are to visit the North, and the South, and to ascend and descend the Alleghany. Sir, it is impossible to talk seriously against such a proposition. To state it, is to refute it. Let me merely ask, whether, in this peregrination of the Court, it is proposed that they take all their records of pending suits, and the whole calendar of causes, with them? If so, then the Kentucky client, with his counsel, is to follow the Court to Boston; and the Boston client to pursue it back to Kentucky. Or is it, on the contrary, proposed, that there shall be grand Judicial divisions in the country, and that, while at the North, for example, none but northern appeals shall be heard? If this be intended, then I ask how often could the Court sit, in each of these divisions? Certainly, not oftener than once in two years; probably, not oftener than once in three. An appeal, therefore, might be brought before the Appellate Court, in two or three years from the time of rendering the first judgment; and supposing judgment to be pronounced, in the Appellate Court, at the second term, it would be decided in two or three years more. But it is not necessary to examine this suggestion further. Sir, everything conspires to prove, that, with respect to the great duties of the Supreme Court, they must be discharged at one annual session, and that session must be holden at the seat of Government. If such provision be made as that the business of the year, in that Court, may be despatched, within the year, reasonable promptitude in the administration of justice will be attained: and such provision, I believe, may be made. Another objection advanced by the member from Pennsylvania, applies as well to the system as it now exists, as to what it will be if this bill shall pass. The honorable member thinks, that the Appellate Court and the Court from which the appeal comes, should, in all cases, be kept entirely distinct and separate. True principle requires, in his judgment, that the Circuit Judge should be excluded from any participation in the revision of his own judgments. I believe, sir, that in the early history of the Court, the practice was, that the Judge, whose opinion was under revision, did not partake in the deliberations of the Court. This practice, however, was afterwards altered, and the Court resolved that it could not discharge the Judge from the duty of assisting in the decision of the appeal. Whether the two Courts ought to be kept so absolutely distinct and separate as the member from Pennsylvania recommends, is not so clear a question as that competent Judges may not differ upon it. On the one hand, it may very well be said, that, if the judgment appealed from has been rendered by one of the Judges of the Appellate Court, courtesy, kindness, or sympathy, may inspire some disposition in the members of the same bench to affirm that judgment; and that the general habit of the Court may thus become unfriendly to a free and unbiassed revision. On the other hand, it may be contended, that, if there be no medium of communication between the Court of the first instance, and the Court of Appellate jurisdiction, there may be danger that the reasons of the first may not be always well understood, and its judgments consequently liable, sometimes, to be erroneously reversed. It certainly is not true, that the chance of justice, in an Appellate Court, is always precisely equal to the chance of reversing the judgment below; although it is necessary for the peace of society and the termination of litigation, to take it

on this subject the just claims of creditors, with due compassion for honest but unfortunate debtors. When they have done this, we shall hear with somewhat more patience, what they may see to find fault with, in systems adopted by their neighbours.

It is well known that it has been the practice of Parliament to grant occasional relief to such insolvent debtors, as do not come within the provision of the bankrupt laws. And it being thought expedient to make a permanent provision on the subject, Parliament passed the act 53 Geo. III. chap. 102. This act, we believe, was drawn by Lord Redesdale, a man of the highest legal eminence, and of great experience. It has sixty sections, and appears to have been prepared with the utmost care and solicitude, in order that it might prevent, on the one hand, the harsh and unfeeling confinement of honest debtors, and on the other, the practice of fraud by the dishonest. This act was limited to November 1818, and to the end of the next session of Parliament. The powers and duties of the act were to be exercised and discharged by a judge, or commissioner, who should be some "fit person, being a barrister or lawyer of six years' standing at the court," and Mr. Sergeant Runnington was appointed to this office. We have already said, that the act contained all the provision which could be thought of, to prevent fraud on the one hand, and cruelty on the other; an application to be discharged was to be accompanied with an offer to assign all his property, excepting wearing apparel, bedding, and tools of his trade, never exceeding in all twenty pounds; and there must be annexed to the petition a schedule of property and effects, and another of debts due by the prisoner, and the prisoners' oath to the truth of these schedules; and every creditor to be served with a copy of the petition and schedule, and notice inserted in the Gazette, and other newspapers, and creditors to have a right to appear and to put any questions to the prisoner, touching his conduct under oath; and assignees to be appointed to receive his assets, books, &c. of all sorts; and then the court, after all, may annul his discharge if it shall appear to have been obtained by fraud, or revoke it, if it afterwards appear that he has ability to pay his debts. The assignees are required to get in effects and debts, and make distribution at the end of three months, &c. with proper penalties for perjury; with a train of exceptions, such as attorneys embezzling money, persons getting money on false pretences, &c. who are not to be allowed the benefit of the law.

