"On the whole, federal and State courts alike have been not only a protection, but the one really efficient protection of minority interests against oppression by the majority.... It has more than once happened that an impatient majority has denounced these courts as instruments of partisanship. The anti-slavery leaders, the soft money leaders, and the labor leaders have in turn taken exception to their utterances, and even ventured to impugn their motives. But I think that most intelligent men who know the history of the country will say that our courts have been the real bulwarks of American liberty; and that while Hamilton and his associates would be somewhat disappointed in the working of the machinery of legislation and administration if they could see it in its present shape, they would be filled with admiration at the work which has been accomplished by the judiciary. I believe it to be the judgment of sober-minded men that the courts have furnished the agency which has guarded us against excesses, and have saved the American republic from the necessity of repeating the successive revolutionary experiences which France underwent before she could attain to a stable democracy."[Footnote: "Freedom and Responsibility," 23, 24.] This confidence in and respect for the judiciary as a whole has increased with the general advance of the country in population and wealth. There have been larger questions with which to deal, and the courts have been found adequate to the task. But at the same time the personal consequence and reputation of every individual American judge has been steadily decreasing. As States multiply and the range of litigation widens, the work of judicial exposition of legal principles comes to be shared by so many hands that what any one man does is of comparatively small account. There is no room for star players upon the stage. Broad as it is, it is too crowded for one to make a conspicuous place for himself and stand as Marshall or Story, Kent or Parsons, did, apart from his fellows. Popular confidence is now not placed in courts because this or that man is the ruling spirit in them. It is impersonal and attaches itself to the institution of the judiciary as, all things considered, the best guaranty of good government in the United States.