culture, trade, and manufactures, continue to swell the tide of individual wealth. Such has been the progress of this system in England, and such must be its course in the United States, unless the legislature, in its wisdom and mercy, see fit to annihilate or alter the whole code of poor-laws.

Man is by nature an idleanimal; and, generally speaking, shrinks from labour, unless impelled by necessity. But the poor-law system takes away this universal impulse to industry, by relieving all the needy that apply for help; thus, in fact, encouraging that very idleness which is the original and hereditary sin of our common nature. Nor is idleness ever a solitary vice: it leads almost of necessity its votaries to intemperance, fraud, theft, and those still more atrocious crimes which shake the foundations of human society. The Spanish proverb is, "the devil tempts other people, but idle people tempt the devil." If the Spaniards would profit by the good sense of their own proverb, they would soon exhibit a beautiful and splendid contrast to the midnight darkness of sloth and slavery which now enshrouds their religious sentiments, their political opinions, their public liberty, their individual enterprise. The legislature of this country, and more particularly of our own state, is called upon by the voice of duty, as they regard the welfare of the people committed to their charge, to check the growth of an evil, whose unchecked progress must eventually convert the great mass of our community into idle, intemperate, profligate beings, and through their instrumentality consign our civil and religious liberties, our political and social institutions, the pride and ornament of an enligntened age, our private consolations, and public defences, the incentives to exertion, the light of hope, and the love of life, to the silence and forgetfulness of the sepulchre.

I cannot close this very slight summary of a few of the defects of our legal system, without noticing the radically imperfect organization of our New-York Court of Errors, which cannot be done better than in the words of Mr. Platt, now one of the judges of our supreme

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court, but sitting as a senator of our state, when he made the following observations, respecting our highest judicial tribunal.

The New-York State Constitution provides, that a court for the trial of impeachments, and correction of errors, shall consist of the President of the Senate, the Senators, Chancellor, and Judges of the supreme court, or the majority of them. "I cannot admit," says Mr. Justice Platt," the doctrine of immutability in the decisions of this court, to the unqualified extent claimed by the plaintiff's counsel. The decisions of courts are not the law, but only evidence of law. And this evidence is stronger or weaker, according to the number and uniformity of adjudications, the unanimity or dissension of the judges, the solidity of the reasons on which the decisions are founded, and the perspicuity and precision with which those reasons are expressed. The weight and authority of judicial decisions depend also on the character and temper of the times in which they are pronounced. An adjudication at a moment when turbulent passions, or revolutionary phrensies prevail, deserves much less respect than if it were made at a season propitious to impartial inquiry and calm deliberation. The peculiar organization and practice of this court render it difficult to establish a system of precedents. In the supreme court, the judges confer together, compare opinions, weigh each others reasons, and elicit light from each other. If they agree, one is usually delegated by the others, not only to pronounce judgment, but to assign reasons for the whole bench. But even in that court, and in the courts of Westminster-Hall, the judges who silently acquiesce in the result do not consider themselves bound to recognize as law all the dicta of the judge who delivers the opinion of the court. In this Court of Errors, the members never hold any previous consultation together: we vote for the most part as in our legislative capacity. Few assign any reasons, and fewer still give written opinions, which may be reported. For these reasons, I think it would be extravagant and dangerous to consider the dicta and

opinions of a single member, as settling definitively the law of the land, on all the points on which he chooses to give opinions, or to assign reasons."

The House of Lords in England, in relation to its being the highest legal tribunal in the empire, is liable to nearly the same objections which Mr. Justice Platt urges against the Court of Errors in this state. But in England, on every question of law, the peers, both clerical and lay, are in the habit of trusting implicitly to the opinions of the twelve judges; whereas, in New-York, our judges have not always the weight in the decisions of the Court of Errors which their acknowledged talents and learning ought, in all places, to command. It would be exceedingly beneficial to this state, if a convention of the people were called for the purpose of altering the constitution, at least in three particulars; namely, constituting a Court of Errors entirely of legal characters; abolishing the limitation as to age in the official tenure of our judges; and annihilating the Council of Appointment, that our governor might be a single, responsible, executive magistrate.

