who is robed in judicial honors reposes in perfect ignorance of the ignominy which his acts of dishonor are bringing on his name. This has been the fate of many a judge.” (_Thirty Years in New York Politics_, p. 25.) A New York newspaper in the Tweed days said that there was no quarter of the civilized world where the name of a New York judge is not a hissing and a byword. The New York bench has on the whole improved since 1871 when this was written; but it is very far from being what it ought to be, and its attainment of a high standard is impossible under manhood suffrage. Taking the judicial system of the United States as a whole for the last three quarters of a century it must be said that the administration of justice has been inefficient; a large percentage of the judges have been and are unfit for their places; clerks and sheriffs corrupt and incapable; there have been chronic and intolerable delays; juries almost everywhere carelessly selected, and usually incompetent and morally weak or dishonest; inferior magistrates corrupt and unfit; many of the trial judges weak and slow and referees and masters grasping and extortionate. Congress and the several states have adopted the stupid policy of underpaying the bench, apparently on the theory that any lawyer is capable of being a judge; and of employing as few judges as possible in order to save some of the money elsewhere so wickedly squandered. These foolish economies to offset reckless waste are characteristic of the lower classes; they are given effect by universal suffrage, and harmonize with the whole inefficient outfit. The result is that in many cities important cases are on the trial calendars for months and even years waiting to be heard because there are not judges enough to hear them promptly; erroneous decisions of weak and ignorant judges keep the appellate courts busy ordering reversals and granting new trials; and a controversy that ought to be disposed of in a few months may drag along for years and until some of the witnesses have disappeared or died and others have forgotten all they once knew about the case. Mr. Bryce, in his _American Commonwealth_, treats the subject of the judiciary with great circumspection, and with an evident desire to speak well of the American bench, but is unable after “careful inquiries” to answer even in the matter of honesty for more than “nearly all the northern and most of the southern and western states.” He says that “In a few states, probably six or seven in all, suspicions have at one time or another within the last twenty years attached to one or more of the Supreme judges,” and has “never heard of a state in which more than two or three judges were the objects of distrust at the same time.” It is worth while to stop to realize what this amounts to: from twelve to twenty dishonest judges of the highest state courts in the United States, actually sitting day after day, dealing out infamy under the name of justice;