This appointment was a boon to the impecunious young attorney.  He could now count on a salary which would free him from any concern about his financial liabilities,—­if indeed they ever gave him more than momentary concern.  Besides, as custodian of the State Library, he had access to the best collection of law books in the State.  The duties of his office were not so exacting but that he could still carry on his law studies, and manage such incidental business as came his way.  These were the obvious and tangible advantages which Douglas emphasized in the mellow light of recollection.[121] Yet there were other, less obvious, advantages which he omitted to mention.

The current newspapers of this date make frequent mention of an institution popularly dubbed “the Third House,” or “Lord Coke’s Assembly."[122] The archives of state do not explain this unique institution.  Its location was in the lobby of the State House.  Like many another extra-legal body it kept no records of its proceedings; yet it wielded a potent influence.  It was attended regularly by those officials who made the lobby a rendezvous; irregularly, by politicians who came to the Capitol on business; and on pressing occasions, by members of the legislature who wished to catch the undertone of party opinion.  The debates in this Third House often surpassed in interest the formal proceedings behind closed doors across the corridor.  Members of this house were not held to rigid account for what they said.  Many a political coup was plotted in the lobby.  The grist which came out of the legislative mill was often ground by irresponsible politicians out of hearing of the Speaker of the House.  The chance comer was quite as likely to find the Secretary of State in the lobby as in his office among his books.

The lobby was a busy place in this winter session of 1840-41.  It was well known that Democratic leaders had planned an aggressive reorganization of the Supreme Court, in anticipation of an adverse decision in the famous Galena alien case.  The Democratic programme was embodied in a bill which proposed to abolish the existing Circuit Courts, and to enlarge the Supreme Court by the addition of five judges.  Circuit Courts were to be held by the nine judges of the Supreme Court.[123] Subsequent explanations did not, and could not, disguise the real purpose of this chaste reform.[124]

While this revolutionary measure was under fire in the legislature and in the Third House, the Supreme Court rendered its opinion in the alien case.  To the amazement of the reformers, the decision did not touch the broad, constitutional question of the right of aliens to vote, but simply the concrete, particular question arising under the Election Law of 1829.[125] Judge Smith alone dissented and argued the larger issue.  The admirable self-restraint of the Court, so far from stopping the mouths of detractors, only excited more unfavorable comment.  The suspicion of partisanship, sedulously fed by angry Democrats, could not be easily eradicated.  The Court was now condemned for its contemptible evasion of the real question at issue.