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 The Highest Courts of Law in New Hampshire. $2,200, and the Reporter, ex-Judge Ladd, gi.ooo. The judges are appointed by the Governor and Council, and hold their offices until they reach the age of seventy, when they retire without pension. They are removable only by address of both houses of the Legislature, assented to by the Governor and Council. They are, of course, subject to impeachment.

As has been shown in this article, the entire court may be swept out of existence by creating a succes sor, and this has been the general practice when politics de manded it. In every Legislature there is more or less talk about changing the judiciary system, but thus far no bill has been seri ously considered, al though several have been prepared. By an unwritten law the politics of the bench are divided between the two great parties; and if a Democratic vacancy occurs it will be filled by the ap GEORGE A. pointment of a judge of like political faith, and the same with a Republican vacancy. In this way the reasons for overturns, set forth by excited partisans, are wholly obvi ated, and the shadow of the headsman ban ished from the precincts of the Hall of Justice. New Hampshire clings obstinately to the English method of appointment, and it is a matter worthy of remark that in the last two Constitutional Conventions no seri ous proposition was advanced looking toward an elective judiciary. The present Chief-Justice of our Supreme Court is indisputably one of the most brill-

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iant and distinguished jurists that this coun try has ever known; and were it not for his exaggerated distaste for public life and noto riety, his name would be one of the most familiar in our judicial history. No man is more intensely averse to identity than Charles Doe. He is even eccentric in his endeavors to conceal himself, and yet this very practice always reveals him and marks him for observation. Simple in taste, and plain, even negligent, in dress, no one would recognize the learned judge in the awkward farmer-like form as he walks up the Capitol steps to preside at the law term. For more than thirty years he has studied law, and nothing but law, even refusing literature of every kind, including the daily newspapers. He is a man of inde pendent fortune, mostly inherited, yet his mode of living is plainly severe, and wholly destitute of prevailing convention alities. He carries BINGHAM. this austerity of habit into court, where he conducts business with startling promptness and exactitude. He tolerates no formalism, sometimes dispensing with the customary proclamation of the sheriff, and never, I be lieve, allowing that functionary to accom pany him from the hotel to the court-house. If a sheriff happens to overtake him, he may walk with the judge as a citizen, but not as a sheriff. In point of intellect, Judge Doe is primus inter pares of his contemporaries. His is a masterful mind. His mental powers are of the kind that made John Marshall and Lord Mansfield famous. With him law is