To bring the question of electing or appointing justices of the peace squarely before the convention, Van Buren, at a later day, introduced a resolution providing that the board of supervisors in every county should, at such time as the Legislature directed, recommend to the governor a list of persons equal in number to the justices of the peace in such county; that the respective courts of common pleas of the several counties should also recommend a like number, and from the lists so recommended the governor should appoint. In the event of vacancies, like recommendations were to be made. The governor was also authorised to remove a justice upon the application in writing of the body recommending his appointment. This scheme was not very magnificent. It put the responsibility of selection neither upon supervisors, courts, nor governor, although each one must act independently of the other, but it gave the governor a double chance of appointing men of his own political faith. This was Van Buren's purpose. He believed in a central appointing power, which the Albany Regency might control, and, that such power should not be impotent, these minor and many magistrates, thickly distributed throughout the State, with a jurisdiction broad enough to influence their neighbourhoods, became of the greatest importance. To secure their appointment, therefore, Van Buren was ready to sacrifice the appointment of sheriffs, with their vast army of deputies. Van Buren's scheme was ably resisted. Rufus King, who was counted a Bucktail but until now had taken little part in debate, spoke against it with all the sincere emotion of one whose mind and heart alike were filled with the cause for which he pleaded. He thought justices should be elected. Each locality knew the men in whom it could trust to settle its disputes, and farmers as well as townspeople should be allowed to select the arbitrator of all their petty quarrels and disagreements. It was the very essence of home rule. In vigorous English Ambrose Spencer, William W. Van Ness, and Jacob R. Van Rensselaer supported the Senator, while Ogden Edwards of New York City, an able representative of Tammany, burning with a sense of injustice, violently assailed the proposed plan. "The unanimous vote of this convention," he said, "had shown that the Council of Appointment was an evil. A unanimous sentence of condemnation has been passed upon it, and I had not expected so soon to find a proposition for its revival."