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310 functions of another except as expressly provided for in the constitution itself. Thus has been evolved by slow degrees the judiciary system as at present constituted, arising from a mere improvision to meet an exigency to a perfectly organized functionary with precisely defined powers and exact jurisdiction. Many judges have sat and presided in the tribunals thus organized, all with honor, I think, without exception, and not a few with signal ability and distinction, two of the most illustrious and well beloved of whom were members of the constitutional convention and are still in active business employment. I refer to our venerable and esteemed fellow citizens, Judges George H. Williams and Reuben P. Boise.

One of the central ideas of this arrangement of the departments of government, divorcing them from the contact and control of each other, was, no doubt, as it was with the framers of our Federal constitution, to establish an independent judiciary–"the firmest bulwark of freedom"–emancipated not only from the influence of its coordinate participators in government, but also from the merely political and partisan influences so often promotive of individuals to official position, and this by reason of the nature of the business with which it is intrusted to interpret and construe the laws adopted and promulgated by the coordinate branches and to determine their validity from a constitutional point of view, as well as to determine all manner of contest between litigants, including the State. In exercising this high function of construing enactments, the intendment of the legislature must govern, of course, and it is by giving heed to this cardinal principle that new policies of government are inaugurated and reforms set on foot, but it was not designed that the judiciary should look back of this into the general scramble for power and to permit the peculiar motives that may have induced individual action to influence its judgments. If