Points (2) and (3) in the governor's address were prompted by the widespread interest created by the action of the legislature in October, 1815, when it had set aside the conviction, by a special Superior Court at Middletown, of Peter Lung for murder, on the ground that the court was irregularly and illegally convened. The chief judge was Zephaniah Swift of Windham, author of the "System of Connecticut Laws." [z] Judge Swift appealed to the public [aa] to vindicate his judicial character from the censure implied by the Assembly's action. An ardent Federalist, who in the early days of statehood could see no need of a better constitution than he then insisted Connecticut possessed through the adoption of her ancient charter, he had long opposed the ecclesiastical establishment which that charter upheld. In his defense of the constitution he had maintained that "it ought to be deemed an inviolable maxim that _when proper courts of law are constituted, the legislature are divested of all judicial authority_." [2l2] But when the legislature claimed as constitutional the right to call to account any court, magistrate, or other officer for misdemeanor or mal-administration, [ab] Judge Swift admitted the lack of "a written constitution." He further argued that the one "made up of usages and customs, had always been understood to contain certain fundamental axioms which were held sacred and inviolable, and which were the basis on which rested the rights of the people." Of these self-evident principles one was that the three branches of government--the executive, legislative, and judicial--were coordinate and independent, and that the powers of one should never be exercised by the other. "It ought to be held as a fundamental axiom," the judge declared, "that _the Legislature should never encroach on the jurisdiction of the Judiciary,_ nor assume the province of interfering in private rights, nor of overhauling the decisions of the courts of law." Otherwise, "the legislature would become one great arbitration that would engulf all the courts of law, [ac] and _sovereign discretion_ would be 'the only rule of decision,--a state of things _equally favorable to lawyers and criminals."_ [213] With respect to the fifth point in the governor's address, the right of suffrage, the Republicans and their allies demanded its extension from householders haying real estate rated at $7 (40s.), or personal estate of $134 (£40), to "men who pay small taxes, work on highways, or do service in the militia."