bring on ourselves the misery that has invariably followed in the footsteps of banks. Nor is this all we should do. We should guard against other incorporations as well. All special incorporations, if not watched closely, will do a limited banking business. And even if they do not, we can see little use in them. If corporate powers are necessary let them be made as limited as possible in extent, and as available as possible to all. Let general incorporation laws alone be passed, even for villages and cities, so that at certain periods, and under certain restrictions, all may avail themselves of them. We have heard it observed that different villages want different powers, that some want control over harbors and rivers, while some have neither harbors nor rivers to control. The answer to that is obvious. If all have the necessary power over them, those that have none will only find that part of the act a dead letter to them that cannot hurt them. Another thing, too, strikes us as important in this matter, and it is that not only villages but towns and counties be prohibited as early as possible from issuing county orders, a species of bank paper that takes money from the laboring man to put in the pocket of the broker. We see no reason why counties, towns, and villages should not be obliged to raise their taxes beforehand and pay in money for services done, except such, indeed, as may be paid by all in labor at certain periods, or in money to procure labor at the time. We, of course, allude more particularly here to road taxes, which can always be thus paid without doing wrong to any one. None can doubt that such a course would tend greatly both to economy and improvement. and improvement. To economy, because, having money on hand, labor would be more readily procured, more cheerfully accorded, and more usefully expended. To improvement, because the taxpayer, seeing that his taxes were expended so as to do the utmost good, would be the more willing to tax himself heavily where the objects to be attained were worth the sacrifice. In this village a tax was raised for the harbor, that was far heavier than was ever voluntarily borne by any community of such limited means, and yet at the same time great donations were made, but then every man felt that the object was of importance and that the money would be expended as nearly according to the exact way in which he wished it as was possible. It would be so, too, everywhere. It is not the taxes that people grumble at so much as the misapplication of them, and nothing would have a stronger tendency to prevent that misapplication than the destruction of this petty banking on local orders that has grown so prevalent over the whole Union. It is a strange thing how banking creeps into all business, when it can once find an entrance. Let a village issue shinplasters and at once every man of business does the same, and if the orders of counties, etc., were once forced into circulation now, we should soon find orders from individuals quite as plenty. We certainly hope that no village or county will, after we become a state, be allowed to issue any evidence of debt, and we feel satisfied that a great majority of the people will agree with us that it is as unnecessary as it is injurious, and if there are some who may insist that these orders have no relation to banking, we can only say that, although the county does not reap the profit on these bills to obtain a reluctant, a forced credit, yet there must be some persons who do, or else these evidences of debt would not be for sale and purchase in the market like depreciated bank notes. If the persons who make the profit are to be called money brokers, instead of bankers, be it so. We shall assent to that, the rather because of late years the connection between banks and brokers has become so intimate that it is scarcely possible to tell where it is. Let us, then, prevent counties, etc., from becoming parties to it, reaping no benefit, and doing injury to themselves and those whose property their orders represent. THE JUDICIARY AGAIN [May 12, 1846] If we understand the Advocate correctly, it proposes to make a resort to the courts for the attainment of justice expensive, in order to discourage litigation. Southport Telegraph. We are not certain whether it was our fault or not, but we are not clearly understood by the Telegraph. We do not propose to make a resort to the courts expensive in order to discourage litigation. Our objection had direct reference to a New York proposition that we quoted, permitting all litigants to come into court without paying the court fees. |