I might also mention the passage of an act by the Legislature seventy years or so ago, providing for an increase in the membership of the Supreme Court, and then the appointment by the same Legislature of one of its own members to the office thus created! The appointee was an honor to the Bench, and ranked then and for thirty years afterwards as one of the most distinguished men in the land. But what would be thought of such a procedure to-day?
And speaking of courts, I do not recall anything in recent times to match the daring of the Monmouth County people, who on March 25, 1701, captured the Governor of East Jersey, two of his Councillors and two of his Justices, who were holding court for the trial of a townsman on a charge of piracy, he having confessed that he had been on a voyage with the famous Captain William Kidd, “as he sailed, as he sailed.” The people would not “stand for” judicial interference in a little thing like that, which brought plenty of “Arabian gold” to our coasts, and so, with grim humor and determination, they kept the Governor and his Court of Sessions, together with the Attorney-General and the Secretary of the Province, in close confinement for four days. As nothing further is said about the matter it is not unlikely that the prisoners were compelled to promise immunity to their captors before being released.
“They didn’t know everything down in Judee,”
chuckled Hosea Biglow in self-satisfied complacency. But from the few instances cited it is quite apparent that our honored forefathers, could they “revisit the pale glimpses of the moon,” would have little to learn from the modern “Boss” in the way of political audacity, chicanery or finesse.
“For ways that are dark
And tricks that are vain,”
the modern politician is much the same as his predecessor of two centuries ago. But in fact there has been a steady improvement in political methods. What appears to have been common in New Jersey in the early days of the eighteenth century—such as turning a Legislative minority into a majority—is so exceptional to-day as to excite general surprise, and more or less genuine indignation. In that State ten years ago it caused a political revolution.
The golden age of American politics does not lie in the past. It looms up brightly in the future.
All the patriots, all the statesmen who have ever lived in our land, are by no means dead. To-day there are more with us than ever. Perhaps when they have left this sublunary sphere as long as have Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Marshall, Webster, Calhoun, Clay and Benton—nomina clara et venerabilia!—future generations looking back upon the eminent men of this day, through the haze of a century, may see our contemporaries surrounded by as effulgent a glamour as that which to our eyes enshrines the worthies who guided the first steps of the Nation along the paths of sure and permanent progress. Let us have faith in the Republic, and in our present leaders, following where they lead aright, and leaving them when they go astray; remembering the golden rule in government, embodied in those matchless words:
“That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”