Here then is a law for the relief of insolvent debtors, fully considered, and deliberately passed, guarded by all practicable securities, and limitations, and placed under the administration of a competent and learned court; and what is found to be the result? The law was to expire in July last, at the end of the last session of parliament, unless continued by another act. To prevent this continuing act, very numerous and very respectable petitions were laid on the table of the Lords and Commons. Innumerable and intolerable frauds were alleged to have been perpetrated in the cases arising under the act. A committee of the House of Commons reported, if we mistake not, "that during the whole duration of the law, and out of the prodigious number of cases in which debtors had surrendered

their property, and been discharged, there had not been received above a penny in the pound upon the average of the debts discharged." This we quote from memory, but our statement is sufficiently exact for our purpose.

We have thus alluded to the experience of England on the subject of insolvent debtors, not by way of an idle retort, but to expose the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, and to shut up the mouths of half-informed, superficial and self-sufficient scribblers and rebukers, on both sides the Atlantic. Would it not be wrong from the facts which we have stated to infer a plausible case of enormous fraud and corruption against English justice? If we were to try our hand at such a paragraph as Mr. Bristed has written and the Quarterly Review has cited against us, might we not say, "England is not a country for a man to recover his debts. All her merchants, who are debtors, are provided for, by what she calls her system of Bankruptcy, a stupendous system, which many of her most eminent lawyers have been honest enough to confess was productive of unmeasured fraud and injustice; and as to all the rest of her subjects who may owe anything, there is the insolvent debtor's court, where anybody may be discharged; and of this court it is enough to say, that during all its existence, although no man can be discharged without surrendering all his property, which the law says shall go to his creditors, yet in truth no creditor ever gets anything. How much the officers of the court get, we do not know; and what becomes of that part which they do not get, we do not know, but we do know that the creditor gets nothing." We forbear. It is hardly fit to write such paragraphs, even for the mere purpose of showing how easily they may be written. It is a dangerous curiosity to commit sins, only to learn or to show with what facility sins may be committed.

An act of the last session of Parliament was intended, we believe, to have continued the insolvent debtor's law to the present session. Owing to mistake, however, the purpose was not effected, and the law is supposed to have expired, and proceedings under it are for the present discontinued. The subject, however, is before Parliament, and it will give us unmixed pleasure if the English government shall be able to adopt such legislation on this equally important and difficult subject as shall satisfy the necessities of its own case, and afford light to the lawgivers of other countries. In the meantime let it not be understood, that the law of creditor and debtor is in a worse state for the creditor in this country than in others. As before observed, some of the states may have occasionally departed, and may still occasionally depart from the dictates of enlightened wisdom on this subject, from a disposition to relieve hardship, and from a vain and illusory hope of finding, in mere remedial legislation, a relief against the pressure of the times, and the stagnation of trade. But the general scope and tendency of our laws is to give creditors full and ample remedies, and to render property of all sorts liable for debts. We may say, indeed, that there is no country in the world, in which a regard for the rights of property is more likely to prevail; for in no country was property ever so equally diffused,