It is a common complaint, that the American bar is overstocked. With what?-with talent and learning. This, I believe, is not asserted, and would be difficult to demonstrate; since no community, in whole or in part, can be so overstocked, because native talent is a plant of rare growth, and still rarer cultivation, in every age and country. But our bar is overstocked with numbers. Grant the fact; and ask if talent and learning have any thing to fear from unnumbered combinations of dulness and ignorance. Can mere numbers of persons, who either neglect to exercise their understandings, or who have no minds to exercise, stop the progress of the combined force of talent, industry, and learning, in a profession where success so mainly depends upon the public display of genius and knowledge? Did the shades of Tartarus, the unsubstantial forms that hovered round his path, impede for a moment the march of Æneas onward to Elysium?

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Whether or not our bar be overstocked with numbers, I am ignorant, having no data on which to calculate with any degree of certainty and precision, if the annual increase of lawyers averages a greater proportion than it ought to bear to the yearly augmentation of wealth and population in the United States. But if the bar be, at present, overstocked with numbers, it is of no importance. It is merely a local and temporary inconvenience, which, when left to itself, will soon find its own remedy; for the quantity of every commodity always suits itself, ultimately, to the effectual demand of the existing market. Apply this doctrine to the law, and lawyers, and there need be no alarm as to the consequences of an excessive influx of students. If the bar be understocked, the practice of its members will be so abundant and lucrative, as to offer a high bounty for an immediate supply of new recruits. If it be overstocked, the practice will be so monopolized by its abler sons, as to speak to the less efficient barristers in the very intelligible language of nakedness and hunger, that the bar is no place for them; that it opens no market for the vent of their wares; that its cardinal pillars are not ignorance and idleness; that its walls are not to be buttressed up by dulness and impudence; and that they therefore must betake themselves to some employment more congenial to their nature and acquisitions, than a calling which requires the combination of native talent, with patient and persevering industry.

At all events, talent and industry need never be terrified from the pursuits of law, since, by the very nature and condition of men and things, there never can be an overstock of diligence and capacity upon the face of the earth; and since they, when directed by prudence and discretion, cannot fail of commanding success and honour in every walk of life, and in none more certainly and more splendidly than the bar. Whichever political party' be uppermost in the United States, the lawyers govern the country; they possess more influence, and exercise more power than any other power; they are emphatically the men of business, and as we have no separate

corps of professional politicians, they engross nearly all the high offices of state, whether at home or abroad. With the exception of General Washington, every President of the United States has been a lawyer; and, without any exception, all our ablest diplomatists have been selected from the same profession.

The American bar always commands a full share of the great talent of the country; indeed, it ought and it does exhibit, in proportion to our whole population, as compared with that of the British isles, a larger aggre gate display of intellect than is manifested by that of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; for, in the United States, there is no other general outlet for the first-rate talent than the profession of the law. The nature of their political institutions forbids any hope of their statesmen ever acquiring any perma nent power or extensive wealth and influence in the community, and, consequently, offers no adequate inducement for the primary talents of the country to dee vote themselves exclusively to a life of polities; whence the state seldom or never commands for her permanent service the first-rate abilities of her children. The pub pits of America are not sufficiently cherished by the national or state governments, nor sufficiently encou raged by public opinion, nor remunerated by a suffi ciently ample compensation, to offer an adequate bounty to the highest order of talent. The navy and army of the United States have not yet grown up to a sufficient size and extent to vindicate to themselves the employment of any very great proportion of the first rank of American genius. These two illustrious professions must experience many years of much more active and comprehensive service than they have ever yet seen, before they can allure to their paths of peril and glory their due proportion of the dominant mind of their country.

And in no community has trade or manufacture, the plough, or the loom, taken to itself permanently the exertions of very commanding abilities. If time and chance, cast primary native genius into either of these