Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/224

214 expected from an insubordinate power for life. The power of construing the constitution and disallowing law, possessed by our judiciary, being functions of unexampled judicial power, and approaching nearer to sovereign and legislative power, than in any former instance; are consideration!) which bestow great weight upon this parallel.

Judicial responsibility "to God and conscience," is a counterpart of the "divine right," cheat, resorted to by innumerable kings, nobles and priests, to delude and oppress mankind. Our system renounces this species of responsibility, and is founded upon the principle of responsibility to the nation. Is this political principle to be lost, and the hostile principle of superstition substituted for it, by the cobwebs of inference and construction? Responsibility to God is the sanction of religion; what would be the influence of religious precept, if this sanction was dissolved? Such as will be the influence of political precept unattended with responsibility to the sovereign.

Practice, as well as theory, sheds light upon this subject. It affords endless materials to prove the usefulness of judicial responsibility, and to display the force of habitual prejudices; but we will compress an idea of this fruitful argument into the following paragraph.

In England and America, the permanency of some judges, and the fluctuation of others; and the appointment of some by the people or the legislature, and of others by the executive; are positions contended for by the same person's, avid the same societies; and habit and prejudice can supply the firmness with which these contradictions are defended, "Judicial independency" and "chartered rights" are the sounds which induce us to fall into them. Corporation judges are elected by the people and periodically changed; national judges are appointed by the king, and hold at the will of the parliament. Charles the second destroyed charters, for the purpose of transferring from corporations to himself the appointment of judges and other officers, as a prelude to despotism. The judges of the union are appointed