or was so great a portion of the numerical population interested directly in the laws which protect it. We look upon this so equal distribution of property, and to the regard paid to the rights of property in this country, as the great safeguards and security of the commonwealth. Almost every man among us is interested in preserving the state of things as it is; because almost every man possesses property, and while he cannot see what he might gain, he sees clearly what he might lose, by change. We think we may perceive here a fair ground of belief in the preservation of our republican forms of government. It is not less the language of reason than of experience, that property should have influence in the state, whenever such a state of things exists, as that military fame is not supreme. If the tendency of the laws and institutions of society be such, as that property accumulates in few hands, a real aristocracy, in effect, exists in the land. This is not a merely artificial, but a natural aristocracy; a concentration of political power and influence in few hands, in consequence of large masses of property having accumulated in such hands. There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another. Indeed such a state of things could not long exist. We have seen something like it in the ancient noblesse of France, in relation to whom the attempt seemed to be to make up, in positive power, or artificial distinction, what was wanting in the natural influence of property and character. The generality of these personages, with all their pretensions to rank, and all their blazoning of heraldry, were infinitely inferior in respectability, and in just influence in the state, to hundreds of the untitled but independent landholders of Great Britain. It will be disastrous, indeed, for this latter country, whenever a separation shall take place between the influence, the indirect, but the natural and salutary influence of property, and political influence, or political power. They would not, and as we have already observed, in the absence of direct, military despotism, cannot be long separated. If one changes hands, so will the other. If the property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property. If orator Hunt and his fellow laborers should, by any means, obtain more political influence in the counties, towns, and boroughs of England, than the Marquis of Buckingham, Lord Stafford, Lord Fitzwilliam, and the other noblemen and gentlemen of great landed estates, these estates would inevitably change hands. At least so it seems to us; and therefore when Sir Francis Burdett, the Marquis of Tavistock, and other individuals of rank and fortune, propose to introduce into the government annual parliaments, and universal suffrage, we can hardly forbear inquiring whether they are ready to agree that property should be as equally divided as political power; and if not, how they expect to sever things, which to us appear to be intimately connected.

These speculations, however, are beside our present purpose. We mean only to say, that, in the present state of the world, wherever the people are not subject to military rule, the government must in a great measure be under the guidance of that aggregate of

me.

It seems to imply that one intelligent man is as fit to be a Judge of the Supreme Court as another. The perception of the true rule of law, and its true application, whether of local or general law, is supposed to be entirely easy, because there are many banks of statutes, and many books of decisions. There can be no doubt, it seems, that a Supreme Court, however constituted, would readily understand, in the instance mentioned, the law of Vermont, because the Statutes of Vermont are accessible. Nor need Louisiana fear, that her peculiar code will not be thoroughly and practically known, inasmuch as a printed copy will be found in the public libraries.

Sir, I allude to such arguments, certainly not for the purpose of undertaking a refutation of them, but only to express my regret that they should have found place in this discussion.-I have not contended, sir, for anything like Judicial representation. I care not in what terms of reproach such an idea be spoken of. It is none of mine. What I said was, and I still say it, that, with so many States, having various and different systems, with such a variety of local laws, and usages, and practices, it is highly important that the Supreme Court should be so constituted as to allow a fair prospect, in every case, that these laws and usages should be known; and that I know nothing, so naturally conducive to this end, as the knowledge and experience obtained by the Judges on the Circuits. Let me ask, sir, the members from New England, if they have ever found any man this side of the North River, who thoroughly understood our practice of special attachment, our process of garnishment, or trustee process, or our mode of extending execution upon land? And let me ask, at the same time, whether there be an individual of the profession, between this place and Maine, who is, at this moment, competent to the decisions of questions arising under the peculiar system of land titles of Kentucky or Tennessee? If there be such a gentleman, I confess I have not the honor of his acquaintance.

On the general question of the utility of constant occupation in perfecting the character of a Judge, I do not mean now to enlarge. I am aware that men will differ on that subject, according to their different means, or different habits of observation. To me it seems as clear as any moral proposition whatever. And I would ask the honorable member from Rhode Island, since he has referred to the Judge of the first Circuit, and has spoken of him in terms of respect, not undeserved, whether he supposes that that member of the Court, if, fifteen years ago, on receiving his commission, he had removed to this City, had remained here always since, with no other connexion with his profession than an annual session of six weeks in the Supreme Court, would have been the Judge he now is? Sir, if this question were proposed to that distinguished person himself, and if he could overcome the reluctance which he would naturally feel to speak at all of his own Judicial qualities, I am extremely mistaken if he would not refer to his connexion with the Circuit Court, and the frequency and variety of his labors there, as efficient causes in the production of that degree of ability, whatever it may be supposed to be, with which he now discharges the duties of his station.

There is not, sir, an entire revolution wrought in the mind of a professional man, by appointing him a Judge. He is still a lawyer; and if he have but little to do as a Judge, he is, in effect, a lawyer