GREAT MEN'S BODIES
now human life itself; yet when did you ever hear of either of these men losing a day, or not being up to his work? Like nearly all our judiciary, inadequately paid; upon a basis of many years ago, when our population was much smaller and poorer; while their work has increased vastly in volume, magnitude, difficulty, and importance; receiving but a fifth as much, for instance, as the Lord Chancellor of England; yet holding more responsible positions than his—dealing with a wider range of questions—a seriously unfair and unjust way to treat men of whom seventy-five million people expect and demand the essence of justice. Do you get the best work out of the most skilled men in your employ by squeezing them down to half pay? Do you or I do our best work when he for whom we do it tries to get off with only partly paying for it? Is or is not the workman "worthy of his hire"? And will you name men whose lives are fuller of more important and more exacting, never-ceasing labor than our judiciary? When the fate of vast railroad properties, or of a mighty city even, hangs trembling in the hands of a mob; and the nation watches breathless to see if law and order and right shall prevail; and the very integrity of our institutions even is in jeopardy; does or does not he by the single stroke of whose pen the danger may grow, or may cease, need the knowledge and the wit to see, and the nerve to do exactly right? It is a national loss when men like Chief Justice Cooley can no longer stand the ceaseless, mighty strain; and give way under it. Chief Justice Shaw saw better than Mr. Webster himself did, what a sacrifice he was asking him to make; and yielded to the giant onslaught of that compelling mind only after the most stubborn resistance. Our law-makers should see to it at once that this glaring evil is remedied; and in a way
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