time; and thus let the sense of the Senate be fully expressed upon one case at a time, and upon the only case now duly before us. In this manner only can anything ever be accomplished.

The amount of the sum now proposed cannot be objected to on the grounds that doubtless caused the losses and sufferings which we are now seeking to redress. The country during the Revolution, and at its close, would hardly have been unwilling to bestow twice the amount, had its resources permitted. But now, such have been our rapid advances in wealth and greatness, by means of the rights and liberties the valor of these men contributed so largely to secure, that the very public land they defended, if not won, yields every year to our treasury more than the whole appropriation. One-twentieth of our present annual revenue exceeds it. A fraction of the cost of the public buildings, the expense of two or three ships-of-the-line, onetenth of what has been saved to our national debt in the funding system, a tax of ten cents per head on our population only a single twelvemonth, either of them would remove all this reproach.

But, whatever might be the cost, I would say, in all practicable cases, be just and fear not. Let no illiberal or evasive feeling blast the hopes of these venerable patriots. Much longer delay will do this as effectually as a hard-hearted refusal, since the remains of them are almost daily going down to the city of silence. Either drive them, then, at once from your doors, with taunts and in despair, or sanction the claim. So far as regards my single self, before I would another year endure the stigma of either injustice or ingratitude to men like these, I would vote to stop every species of splendid missions, I would cease to talk of Alleghany canals, I would let the capitol crumble to atoms for want of appropriations, and introduce retrenchment from the palace to the humblest door-keeper.

It has formerly been said, that if these officers are relieved, so must be those of the late war. But, deserving as were these last, the cause in which they fought required much inferior sacrifices. They were not contending under the stigma of traitors, liable to the halter; they were liberally and promptly paid; and, whatever small depreciation may have existed in the treasury notes taken for their monthly pay, it was infinitely less than the losses sustained by these petitioners on their monthly pay, and for which they neither ask nor expect relief.

One other consideration, and I will at this time trouble the Senate no longer. The long lapse of time since the claim originated has been objected formerly to its success. But what honest individual shelters himself under a statute of limitation, if conscious that his promise has not been substantially fulfilled? Under such circumstances, it is no defence, either in the court of conscience or in a court of honor; and Congress have often shown their liberality in waiving it, where expressly provided to bar an application.

Here no express bar has ever been provided. application, the officers waited till A. D. 1810,

Before their first when old age and

infirmity rendered them more needy, and when many years of prosperity had rendered their country more able. However numerous, and technical, and evasive, may have been the objections since interposed, let it not be forgotten that, in performing their portion of the compact, however neglected as to food or wages, they never were heard to plead excuses or evasions, however appalling the danger, whether roused by a midnight alarm or invited to join a forlorn hope. Like others, too, it may be imputed to them, in derogation, that they were "military chieftains." But if, as such, for a time, they did, like others, nobly help "to fill the measure of their country's glory," so, like others of that class, they have often distinguished themselves in forums, cabinets and halls of legislation.

Whatever "honor and gratitude" they have yet received is deeply engraven on their hearts; but they now also need-and they ask only because they need-the additional rewards of substantial justice. It remains, sir, for us, whose rights they defended and saved, to say whether they shall longer ask that justice in vain.

JUDICIARY OF THE UNITED STATES.*

Mr. WOODBURY offered the following motion:

"That the Bill to extend the Judicial System be recommitted to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to report such amendments as will remove any existing grievance, without an increase of the number of judges of the Supreme Court."

He addressed the Senate as follows: The gentlemen near me, sir, ask for my views in submitting the motion on your table. The task is one I undertake with reluctance; but, at the same time, one from which I have no right to shrink, and which shall be discharged with all practicable brevity.

The strong, the prominent feature of this bill is, in my eye, its extraordinary increase of the number of judges of the Supreme Court. Before yielding my approbation to such an increase, I feel anxious to obtain further facts and principles in illustration of its necessity; and as the particular friends of the bill unquestionably think that abundant. reasons exist for so novel a measure, this motion must afford gratification to them, and be received in the spirit of kindness, as it will afford them the opportunity, doubtless desirable, to spread those reasons before persons of less local knowledge concerning the region of country whose grievances the bill is particularly designed to remove. I am thus exposing myself to become a convert to their opinions, rather than cherishing any vanity of my power to convert others.

A speech on the Judiciary Bill, and against the increase of judges; delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 11, 1826.

It will be seen that the motion presents only a single point of specific instruction as to the bill which may be prepared for their relief; leaving the committee to adopt, for our future consideration, any efficient scheme whatever, which shall not enlarge the Supreme Court.

If the motion should prevail, additional instructions, by other motions, can be proposed by gentlemen who are friendly to particular plans such as the circuit plan, with the attendance of a judge of the Supreme Court once a year; or such a plan, dispensing with his attendance altogether; or any other which the observation and reflection of those around me may have satisfied them is most eligible.

But, should this motion not prevail, then the consideration of any of these plans would be useless; and hence I desire to put to the Senate the single, unembarrassed, and naked question, whether they believe any exigency now exists which demands and justifies the unprecedented increase of the Supreme Court to ten? Has anything been exhibited to us which renders such an increase necessary, proper, or safe?

In an attempt to obtain some certainty as to the operation of this increase in the members of that court, and as to the real reasons which exist for the increase, so that the Senate can act understandingly upon the present motion, we shall not, it is hoped, be misled by the title of the bill. The living principle of any measure lies deeper.

The title is merely "to extend the judicial system," and not to alter or amend it: so the title to the act of February 13, 1801, was to "provide for the more convenient organization of the courts," &c.

