Is it probable that the long literary leisure of the judges in this city, during ten months of the year, would be devoted to searching the two hundred volumes of jarring decisions of State courts, or in studying the acts of twenty-four State Legislatures? The man must have a singular taste and a firm resolution who, in his closet, could travel over this barren waste. And even if he should, what would be the consequence? The truth is, such knowledge cannot be obtained; and after it has been acquired, it cannot be preserved, except by constant practice. There are subjects which, when the memory has once grasped, it retains forever. It has no such attachment for acts of Assembly, acts of Congress, and reports of adjudged cases, fixing their construction. This species of knowledge, under the present system, will always be possessed by the judges of the Supreme Court; because, in the performance of their circuit duties, they are placed in a situation in which it is daily expounded to them, and in which they are daily compelled to decide questions arising upon it. Change this system, make them exclusively judges of an appellate court, and you render it highly probable that their knowledge of the general principles of the laws of their country will become more and more faint, and that they will finally almost lose the recollection of the peculiar local systems of the different States. “Practice makes perfect,” is a maxim applicable to every pursuit in life. It applies with peculiar force to that of a judge. I think I might appeal for the truth of this position to the long experience of the distinguished gentleman from New York, now by my side (Mr. Spencer). A man, by study, may become a profound lawyer in theory, but nothing except practice can make him an able judge. I call upon every member of the profession in this House to say whether he does not feel himself to be a better lawyer at the end of a long term, than at the beginning. It is the circuit employment, imposed upon the judges of England and the United States, which has rendered them what they are. In my opinion, both the usefulness and the character of the Supreme Court depend much upon its continuance.