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as Mason, Plumer, Smith, and Sullivan were among the laborers. The niggardliness of compensation did more to retard the re form than all other causes combined. The salaries were not equal to the wages of an artisan. The Chief-Justice received eight hundred and fifty dollars a year, and each associate fifty dollars less; and to show the munificent disposition of the Legislature, the vote putting the salaries at these figures was passed, after a long opposition, by 73 yeas to 62 nays. The offices could not be filled by lawyers unless at great personal sacrifice, and the bar viewed with chagrin and alarm the sorry condition of their courts. But one lawyer set himself hard at work, determined that he would do what he could to raise the standard of both bench and bar. His name was Jeremiah Smith. He was one of the purest and most unselfish of pub lic men, and to his efforts may be attributed the improvement of legal affairs. On the 20th of February, 1801, Jeremiah Smith was appointed a circuit judge of the United States, — a coveted honor, and one that gave great satisfaction to the people; but never was judicial preferment more briefly enjoyed, or more ruthlessly taken away. The history of John Adams's mid night court, as his opponents termed it, is interesting, if not comical. The victorious Jeffersonians would stand no such sharp practices; and no sooner were they installed in power than they legislated the newly -fVgC|inized Circuit Court out of existence. This "was^certainly one of the grimmest parliamentary""^^ ever recorded; but ap peal there was none, so Judge Smith and his associates found themseiVes practising at the bar as if no unusual honor had been conferred upon them. Smith, however, was too good a man to be forgotten; and in August, 1802, Governor Gilman appointed him Chief-Justice of New Hampshire. In this office he continued till 1809, devoting all his time to his duties, often overworked but never discouraged, and always conscious

that the people looked to him for those re forms that had long been demanded. He accomplished much, and with him arose a new order of things. The idea that law was a science seemed never to have entered the heads of the old judges during their supremacy. To them law was looked upon as a superior mode of arbitration, where each case was to be adjudicated indepen dently of every other case. From these propositions the new Chief-Justice emphati cally dissented. He had well-defined ideas on the subject, and so far as he was able he insisted that certain rules should be strictly observed by those who practised before him. At all times he was exacting; and he fre quently took occasion to lecture the bar on the necessity of going by rules and certain precedents that he had laid down for guid ance. His mission was successful; and when he left the bench it was the testimony of all that in no State was the law adminis tered with greater wisdom and precision. With Judge Smith the law was a great and comprehensive science, founded on rea son, and capable of consistent application, and not a cunning contrivance for tripping up the unwary, and throwing dust in the eyes of the uninitiated. In his own words is recorded, " If the world should be pleased to speak of me after I am dead, let them say, He was a judge who never permitted justice to be strangled in the nets of form." Firm and impartial, learned and diligent, his example is worthy of emulation. When he left the bench it was felt throughout the State that the judicial system had been re generated, and that henceforth only lawyers of character and attainments should be called to the judgeships. Judge Smith was succeeded by Arthur Livermore, a good lawyer, but, like his fatiV^r, whose acquaintance we have just made, Dainfully eccentric and uncertain. He had certainly inherited many of those salient characteristics that made his father so famous. The bar, however, respected him, as well as his two associates, Richard