But as that, under the then condition of the country, was not long found by the people to be very "convenient," so this will not be found a mere extension of our judicial system to places where it never before prevailed. The judicial system now in operation in all the nine States covered by this bill has been a part of the judicial system of the Union, with the exception of about one year, ever since the first judiciary act of A. D. 1789, to the present moment. Because we all know that, for local duties, District Courts and Circuit Courts have ever been this system, with the right of appeal, in certain cases, to the Supreme Court; and that the only difference, in different regions, has been simply what now exists in some of these nine States, and in parts of some Atlantic States, namely, that in new and thinly-peopled sections of country the Circuit Courts have been held by a district judge alone.

But the proposed bill not only alters this system for local purposes, by requiring the attendance of an additional judge at the Circuit Court in regions of country not so populous as those where the judges of the Supreme Court now attend, but it alters the system for general purposes, by enlarging the Supreme Court itself one-half its whole original number, by leaving its quorum so that contradictory decisions may constantly be made without any change in the court itself, and

by increasing it to as great an extent as a majority of its present quorum, so that new results may possibly be produced in all its grand supervising powers over each State, and over the whole Confederation.

It is thus that a principle lurks in the last effect of this great alteration, which, in the opinion of many, should carry anxiety and dismay into every heart; because, among other objections, hereafter to be noticed, it places at the mercy of the legislative breath, in any moment of over-heated excitement, all that is valuable in any constitutional judgment on its records. We have only, as in this case, to add a number to any court sufficient to balance a majority of its quorum, and, by a union of feeling with the appointing power, secure judges of certain desirable opinions, and any political or constitutional decision can, in the next case which arises, be overturned. Every security is thus prostrated. The system is not extended; but is, in principle, destroyed. For thus does this increase open an avenue to a radical change in the highest functions of one great department of our government; and a department, too, of all others, the most endangered by any change, because, in its very nature, designed for permanency, independence, and firmness, amidst those tempests which, at times, convulse most of the elements of society.

Gentlemen must perceive that I speak only of the general tendency and alarming character of such an increase, without reference to the motives which have now recommended it. They are, doubtless, pure. But its propriety is to be tried by the reasons for it, and not by motives. And, without stopping to trouble the House with any detail as to further inconveniences, injuries, and dangers, from this extraordinary increase in so important a department, let me ask, sir, what are its justifications? By whom is it called for? Who has stood forth and proclaimed that public sentiment throughout the Union has demanded it? Whatever may be the jealousies and apprehensions concerning the general course of decisions in that court, so eloquently sketched by the chairman of the judiciary committee, who has shown the loss of public confidence, the errors of opinion, or denial of justice, by that court, which this great increase of its numbers is sought and is adapted to correct? No, sir. I undertake to aver that, so far as this bill alters the Supreme Court itself, by that increase, and thus affects its discharge of all its general duties as the supreme constitutional court for the whole Confederacy, it is a bill entirely uncalled for by the whole Confederacy, or perhaps by any part of it; and, at the same time, it is entirely unfitted to remove any actual grievance which exists in the discharge, by that court, of those general duties.

The fallacy of the measure consists in this: This bill is to be passed mainly for the removal of local evils, now existing in the west and south-west. Such has been the argument. Thence come the complaints. Why not, then, remove those evils, as my motion proposes, without touching the Supreme Court? Why not make the remedy coëxtensive only with the disease? I do not now consider the

delay in the Supreme Court itself, for I shall hereafter show that this bill will not diminish any delay in the Supreme Court. But, as a cure for a mere local disease, why should you begin to tamper with parts of the system not disordered? You will thus jeopard, if not sacrifice, the primary and most momentous duties of that court, for the relief of some sectional inconvenience; you will make the head and heart tributary to one of the extremities; and, for the gratification of two or three millions of people in the inferior duties of our judiciary, you will put in peril, not only the interest of the other seven or eight millions, but the interest of the two or three millions of the whole Union, in all the paramount, original, and appellant powers of the great judicial tribunal of the country.

Is it possible that the local evils which exist in the valley of the Mississippi can be such as to justify so extraordinary a measure? Where are the petitions and remonstrances on this subject from conventions or legislatures? Here is a bill, whose local operation reaches nine States; but not more than one of that brilliant galaxy has memorialized us for relief. The bar of a single city in Tennessee, and the bar of some part of Ohio, have petitioned us; but, however respectable these sources of complaint, is it all you would expect, if an actual necessity existed for so important a bill?

I shall not now discuss the abstract and metaphysical propriety of a call for our legislation by a sovereign State; but I appeal to our knowledge of human nature, and to human usages, if we should not, probably, see different remonstrances, if the grievances were, in fact, so wide-spread and acute as to require, for their removal, so unusual a bill. But intelligent gentlemen on this floor have stated their impressions as to the character and extent of those grievances. Their statements are entitled to the utmost respect and consideration.

If I understand them, as now and heretofore disclosed, they are all resolvable into a supposed want of equality between those nine States and the rest of the Union in their judiciary.

And, without tracing all the Protean shapes which conjecture and argument have assumed, I will frankly admit, that, if such a want of equality exists there as is so fatal to the administration of justice as to require for its removal this large increase of the Supreme Court, I earnestly pray that my motion may fail. For, without vaporing about my regard for the west, which those only can doubt to whom I am unknown, — and without claiming any exclusive merit for broad, statesman-like views, I would extend any proper relief as readily to Missouri,-however western or small, and whether born under a good or an evil star,-as to that Pilgrim State, whose arms, literature, and arts and commerce, have crowded her history with such proud trophies since the landing at Plymouth rock.

Proceeding, then, to analyze this general want of equality, it must, if true, be found to consist either in a want of an equal representation on the bench of the Supreme Court, or in the want of an equal