It has not been the usual custom of English judges of courts of last resort to write out their opinions. They have commonly pronounced them orally and left it to the reporters to put them in shape. The consequence has been that English reports have a conversational tone, and are not free from useless repetition. This has been not only a matter of tradition but of necessity. The English judges have always been few in number. Their time has been largely occupied in the trial of cases on the facts. It is only in recent years that certain judges have been set apart especially for appellate work. American judges, on the other hand, are numerous. There is the waste of energy in our judicial system which is the necessary concomitant of the independent sphere belonging to each separate State. Combination of all of them into one empire would make it easy to reduce the judiciary to a tithe of its present numbers. Their salaries are part of the price we pay--and can well afford to pay--for our peculiar system of political government, under which every State is an _imperium in imperio_. The ever-increasing number of our States, each with a body of law not exactly like that of any other, and each with a written Constitution which is its supreme law, requires a court of last resort in each. Experience tends to show that it ought not to be composed of less than five. There should certainly be an uneven number to facilitate decisions by a majority; and unless a minority consists of as many as two, its dissent is apt to carry little weight in public opinion. In most of the States the court of last resort is not overworked. In some the judges find time to do considerable circuit duty in the trial of original causes. This keeps them in touch with the daily life of the community, and is so far good. On the other hand it disqualifies them from sitting on an appeal from their own decisions, and so either reduces the number of the appellate court occasionally below that which is normal and presumably necessary, or involves calling in some one to act temporarily, which imperils the continuity of thought and uniformity of doctrine which should characterize every such tribunal. There is also a certain natural bias, insensible perhaps to themselves, which tends to make appellate courts stand by one of their members whose rulings while holding a trial court are brought in question. For these reasons it has now become common for the States to confine their appellate judges exclusively to appellate work. The time, therefore, which the English judge gives to circuit duty the American judge can give to writing out his opinions with all the art and care which he can command.