The amendment to the amendment was agreed to; there being on a division, ayes fifty-six, noes twenty-eight.

The CHAIRMAN. The question recurs on the amendment of the delegate from Lawrence, (Mr. Craig,) as amended.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Mr. Chairman: As the ratio stands now, I believe it is fixed at forty-five thousand. Take Delaware county; what are you to do with it? Take Greene county, which is in the extreme south-western part of the State and contains a populations of twenty-five thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven. Washington county, immediately to the north, has forty-eight thousand; Fayette immediately adjoining it on the east has forty-three thousand; and it has no other bounds. What will you do with it? If you put it with either one of the adjoining counties, you have too much.

Mr. KAINE. Fayette and Greene would remain as they are.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Fayette and Greene would remain as they are, and they would have a single district with how much population? Sixty-nine thousand. Then you have some thirteen thousand in excess of the ratio adopted. But gentlemen say, then give them two judges. That is destroying the principle and going back to the very place where we are now, adapting the number of judges to the population and business.

I agree with the gentleman from Erie (Mr. Walker) fully in the purpose he has in view, which is, to add the necessary judicial forces to the State. I am with him to any extent that the Convention may deem prudent and proper in that regard; but the division upon the basis of population is impracticable; it cannot be done; and any man who takes up the map and the population will discover in a very little while that he cannot district this State in a way which will make population the basis.

In view of these facts, why not let these districts stand just where they are, welldevised, and, when a county attains to a population or a business which requires an additional judge or that it should be made a separate district, let it be so made. It is a question peculiarly within the province of the Legislature, and I think it should rest there. Let the districts stand, but add liberally to the force of judges, so that there may be no delay caused by the overworking of judges.

One further remark. I believe that the experience of the best judges of the State

and of the majority of lawyers in large practice is, that if judges are not well worked and kept busy, they do not make good judges; they deteriorate. No greater calamity could fall upon the State than to have a large body of judges scattered throughout our territory with not enough to do.

I will not detain the committee by prolonged discussion. I think the whole thing ought to be voted down.

Mr. BROOMALL. Mr. Chairman: The gentleman from Lycoming (Mr. Armstrong) asks with some force, what is to be done with Delaware county with a population of thirty-nine thousand, with the neighboring county of Chester, to which we are now attached, with a population of seventy-eight thousand, and with no county around to which we can be attached, unless indeed it be to the State of Delaware or New Jersey, across the river. [Laughter.]

The fact is, it is utterly impossible to district the State for any purpose, judicial, legislative, or Senatorial in the Constitution; particularly is it impossible to distribute the judges according to population. Populations change. The same population becomes not only more or less numerous, but it becomes more or less litigious.

There is another element of change that requires that this thing should be let alone in the Constitution, and that is, that judges differ. Something has been said about the judge in our district, who is capable of trying all the causes in that district and the district of the gentleman over yonder in the corner, from Montgomery (Mr. Boyd;) but the judge that may follow him may not be capable of trying all the causes in the present district with a population of one hundred and seventeen thousand, doubling as it does the average population of a law judge in the State. How can we in a Constitution accommodate all these changing circumstances? Judge Butler may die, or he may be put on the supreme bench instead of where he is, and there may follow him one or the other of my colleagues.

Mr. DARLINGTON. "Not if the court knows itself." [Laughter.]

Mr. BROOMALL. Well, probably the court does not know itself with respect to my other colleague, (Mr. Hemphill,) who is a very good man; and we may then want a judge in Delaware county; we may then want two in the district. Another

change may take place in two or three years more and we get a judge as good as the present one, and then we shall want but one.

The fact is, these things change too much to be fixed in the Constitution. We must give up the idea of apportioning the judges in the Constitution. We must entrust that matter to the Legislature, which can accommodate the laws to the changing circumstances of the districts. Mr. KAINE. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. BROOMALL. Certainly. Mr. KAINE. I wish to inquire of the gentleman from Delaware if he did not vote for fixing the number of judges of the Supreme Court, in the Constitution,

at seven?

Mr. BROOMALL. I did not. I was always for retaining the number at five. I was not here when the number was increased to seven. If I had been, I would have voted against it. I care very little about that, however. A Supreme Court of seven judges is not much more than one of five. It is a little worse, being a little slower in its operations. Still I have no particular objection to that; and I have no objection to allowing the Legislature to give an additional judge wherever he is wanted, and when the time comes at which he is not wanted, abolishing him, letting him go. I want to leave these matters to a body that can change them to suit the constantly changing circumstances. That is why I do not agree to that part of the report of the committee that proposes to assign new judges to districts, because I do not want to have these things made unalterable for a term of years. I want to have them so that they can fluctuate as the necessity for change arises.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. The report of the committee does not make the assignment of the additional judges inflexible, but leaves it entirely to the Legislature.

Mr. BROOMALL. Still I am opposed to doing anything of that sort in the Constitution. I want to leave that matter to the Legislature. Something has been said about the Legislature being unwilling to grant additional courts where they are required. That is not my experience in the Legislature. I believe we could get three judges for our district by law, if we were to apply for them. I think there is no trouble about that. I think all districts that deserve to have two judges have got them, or if there are any that 11-VOL. IV.

still need them that they can get them without any trouble. But, sir, the Legislature is the body to fix this thing, and not the Constitutional Convention, and hence I am opposed to this amendment.

