Mr. Ingersoll's day at the bar was moreover the day of judicial tenure during good behavior. It ought not to be forgotten what sort of men were made at the bar, by that tenure of judicial office, any more than we should forget who were the judges that adorned it, and shed their influence upon all around them.

We are now under the direction of a fearful mandate which compels our judges to enter the arena of a popular election for their offices, and for a term of years so short as to keep the source of their elevation to the bench continually before their eyes. At least once again in the life of every judge, we may suppose he will be compelled by a necessity, much stronger than at first, to enter the same field; and the greater the necessity, the less will his eyes ever close upon the fact. It is this fact, re-eligibility to office, with the hope of re-election, that puts a cord around the neck of every one of them, during the whole term of his office. It is transcendently worse than the principle of original election at the polls. Doubtless there is more than one of the judges who had rather be strangled by the cord than do a thing unworthy of his place; but the personal characteristics of a few are no grounds of inference as to the many; nor are even the mischiefs already apparent a rule to measure the mischiefs that are in reserve. We must confess that a system is perilous which holds out to the best judge, if he displeases a powerful party, nothing better than the poor-house, which a late eminent Chief Justice saw before him, and committed the great fault of his life, by confessing and avoiding it. The mind of the public, of all parties, is becoming apprehensive upon the subject; and well may it be so, even among party men, for parties change suddenly, and once in every five or ten years we may be sure that the chalice will come round to the lips of those who have drugged it. No man can be too apprehensive of the evil, who thinks the law worth preserving as a security for what he possesses, and no lawyer who regards it as a security for his honor and reputation. For what can it give

of either, if the wheels of the instrument receive a twist or bias through party fear or favor, or are so ignorantly and presumptuously governed, as to let them cut and eat into each other, until they work falsely or uncertainly?

At the formation of the Federal Constitution in 1787, the tenure of the judicial department was thought by our forefathers to be not only the guarantee of that department, but the best guarantee of all the departments of government. What guarantee is there for the Constitution itself, if you emasculate the judicial department, the only one that is a smooth, practical, wakeful, and efficient defence against invasions of the Constitution by the Legislature, the only one that can be efficient in a republican representative government, whose people will not bear a blow, and therefore require a guarantee whose blow is a word? A leasehold elective tenure by the judiciary is a frightful solecism in such a government. It enfeebles the guarantee of other guarantees the trial by jury-the writ of habeas corpusthe freedom and purity of elections by the people-and the true liberty and responsibility of the press. It takes strength from the only arm that can do no mischief by its strength, and gives it to those who have no general intelligence to this end in the use of it, and therefore no ability to use it for their own protection. The certainty and permanence of the law depend in great degree upon the judges; and all experience misleads us, and the very demonstrations of reasons are fallacies, if the certainty and permanence of the judicial office by the tenure of good behavior are not inseparably connected with a righteous, as well as with a scientific administration of the law. What can experience or foresight predict for the result of a system, by which a body of men, set apart to enforce the whole law at all times, whatever may be the opposition to it, and whose duty is never so important and essential as when it does so against the passions of a present majority of the polls, is made to depend for office upon the fluctuating temper of a majority, and not upon the virtue of their own conduct?

But an equally inseparable connection or dependency exists between the bar and the bench,-between the knowledge and virtue of the respective bodies. A good bar cannot exist long in connection with a favor-seeking bench,— a bench on the lookout for favors from the people or from any one. Such a Bench is not an independent body, whatever some of the judges may be personally. Nobody thinks it is. The Constitution of 1837, and the people, declare that it is not, by the very principle of the recurring elective tenure. Under a false theory, and for a party end, they meant to make it a dependent body, by abolishing the tenure during good behavior. The bench, therefore, as now constituted, is not raised sufficiently above the bar to command it by the power of its political constitution. The bar is constitutionally the higher body of the two, the more permanent, the more independent, and, popularity being the motive power, the more controlling body, though only for its personal and several ends. This is the fatal derangement that the present judicial tenure makes between the two corps. The subordinate becomes the paramount. The private and personal will controls the public; not by reason, not by virtue, not always openly, but by influence.

In our cities and principal towns, the bar is a large and diversified body. Like the web of our life, it is a mingled yarn, good' and ill together; and the ill yarn is not always the weakest, nor the least likely, by its dye, to give hue and color to the whole. Venal politicians,-leaders in the popular current,—minglers in it for the purpose of leading it, or at least of turning the force of its waters to their own wheels, adepts in polishing up, or in blowing upon or dulling the names of candidates for judicial office,-students in the art of ferreting out the infirmities of judges, and tracking the path of their fears,—such men are always to be found in such a body, and to be found in most abundance at the bar of a court that has a weak constitution. It is there that thrift waits upon them. There is no need that the pregnant hinges of their knees should be crooked to the

judges, if they only be to those who make them. Where is the independent bench, that can habitually exercise the restraining or the detersive power, to prevent such "faults" of the bar from "whipping the virtues" out of court, or breaking down their influence upon the mass? And if the bench-not individual judges-if the bench, as the Constitution makes it, cannot steadily and uniformly, without special virtue or particular effort, repress the professional misconduct of every member of the bar, whatever be his popular influence and connections, what honor or esteem will professional distinction obtain from the world, and what sanction will professional integrity have at the bar?

It is no comfort to think that the people, or at least a large number of them, must be present sufferers from such a state of things, and that, finally, all of them must take their turn; for the whole people must suffer from a disordered bar. But the more cutting evil must fall on the honorable members of the bar, who regard their own distinction in it as an estate in character for those who are to succeed them; and who, if their community be generally vitiated, must see the inheritance of honor which they would lay up for their children, day by day sapped and undermined, while they are toiling against the hour-glass, to find at last in their best acquisitions nothing better than the sand at the one end, or the emptiness at the other.

The bar of Philadelphia, I doubt not of all Pennsylvania, but of the former I may speak scienter, was, for nearly half a century, under the judicial tenure of good behavior, an honorable Bar, professionally and personally. If there were spots or blemishes, they did not meet the face of the court, and rarely the face of the day. The serene virtue of the bench was no more disturbed than its strength was challenged by them. Without any doubt, very many honorable and able lawyers are still extant at it, and so are pure and unterrified judges. But is there no symptom of change? Perhaps not great. Is the countenance of the public towards the bench and the bar the same that it was in times

past? Perhaps not exactly. Both the fact and the causes of it are worthy of much observation by the bar, and by everybody.

Whether the connection between bench and bar, however, be such as has been suggested, or the full influence of learned and honorable members of the profession must always be felt, whatever be the tenure of the bench, in either supposition it must be profitable to lawyers of virtuous aspiration to recall their predecessors of distinguished name, and to corroborate their own virtue and influence at this day, by examples from the old "good behavior" bar of Philadelphia.