Though the executive and the
legislature were a direct inheritance, needing but little change, a deep
line was drawn between the three departments, and the theory of the
coordinate judiciary was first brought to its maturity within the
jurisdiction where it had been born. To attain this cherished object was
the chief labor of the delegates, for to the supreme court was to be
intrusted the dangerous task of grappling with the representative chambers
and enforcing the popular charter. Therefore they made the tenure of the
judges permanent; they secured their pay; to obtain impartiality they
excluded them from political office; while on the other hand they confined
the legislature within its proper sphere, to the end that the government
they created might be one of laws and not of men.
The experiment has proved one of those memorable triumphs which mark an
era. Not only has the great conception of New England been accepted as the
fundamental principle of the Federal Union, but it has been adopted by
every separate State; and more than this, during the one hundred and six
years since the people of our Commonwealth wrote their Constitution, they
have had as large a measure of liberty and safety under the law as men
have ever known on earth. There is no jurisdiction in the world where
justice has been purer or more impartial; nor, probably, has there ever
been a community, of equal numbers, which has produced more numerous or
more splendid specimens of juridical and forensic talent.
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