In replying to Root, Van Buren again discovered his kindliness of heart. The only question, he said, was whether the convention would insert an article in the Constitution for the sole purpose of vacating the offices of the present chancellor, and Supreme Court judges, and thus apply a rule which had not yet been applied in a single instance. There could be no public reason for the measure and personal feeling should not control. Referring to William W. Van Ness, he declared that he could with truth say that, throughout his whole life, he had been assailed by him with hostility--political, professional and personal--hostility which had been keen, active, and unyielding. "But, sir, am I on that account to indulge my individual resentment in the prostration of my private and political adversary? If I could be capable of such conduct I should forever despise myself." In conclusion, he expressed the hope that the convention would not ruin its character and credit by proceeding to such extremities. Van Buren struck hard, and for the time had routed the judges' opponents by a vote of sixty-four to forty-four. But if the delegates hesitated to back Root, they did not propose to follow Van Buren, and they crushed the first report under the unexpected vote of eighty-six to twenty-five. The convention had now been in session over two months, and this most troublesome question seemed no nearer settlement than on the opening day. As in the suffrage debate, there were three factions--one determined to get rid of Chancellor Kent and the five Supreme Court judges; another, less numerous, desirous of continuing them all in office, and a third, probably composed of a majority of the convention, who wished to save the chancellor and lose the others. Finally, on the first day of November, ten days before adjournment, a proposition appeared to create a Supreme Court to consist of a chief justice and two justices, and to divide the State into not less than four or more than eight districts, as the Legislature should decide, in each of which a district judge should be appointed, with the tenure and powers of Supreme Court judges. It was also provided that such equity powers should be vested in the district judges, in courts of common pleas, or in other subordinate courts, as the Legislature might direct, subject to the appellate jurisdiction of the chancellor. This was practically Root's old proposition in another form, and its reappearance made it the more certain that a majority of the convention had determined to destroy the present judges.