Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/420

Rh Justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?"—King Lear.

At a later date Woodbridge was also attacked. But it might perhaps be as unsafe to judge of the court by what the newspapers said, as it would be now.



The admission of Michigan to the Union was one of the political sensations of its time. Her people declared themselves a State, adopted a Constitution, and chose State officers, full fourteen months before they were admitted by Congress. Their choice for executive was Stevens T. Mason, the boy governor, whom Jackson had previously made territorial secretary. Jackson was displeased with him for the promptness with which he had marched the Michigan militia into Lucas County on the outbreak of the Toledo War; and he had sent a young Virginian named Horner to take his place. But no one took much notice of Horner beyond pelting the tavern where he lodged one night with stones,—for which attention the landlord charged him in the bill, —and Mason, who presently became governor by popular election, deported himself thereafter as a State and not a Federal functionary. He appointed a Supreme Court consisting of William A. Fletcher, George Morell, and Epaphroditus Ransom. Morell had been one of the territorial judges for nearly eight years; but he now, like Mason, transferred his allegiance to the State. He was the only one of the territorial judges to sit on the State bench; Chief-Justice Sibley, who was sixty-seven years old, had become deaf; and Wilkins, who had taken part in the various "State's Rights" conventions had also been active in that Ann Arbor gathering of Jacksonian Democrats, known as the "Frostbitten Convention," which met in December, 1836, and assumed, in the name of the people, to accept the terms of admission imposed by Congress; he was rewarded with the position of district judge. Fletcher, the new Chief-Justice, was capable enough; he had practised in Detroit since he came to the Territory in 1820, and in 1825 had served on a commission to revise the laws. When he was made Chief-Justice he was already judge of a circuit that embraced all of the Michigan counties except Wayne; he travelled this circuit, and had two local associates in every county. He had also been Attorney-General. His tastes, however, like the young governor's, were too convivial; and though he lived till 1853, he soon became unfit for judicial life, and left the bench in 1842. While he presided, the bench was lengthened to accommodate four members, and Mason gave the new judgeship to Charles Wiley Whipple.

His successor as Chief-Justice was his associate, George Morell, who was born at