THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE. 627

they may think proper, for the payment of this peculiarly and
clearly defined salary of a chancellor or a judge. But, the amount
of the salary being once designated by the General Assembly,
whether by law, resolution, or in any other legislative way, that
amount, so designated, is, by this article of the Declaration of
Rights, secured during the continuance of the commission; and
nothing remains at the discretion of the legislature but the mode
of making provision for its payment.

If the correctness and utility of provisions, such as these, con-
cerning judicial salaries, could be supposed to stand in need of any
testimonials in their favour from actual practice; or, if their per-
spicuity could be made more clear by illustrative examples, the
immediately antecedent occurrences in our own country would fur-
nish the most ample exposition of their bearing and tendency;
and the most unanswerable proofs of their utility and value. The
colonial Congress of 1774, that most illustrious body of men,
deliberately and solemnly declared to their then king, that in the
colonial courts of admiralty justice had been perverted, because
the judges were " empowered to receive their salaries and fees
from the effects condemned by themselves;" and they further
declared, that the administration of justice, in the colonial courts
of common law, was no less partial and impure, because the judges
of those courts had been " made entirely dependent on one part of
the legislature for their salaries, as well as for the duration of their
commissions." And, among the causes which impelled us to the
separation from the mother country, it is charged, that the king
had made the judges dependent on his will alone for " the amount
and payment of their salaries."

These are some of the great lessons of our revolution. They
were among the axioms deemed unquestionable in those times. It
had been sorely and deeply impressed upon the minds of all the
people of America, that a dependent judge was the fit instrument
of an oppressor; that an independent judge was a proper and
necessary guardian of a freeman's rights; that judges, like other
men, were frail, and always found to be entirely subservient to
those on whom they were dependent for their salaries, and their
bread; and that wise and salutary laws were a mockery, without
firm and impartial judges to administer them.

Having thus traced the origin, history, and nature of the secu-
rity of judicial salaries; and having carefully considered that article
of the Declaration of Rights in which their security is particularly