To talk of this matter in any other way is to turn a rational principle into an idle and vulgar superstition,—­like the antiquary, Dr. Woodward, who trembled to have his shield scoured, for fear it should be discovered to be no better than an old pot-lid.  This species of tenderness to a jury puts me in mind of a gentleman of good condition, who had been reduced to great poverty and distress:  application was made to some rich fellows in his neighborhood to give him some assistance; but they begged to be excused, for fear of affronting a person of his high birth; and so the poor gentleman was left to starve, out of pure respect to the antiquity of his family.  From this principle has arisen an opinion, that I find current amongst gentlemen, that this distemper ought to be left to cure itself:—­that the judges, having been well exposed, and something terrified on account of these clamors, will entirely change, if not very much relax from their rigor;—­if the present race should not change, that the chances of succession may put other more constitutional judges in their place;—­lastly, if neither should happen, yet that the spirit of an English jury will always be sufficient for the vindication of its own rights, and will not suffer itself to be overborne by the bench.  I confess that I totally dissent from all these opinions.  These suppositions become the strongest reasons with me to evince the necessity of some clear and positive settlement of this question of contested jurisdiction.  If judges are so full of levity, so full of timidity, if they are influenced by such mean and unworthy passions that a popular clamor is sufficient to shake the resolution they build upon the solid basis of a legal principle, I would endeavor to fix that mercury by a positive law.  If to please an administration the judges can go one way to-day, and to please the crowd they can go another to-morrow, if they will oscillate backward and forward between power and popularity, it is high time to fix the law in such a manner as to resemble, as it ought, the great Author of all law, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.

As to their succession I have just the same opinion.  I would not leave it to the chances of promotion, or to the characters of lawyers, what the law of the land, what the rights of juries, or what the liberty of the press should be.  My law should not depend upon the fluctuation of the closet or the complexion of men.  Whether a black-haired man or a fair-haired man presided in the Court of King’s Bench, I would have the law the same; the same, whether he was born in domo regnatrice and sucked from his infancy the milk of courts, or was nurtured in the rugged discipline of a popular opposition.  This law of court cabal and of party, this mens quaedam nullo perturbata affectu, this law of complexion, ought not to be endured for a moment in a country whose being depends upon the certainty, clearness, and stability of institutions.