further order ought to be taken on the subject, and none was. In 1826 the salary was made $1050; in 1827 an extra sum of $125 was allowed each judge for furnishing opinions in the cases heard by them; in 1839, the salary was made $1375; in 1854, $1500; in 1858, $1800; in 1864, $2100; in 1866, $2500; in 1886, $3000, and in addition a sum not exceeding $300 was allowed each judge for necessary expenses when away from home on judicial business. It must be conceded that the compensa tion of the judges, until the act of 1886, was ridiculously low. It is now fairly re spectable, but can hardly be considered extravagant; the greater part of their ser vices are performed when away from home, and until the latter modes of rapid locomo tion, they were required to be absent from home weeks and sometimes months in the discharge of their duties in distant parts of the State. More than one third of the whole number, and the ablest of them all, have declined the position or resigned, in consequence of the inadequacy of their compensation, while many able men have refused the position for that reason, among them, Robert Temple of Rutland, Hcman Allen of Milton, and Timothy Follett of Burlington, who were elected and declined. Mr. Edmunds was offered the appointment upon the resignation of Asa O. Aldis in 1 865, but declined it. He was probably then in receipt, from a single client, of a larger sum annually than the salary of a judge. This is the reason why so many judges have been elected at an age when really unfit to discharge the duties of the office; elected after their active business life was over, and when more than sixty years of age. The palmy days of the court were in 1833-35 > during this period too high an eulogium can hardly be pronounced upon it. Williams, Phelps, Royce, Collamer, and Mattocks composed the Bench. Three of them subsequently became governors and
two United States senators. If the court, at that time, had been transferred as a body to the judgment seat of any tribunal, wher ever the common law and equity was admin istered, it would have been found fully and re markably adequate to discharge all its duties. Its opinions, only a part of which are re ported, are its sufficient monument, but they fail to show, after all, the sound, prorrrpt, wholesome, and effective justice that was always administered wherever they sat. They were all men of striking personal appearance, and their proceedings were at tended with great dignity and decorum; they were all lawyers in the front rank, and intellectually of a high order. As nisi prius judges, Williams, Phelps, Royce, and Collamer were unexcelled. Mattocks as an advocate and lawyer was without a peer, while Collamer was one of the wisest, and Phelps the most gifted man, ever in the State. Vermont is a small State, and was not then connected, as now, with its neighbors in business relations. The work of its courts rarely concerned people or interests beyond the State; there were few newspapers and legal periodicals, and no reporting of deci sions, except to a partial, extent in the regular State reports. But little was therefore known about the court in other jurisdictions. Its judges at the time named were great beyond their celebrity. The judges continued substantially the same for a few years, Redfield taking the place of Mattocks in 1835, ar,d Bennett that of Phelps in 1838. The nearest ap proach to the court of 1833-5, m point of ability, was that of 1857, upon its reorgani zation, when Judges Isaac F. Redfield, Ben nett, Poland, Aldis, Pierpoint, and Barrett were the members. Besides those named as serving the two years 1833—35, the best " all round judges" were probably Poland, Steele, and Wheeler. The two greatest jurists have been Prentiss and Peck, the former however more varied and learned in his acquirements.