Mr. NILES. Mr. Chairman: The object of this amendment 1 suppose is to give us separate judicial districts and to that I am agreed. I only desire now, however, to call the attention of the committee to the fact that by the amendment which they have just adopted, of the delegate from Erie, while they are seeking for separate judicial districts in the State, excluding Philadelphia and Pittsburg, they only give us nineteen. There are only nineteen counties in the State, after all this fuss and trouble about separate judicial districts, that will have the benefit of this provision, whereas if we had retained the original proposition of thirty thousand, thirty-nine counties would have had separate judicial districts. While you are professing to give us relief, you are giving us none. You exclude nearly all the purely rural districts in the State. It is true that in Lancaster and Berks and Schuylkill and Luzerne, and some of the large counties with not as much territory as we have, you give them separate judges, but in a great majority of the counties of this State you still keep us burdened with what the delegate from Lawrence calls the old difficulty. opposed to this and I hope we shall vote the whole thing down.

I am

Mr. CRAIG. Mr, Chairman: I believe that the virtue of the proposition which I have made consists in keeping the minimum down tolerably low, and that the amendment which has been made by the committee inserting forty-five thousand as the minimum virtually kills the proposition; it opens it to the objection made by the gentleman from Lycoming, which on that basis 1 think is unanswerable. In the proposition which I made, however, as any gentleman will see by reading it closely, it is not difficult to understand how it can all be arranged on the basis of thirty thousand. every county containing less than thirty thousand population shall be connected with one or more counties, whether they shall have less or more than thirty thou. sand people, so as to form convenient districts, and every such district shall be entitled to at least one judge and as many more as may be provided by law. county if it have eighty thousand popu lation shall be entitled to take more than

It is that

No

one judge and the Legislature would not afford it more than one unless the business required it.

I know it is true, as I said when I first rose on this subject, that population is a basis which cannot be pursued beyond the mere initiation of a system; it cannot be pursued to the end for it fails immediately on the addition of one judge. You may take population as a basis for one judge in a district, but you can do no more. The business, after that, must determine how many more it shall have; and I think gentlemen are mistaken when they say that thirty thousand is too small a basis, because, as I said, when I first rose, this proposition is made with a view to impose upon the judges the performance of all judicial work such as they have never heretofore been in the habit of doing, including that now done by masters in chancery, an auditor in the orphans' court, common pleas, and so on. Mr. BEEBE. I move to amend by striking out "forty-five thousand” and inserting "thirty-two thousand."

The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment of the gentleman from Venango to the amendment.

Mr. J. R. READ. I raise the question of order.

The CHAIRMAN. The amendment is

not in order in that connection. Other

words would have to be connected with those already inserted.

Mr. BEEBE. I move then to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to inserting "forty-five thousand."

The CHAIRMAN. The motion to reconsider can be entertained if it is seconded. Mr. CORBETT. I second it.

The CHAIRMAN. It is moved that the vote by which "thirty thousand" was stricken out and "forty-five thousand" inserted, be reconsidered. The question

is on the motion to reconsider.

The motion was not agreed to; there being, on a division-ayes thirty-four, noes forty.

The CHAIRMAN. The question recurs on the amendment of the delegate from Lawrence as amended.

are unnecessary. I think it will improve the phraseology to strike them out.

The CHAIRMAN. If there be no objection the words "organized for said courts" will be stricken out. The Chair hears no objection and those words are stricken out.

Mr. MANN. I move to amend the section by adding:

"No additional law judge shall hereafter be elected in any district composed of more than one county."

Mr. Chairman, I have offered this amendment because it seems to me to be in harmony with the votes which have been given on this question. The proposition of the gentlemen from Fayette was voted down chiefly because of the argument made by various gentlemen in opposition to double or triple districts. The arguments made against that amendment were all or nearly all of them based upon the idea that the districts ought to be sin

gle, that there ought to be no divided responsibility in these courts; and according to my experience and my judgment there should be but one judge in a district to whom all parties interested can look for the justice that is to be awarded to them. I believe that no delegate will rise in his place and from his experience of the effect of double districts speak in favor of them.

The gentleman from Erie who has had large experience in such a district condemns it and all the arguments made on this subject condemn it. They all point to the evil of it, for it is true I believe that in no district where there is more than one judge has the decision of the judge who tried a cause or made a decision upon a motion in court been reversed by his associate. So far from doing that, they will not even listen to an argument on the subject. I have the fortune or misfortune, which ever it may be-it seems to me to be the the misfortune-to live in a district of that kind; and in my district the judge who entertains a motion or tries a cause has the entire control of it; and no matter what the circumstances may be, the other judge will not listen to a motion in regard to it; and in one case where a decree was made that was notoriously wrong the judge upon the bench said that he would

Mr. ARMSTRONG. I should like to make a verbal correction in the section at this point. In the fifth and sixth lines the words "organized for said courts

to the proposition to change it because his associate had made it, and his associate did not go there for months, nearly a year and there was no remedy because the other judge would not listen to an argu