Last January, in an address delivered before the New York State Bar Association at Albany, Mr. Justice Brewer reminded his hearers that the rights of the railroads "stand as secure in the eye and in the custody of the law as the purposes of justice in the thought of God." And further on they were told that "there are to-day $11,000,000,000 invested in railroad property, whose owners in this country number less than two million persons. Can it be that whether that immense sum shall earn a dollar or bring the slightest recompense to those who have invested perhaps their all in that business, and are thus aiding in the development of the country, depends wholly upon the whim and greed of that great majority of sixty millions who do not own a dollar? It may be said that that majority will not be so foolish, selfish and cruel as to strip that property of its earning capacity. I say that so long as constitutional guarantees lift on American soil their buttresses and bulwarks against wrong, and so long as the American judiciary breathes the free air of courage, it cannot." Unfortunately judicial buttresses and bulwarks have not always been lifted against wrong. Judge Taney, like Brewer, supposed that it was left at his time for his court to preserve the peace and provide for the safety of the nation; but history has shown that we cannot depend upon that high tribunal for safety when it is controlled by weak or inefficient men. When we consider what "that great majority" has done for this country in the past, and is doing for it at the present time, and especially when we contrast its sense of justice and right with the weakness and inability of some of its public servants, does it not seem to be a little presumptuous for them to assume that "the danger is from the multitudes--the majority, with whom is the power," and that, were it not for their superior wisdom and patriotic action, this great government of the people, by the people and for the people would be a failure? Mr. Lincoln never feared "the whim and greed" of "that great majority," but he had at all times implicit confidence in the great mass of the people, and they in return had full confidence that no temptation of wealth or power was sufficient to seduce his integrity. We cannot dismiss this subject without referring to a stratagem which railroads have in the past repeatedly resorted to for the purpose of removing from the bench judges of independent minds whom they found it impossible to control. This stratagem consists of a well-disguised bribe, by which a Federal judge is changed into a railroad attorney with a princely salary. The railroad thus gets rid of an undesirable judge and gains a desirable solicitor at a price at which they could well have afforded to pension the judge. The following is a copy of a broker's circular letter sent to prominent bankers of Iowa, and shows that even the Clerk of the United States Court is not overlooked: "----, June 30th, 1892.