law's delay is far more vexatious and disastrous, and the unpopularity of legal tribunals is largely increasing in the present day, notwithstanding our boasted improvements and our Judicature Acts and Rules. Many actions tried in our courts of law are a blemish to our civilization. The publication in the newspaper reports reveals a sad story of degradation and vice in our social surroundings, and mars the moral tone of our social edifice."
Here we have the faults of modern society and the inevitable results of the enormous increase of legal business laid at the door of the new practice. Mr. Pence inveighs against the present law's delay, but he forgets the old law's delay — as for example in Lord Eldon's court — and neglects to consider what would be the result if we had the old machinery for doing the new business. It would be hardly less sensible or just to attribute the present delays to the abolition of the old '•convenience" in the corner of the court-room and the substitution of decent and convenient retiring-rooms for the judges.
THE JUDICIAL ELECTION IN NEW YORK. — This event was anticipated with great anxiety by the legal profession in that State, and probably with great in terest by the profession throughout the country. Judge Maynard's offence is familiar to all lawyers, we suppose; but if not, it is sufficient to say that it consisted in surreptitiously removing from the proper place of deposit a correct and true election return, where a false one had previously been deposited (which was afterward pronounced false and void by the court of appeals), leaving only the latter to be canvassed, thus changing the political complexion of the Senate, setting at naught the judgment of the court, and defeating the will of the people. This was while he was deputy Attorney-General. This was a statutory crime, for which he should have been put in prison instead of being twice appointed to fill va cancies in the court of appeals, permitted to draw $24,000 from the treasury in judicial salaries, and nominated for a term of fourteen years in that court by the party which he had so dishonestly put in tem porary power. The voice of the people has now pronounced against him For the second time in recent days the people have unmistakably shown to political bosses and party managers that there is such a thing as political conscience irrespective of party obligation. The former victim was a blameless one, as able and pure a man as has ever graced the high est bench, but who was absolutely "snowed under" in protest against the unhandsome manner in which the nomination was thrust on him Never was a word uttered against the beloved Judge Folger. In this last case the offender was a man of originally good intentions and fair record, and of highly respect able abilities, who was a victim to the stronger and
utterly unscrupulous will of a political brigand, and who in confessing and justifying his crime showed that he had lost the power to distinguish right from wrong. As a recent speaker said, " He shows that he has not a judicial mind." We are not disposed to call hard names or glory in this great victory. All good men must feel, like Wellington after Waterloo, sad while rejoicing. Two lessons may be drawn from the result. First, that the people maybe safely trusted to choose their judges. Had the result been the other way, Mr. Field and other believers in the appointing system might have derived from it a powerful argument in support of their theory, .as against the people, although they would have found it difficult to derive support for it as in favor of the appointing agency. Here the governor did wrong twice over in regard to the same candidate; and the people, irrespective of party, did the right, just, and decent thing by a verdict so tremendous that it should sound in the ears of unscrupulous partisans for a generation. Second, the bar can be trusted to defeat and can defeat an unworthy nomination, irre spective of their party ties. Let no one make any mistake here. The honor and glory of this great victory are due to the lawyers of the State of New York, some of whom unselfishly gave up their time for weeks to the canvass, and especially to the Bar Association of the city of New York, headed by the acknowledged leaders of the bar of the entire coun try, themselves Democrats. The writer of these lines has only one personal regret in the matter; that is, that Judge Maynard had not been a Republican, so that he could have shown his independence of party by voting against him. Now let the matter drop, so far as the candidate is concerned. But let not the lesson be forgotten; an awful disgrace has been averted. The people have declared that they will not reward crime by judicial preferment; that they will have judges, not only absolutely pure, but like Cxsar's wife, free from suspicion.
THE JUDICIAL ELECTION IN CHICAGO. — Judge Gary has been re-elected to the Superior Court in Chicago. Our readers of course will recall that he was the judge before whom the Anarchists were tried and convicted for the murder of the policemen, and upon whom, and upon the methods of which trial, Governor Altgeld, in pardoning those who were in prison, made such an unprecedented and unwarrant able attack. This will serve to demonstrate that the people do not recognize their governor as a supreme court of appeal. Mercy to fairly convicted crim inals is a matter of humanity and policy alone, in the exercise of which the people will not suffer the just judgments of their courts of justice to be wantonly impugned. So far as the actions of governors in
