The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1860-07-20

political nature, the court is open to the
same suspicion of partisanship as in the
United States, and for q much stronger
reason, inasmuch as our judges can never
be members of the Cabinet or of Congress.
During considerable part of his career,
Lord Mansfield was engaged in an embit-
tered political warfare with the Earl of
Chatham in the House OF Lords. All the
resources of the English language were ex
hausted by Junius in desOlating and unpun.
ished party libels on the Chief Justice of
England; and when the capital of the Brit
ish empire lay for six days at the mercy of
Lord George Gordon's mob its fury was
concentrated against the same venerable
magistrate. The jurisprudence of this coun-
try strikes its roots deep into that of Eng.
land. Her courts, her magistrates, her
whole judicial system, are regarded by the
profession in America with respect and at-
fection. But if, beginning at a period
coeval with the settlement of America, we
run down the line of the Chancellors and
Chief Justices, from Lord Bacon and Sir
Edward Coke to the close of the last Gen.
tury, it will, in scarce any generation, be
found free from the record of personal, off,
cial and political inirmity, from which an
unfriendly censor might have drawn infer
ences hostile to the integrity of the tribunals
of England, if not to the soundness of her
public sentiment. But he would have erred.
The character of governments and nations
must be gathered from a large experience,
from general results, from the testimony of
ages. A thousand years, and revolution
in almost every century, have been necessary
to build up the constitutional fabric of Eng.
land to its present proportions and strength.
Let her not play the unfriendly censor, if
some portions of our newly constructed
State machinery are sometimes heard to
CRATE and jar. With respect to the great two
edged sword with which Justice smites the
unfaithful public servant, the present Lord
Chancellor (late Chief Justice of Epgland)
observes, of the acqnittal of Lord Melville,
in 1906, that "it showed that impeachment
can no longer be relied upon for the convic-
tion of State offences, and can only be con-
sidered as test of party strength" while
of the standard of professional literature, the
same venerable magistrate. who unites the
vigor of youth to the experience and au J..
thority of four score years, remarks, with a
candor not very fatteriDg to the United
States, that down to the end OF the reign of
George the Third "a. D. 1920, "Eng land
was excelled by contemporary judicial au.
thors, not only in France, Italy and Ger
many, but even America" I will only add,
that of the great number of Judges of our
federal and State courts-althoagh frugal
salaries, short terms of Office, and the elec-
tive tenure may sometimes have called in-
competent men to the benefit is not with
in my recollection that a single individual
has been suspected even of pecuniary cor
ruption.
LEGISLATIVE CORRUPTION.
Next in Importance to the integrity of
the courts, in we'll governed State, is the
honesty of the Legislature. A remarkable
instance of wholesale corruption, in one of
the new States of the West, consisting of
the alleged bribery of considerable num-
Der of the members of the Legislature, by a
corrupt distribution of railroad bonds, is
quoted by Lord Grey as specimen of the
corruption which has infected the legislation
both of Congress and of the States, and as
showing "the state of things which has
arisen in that country" 1t was a very
discreditable occurrence certainly, (if truly
reported, and of that know nothing), illus
trative, l hope, not of "a state Of things"
which has arisen in America, but of the de-
gree to which large bodies of men, of whom
better things might have been expected,
may sometimes become so injected, when the
mania of speculation is epidemic, that prin-
ciple, prudence and common sense break
down in the eagerness to clutch at sudden
wealth. In bubble season the ordinary
rules of morality lose their controlling power
for while, under the temptation of the day.
The main current of private morality in
England probably flowed as deep and strong
as ever, both before and after the South
Sea frauds, when Cabinet ministers and
court ladies, and some of the highest person
ages in the realm ran mad after dishonest
gains, and this in Englands Augustan age.
Lord Granville, in reply, observed that the
"carly legislation of England, in such mat.
tiers, was not so free from reproach as to
justify US in attributing the bribery in
America solely to the democratic character
of the government" and the biograpber Of
George Stephenson furnishes facts which
abundantly confirm the truth of this remark.
After describing the extravagent length to
which railway speculation was carried 10
that country in l844-45, Mr.. Smiles pro-
ceeds:
parliament, whose previous conduct in
connection with railway legislation was so
open to apprehension, interposed no check,
attempted no remedy. On the contrary, it
helped to intensity the evil arising from this
unseemly state of things. Many of its men,
bers were themselves involved 10 the mania,
and as much interested in its continuance as
even the vulgar herd of money grubbers.
The railway prospectuses now issued, un-
like the Liverpool and Manchester and Lon
don and Birmingham schemes, were headed