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AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
to do. We can not therefore expect that Judgements wm be given with that uniform legal correctness that they ought to be and which we have a right to expect under the present system from the time which is allowed the Judges to investigate subjects under the present system we have the advantage of Court of Errors and appeals wholly and entirely distinct from the Circuit Courts and appeals are adjudicated by a Set of Judges who having never before judged the subject or compromited themselves by a decission in the Court below take up the appeals which are sent up there perfectly unbiassed and free from that influence which a prior clecission must unavoidably leave upon their minds-This would not be the case under the system proposed by this Bill One of the Judges must always have pre- judge[d] every subject which comes before them and would as is provided by this bill be incompetent to set on the tryal of any cause sent up from his Circuit. There would then be but two Judges on the Bench on every tryal and should those Judges disagree no de- cision could be had the cause would be continued from Court to Court untill one or both of [them] were removed from office and superceeded by others who would take a different view of the subject and awee in their judgement. And thus Sir numerous instances may occur where no decission can be had at all for years and suits on the decision of which perhaps the whole fortune and happiness of un- fortunate litigants might depend would hang indefinitely suspended between the Court by the obstinacy of the Judges or their various conseptions of the subject, and decisions would be thus delayed and procrastinated until! ruin and dispair may have overwhelmed and prostrated the miserable litigants whose subsistance and truest hopes depended on the issue of the suit, and the decision when it finally was obtained would be rather an agrivation than antidote to their suffer- ings as it could not perhaps relieve them but only serve to give them a slight taste of those comforts which the procrastination of the cause had incapacitated them to enjoy This system therefore Sir I contend will not insure to the citizens of this Territory the same uniform and legally correct decisions in the Circuit Courts, it [will] not insure the same impartiality un- biased uninfluenced speedy and correct <Jecisions in the Superior Court of appeals and therefore I contend is not as good a system as the present one and will not as fully answer the objects of adjudica- tion as the present system does and therefore is not in any manner equal to it in point of expediency and utility, but Sir the main argu- ment in support of this new system is that it will save the enormous sum of 2400 Dollars to the Territory. this Sir is the Colosial argu- ment which is to look down all opposition to this Bill to prostrate the arguments which may be martialed against it and dispute and crush
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