Legal Reminiscences. and was ready to be voted upon, when an express came which summoned the mem bers to defend their homes against the in vasion of Burgoyne. There was no time to lose, the British-Hessian-Indian army was at their doors. The motion to adjourn was put and carried, when a sudden thunder storm caused a slight delay. Parson Hut chinson, who had opened the convention with a sermon, declared that the Almighty had sent the storm to delay them while they adopted the constitution. The con vention was reorganized, and in the old hall at Windsor, on the second of July, 1777, with an oratorio of the rolling thunder, the first constitution creating the independent State of Vermont was adopted. A member had it printed in Hartford, Conn., and with out submission to the people or further cer emony the state was organized and main tained under it by annual elections until 1 79 1, when upon the equal terms for which she had always contended Vermont was ad mitted into the Union. We shall never know who was the real author of that instrument, but we do know that it was the first to prohibit slavery, and that to secure the kind of government which Lincoln hoped might be perpetual, no bet ter was ever formed. It was the work of men who could scarcely write a grammatical sentence, yet it comprised some very sound principles of political economy. It declares a most excellent rule for the adjustment of salaries : " They should not be so large as to tempt the citizen from the pursuits of private life; but those who serve the public at the expense of their private business ought to be fairly compensated. Neverthe less, when the salary of an office is so large as to cause many to seek after it, the salary ought to be reduced by the Legislature." In other words, the incumbent of a judi cial or any other public office ought to be paid quantum meruit, and not according to any fanciful notions of its dignity or its im portance. There was a very practical ap
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plication of this principle in the case of the first governor of Vermont. His' salary was fixed at £300, then equal to $1000 per an num. He was a plain man, he thought the salary was more than the people could then afford to pay, and recommended a change which would relieve them of the whole bur den, a fee upon the grant of each township of land. These fees probably never in any year amounted to $500, but they satisfied the governor of that time. The next change of the governor's salary was to $750, where it remained for half a century, until 1857, when it was raised to $1000. In 1884 it was made $1500, which is the amount now paid. One element in the cost of litigation is the number of the judges and their compen sation. The payment of salaries to judges in Vermont began in 1804, when the Su preme Court consisted of a chief judge and two assistants. The chief received a salary of $1000, and each assistant $900. In 1826 the salaries of the three were made $1050 each. In 1839, the number of assistants having previously been increased to four, all the salaries were made $1375. ^n 1854 these salaries were increased to $1500 each. They were afterwards gradually raised and more assistants added, until 1886, when the court consisted of a chief and six assistants, and the salaries were made $3000 each, with an additional allowance of $300 for traveling expenses. A judge of the Su preme Court presides at two terms annually in each county for the trial of jury and other cases, civil and criminal, and there is one term in banc annually in each county. It is the opinion of lawyers of the great est experience that the greatest volume of business was done when the court com prised a chief and four assistants, receiving salaries of $1050 and $1375. Land-titles were then unsettled, actions of ejectment were numerous, there was a greater number of criminals, and defective highways and bridges caused many suits against towns. This also
