The age-herald., 1898-01-16

lOI AiGinDeTS Ol congress- III lHGlT ItSptClihG states. The judges first to be chosen under this amendment shall be elected on the Tuesday after the first Thursday in No yember in the year 1900, A. D., and their t5Tms shall begin on the 1st day of January following, at which time the terms of all other judges of the United States shall cease and determine. Should a vacancy for any cause. happen in the judgeships herein provided for the president shall ap- point till the 1st day of January next suc- ceeding the next general election for mem bers of the lower house of congress, at which general election judge shall be chosen for the said vacancy for a term of eight years. The judges shall at stated times receive for their services a compen- saton which shall not be diminished dur ing their continuance in oflice."
 There are additional Sections, ?, and 4, which deprive the federal courts of their present Jurisdiction of causes "between citizens of different states and which strike out of the present constitution the appointive power of the president and ad- vising and consenting rights of the senate in the matter of creating the federal courts and which empower congress to enact leg islation to enforce the Sixteenth amend ment proposed.
 This proposed amendment is in fact the duplicate of the joint resolutions proposed by George McDuffie, of South Carolina in the house of representatives and by Thom- as H. Benton, of Missouri in the senate, in the late twenties, now applied by Butler to the federal courts, but by those earlier statesmen to the election of president and yice-president The majority taken by dis trictS or circuits, the case may be, en- ters, in both plans and both objects, the aggregate majority of the whole republic. Now the majority that Bryan, for example, may receive in Alabama, cuts no figure in assisting him in Massachusetts, It dies with the result of giving him eleven elec- toral votes from Alabama. In sympathy with the proposed reforms of electing the federal judiciary and the federal execu- tive, by direct vote, of the people, must come the corresponding and equally imper- ative reform of popular election of sen ators.
 None of the proposed changes from de- popularized departments to popular are new or recent in the consideration of the voters. All are now in practice in the states. After a generation of experience with a de-popularized judiciary, Alabama amended her constitution, happily to re- quire the voters to elect the judges, from high to low.
 The people have laid the predicate in the exercise of their judgment upon the federal unit, the state. The counter-prop- osition to that predicate must quickly vanish or its precarious existence must abide amidst scenes of revolution. The
  ganic law, but the organic law itself be- comes an empty shadow and a victim of derision while the spirit of amendment repair of it's demonstrated incapacties contents itself i1 lethargy, disobedience and decay.
 A citizen, some years ago, took silver brick to the mint at Philadelphia accom- panied by his order to the government of- finar in oh tn fhn hull ion for him into dollars of the lawful fineness and weight. The officer refused to receive the brick under the statutes of congress. The case, as yet unadjudicated, was taken into the courts. The plaintiffs brief con- tends that free coinage of the money met als was a common law right in every state, up to the inauguration of the federal gov ernment, in 17S9 under the present consti- tuition; that the voluntary transfer of the original state right, to coin money, to con- gress does not impair the original right residing in the citizen who desires to have coined his silver and gold bullion, but that the right of free coinage of such bullion remains in the citizen; that congress has no power to take from the United States the trust confded to the United States by
 the people of the separate states in the matter of their original right of free coin age.
 A JuQSe dppOlHIeu, DelOTe loOU, WOulu hold that the anti-silver legislation of con- gress and all of the legislation known as war Legislation" since hostilities ceased is void for want of constitutionality. Judges appointed by President Grant or any of his successors, including Mr. Cleveland, hold the same legislation valid.
 It is more important, in the light of cir cumstances familiar to us all, that the judges of courts of last resort shall sympa- thize with the forces led by MT. Bryan than Bryan shall be elected or that a Bryan con- gress shall be elected. The court of last resort Is supreme and the judges hold for life.
 It is impossible that the people of the United States or of Alabama, in this period of controversy over the fundamental prop ositions of constitutional liberty, can ig- nore the direct and active influence of the known personal bias of judges of high courts in that controversy. The refuge or liberty Is in the correction of the bias Of the judges by the people. Possibly the federal ideal of an impartial, non-partisan judiciary might have been perpetuated as an Americanism, had the fundamental the ory of up-to-date vitality of the system been preserved by amendment or repair. What has been our experience? The. sword and the purse combined set aside the Dred Scott decision and substituted raging revolution of blood and destruction In lieu of the dictum of the court
 The revolution cannot right itself. The people must recognize the revolution and reform the system so as to reinstate the fundamental propositions of liberty Jeff ferson was elected president by the peo- pie to condemn the policies of Adams, the monarchical candidate for his own re-elec- tion. Adams appointed John Marshall, an intense hater of the president-elect, chief justice few weeks before Adams term expired and Jefferson's began. The people continued to elect democratic presi- dents and congresses as long as Marshall lived, but, beginning with the Dartmouth college case Marshall by means of the su- preme court, gave to the politics of the country a Hamiltonian rather than Jeff fersonian character. An anecdote will il- lustrate: A court of the state of Georgia ordered a prisoner hung An appeal was taken to the federal supreme court. The federal court made an order in effect sus- pending the execution of the sentence of the state court President Jackson hear ing of it remarked: "Now Marshall has made law, how will he get it obeyed?' The Georgia courts went on with their own law and the prisoner was hung. Had MT Adams waited six weeks, to allow the vote against him to take effect upon the federal court, MT. Jefferson would have