railroad companies, and that there was no law of the state authorizing such subscription. The whole matter arose under the constitution and laws of the state. The supreme court of the United States overruled this last decision of the state courts, and decided that such subscription was constitutional and was authorized by the laws of the state. The courts of the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, and others, made like decisions, and the supreme court of the United States overruled them. The legislatures of some of the states--Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan included, passed statutes authorizing local aid in shape of a tax to be voted to railroad companies. The supreme courts of these states decided that the statutes were unconstitutional, and within fifteen months thereafter the supreme court of Iowa decided that the Iowa act was constitutional. Like decisions were made in some of the other states. In Wisconsin the state courts decided the act was unconstitutional, and the supreme court of the United States overruled that decision and decided that the act was constitutional. Some of the state courts hold that railroad corporations are private, whilst others decide that they are public. The supreme court of the United States, by its decisions, clothes them with one of the attributes of sovereignty, and declares that under the law they are public corporations, and that their roads are public highways. The same court, upon the legal tender issues, decided that treasury notes were not legal tender for debts contracted before the enactment of the statute providing for their issue. In a few months after that decision was made, and after the friends of railroad corporations had so reconstructed the court as to have a majority of the court in favor of a re-hearing of the question, the same _high court_ decided that treasury notes were not only legal tender for all debts (save those excepted by the statutes), but that they were the standard of values. In all of the above decisions made by the supreme court of the nation, either reversing the decisions of the state courts, or reversing and overruling its own decisions, such reversals and overrulings were in favor of the corporations and against the people. When courts, whose duty it is to declare the law and interpret the constitution, differ so widely and change so often, it is not strange that the people should begin to look with suspicion upon, and doubt the binding force of, these decisions; and when it is received as a truth, that in the appointment of judges care was taken to select men who were pledged to decide important issues then pending, in accordance with the interests and expressed wishes of railroad companies, it will not appear strange that the people, before voting for a judge, should demand of him a pledge in favor of measures advocated by them, or that he at least should pledge himself to abstain from judicial legislation and from twisting the meaning of the