Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[177] rusted to manage their own affairs. The people, with their practical common-sense, instinctive feeling of right and wrong, and manly love of fair play, are the true conservative element in a just government. It is true, the people are not always right; but it is true, also, that the people are not often wrong,--less often, surely, than their leaders. The theory of our government is, that the purity of the bench is a matter which concerns every individual. Whenever, therefore, guilt, recklessness, or incapacity shield themselves on the bench, by technical shifts and evasions, against direct collision with the law, it is meant that the reserved power of the people shall intervene, and save the State from harm.

It is easy to conceive many occasions for the exercise of such a power. How many men among us, by gross misconduct in railroad or banking companies, have incurred the gravest disapprobation, and yet avoided legal conviction? Suppose such men had been at the same time judges, will any one say they should have been continued on the bench? Yet, on the remonstrant's theory, it would be an “abuse of power” to impeach or “address” them off the bench! Suppose a judge by great private immorality incurs utter contempt,--is drunk every day in the week except Probate Court day,--shall he, because he is cunning enough to evade statutes, still hide himself under the ermine? Suppose a Judge of Probate should open his court on the days prescribed by the statute, and close it in half an hour, as your Judge Loring did when he shut up the Probate Court of Suffolk on Monday, the 29th of May, to hurry forward the kidnapping of Anthony Burns. Suppose some judge should thus keep his court open only five minutes each probate day the whole year through. He violates no statute, though he puts a stop to all business; yet, according to the arguments of the press and the remonstrant, it would be a gross abuse of power to impeach