So the Whigs were restored to power by the fall election in 1852. Their heads were turned by their success. They did not quite dare to repeal the law providing for a Constitutional Convention, but they undertook to repeal so much of it as required that the choice of delegates should be by secret ballot. The minority resisted this repeal with all their might. They alleged with great reason that it was not decent for the Legislature to repeal a provision which the people has expressly approved. But their resistance was in vain, and after a long and angry struggle which stirred the people of the Commonwealth profoundly the provision for the secret ballot was abrogated. But the result of the contest was that the Whigs were routed at the special election for delegates to the Convention. That body was controlled by the Coalition by a very large majority. Their triumph made them also lose their heads. So when the Convention assembled in 1853, they disregarded the pledges which had enabled them to get the assent of the people to calling the convention, and provided that the tenure of office of the Judges of the Supreme Court should be for ten years only, and that the Judges of Probate should be elected by the people of the several counties once in three years. It is said, and, as I have good reason to know, very truly, that this action of the Convention was taken in consequence of a quarrel in Court between the late Judge Merrick and General Butler and Mr. Josiah G. Abbott, two eminent leaders of the Democrats, members of the Convention. They had neither of them agreed to the proposition to change the judicial tenure. They were absent from the convention for several days in the trial of an important cause before Merrick, and returned angry with the Judge and determined to do something to curb the independent power of the Judges. The proposition was adopted. These schemes were a distinct violation of the pledge which had been given when the Legislature submitted to the people the proposition for calling the Convention. Of course it was a fair answer to this complaint to say that the members of the committee who made that report could in such a matter bind nobody but themselves. That was true. But I think if the men who signed that report, and the men who joined them in giving the assurance to the people, had been earnest and zealous in the matter it is quite likely they could have prevented the action of the Convention.