of the countries of Europe,
there were, and there still are, many private rights, connected for
the most part with the general right of property, which stood under
the protection of the courts of justice, and which the State could not
violate without their sanction. It was this semi-political power which
mainly distinguished the European courts of judicature from all others;
for all nations have had judges, but all have not invested their judges
with the same privileges. Upon examining what is now occurring amongst
the democratic nations of Europe which are called free, as well as
amongst the others, it will be observed that new and more dependent
courts are everywhere springing up by the side of the old ones, for
the express purpose of deciding, by an extraordinary jurisdiction,
such litigated matters as may arise between the government and private
persons. The elder judicial power retains its independence, but its
jurisdiction is narrowed; and there is a growing tendency to reduce it
to be exclusively the arbiter between private interests. The number of
these special courts of justice is continually increasing, and their
functions increase likewise. Thus the government is more and more
absolved from the necessity of subjecting its policy and its rights to
the sanction of another power. As judges cannot be dispensed with, at
least the State is to select them, and always to hold them under its
control; so that, between the government and private individuals, they
place the effigy of justice rather than justice itself. The State is
not satisfied with drawing all concerns to itself, but it acquires an
ever-increasing power of deciding on them all without restriction and
without appeal. *d

[Footnote d: A strange sophism has been made on this head in France.
When a suit arises between the government and a private person, it is
not to be tried before an ordinary judge--in order, they say, not to
mix the administrative and the judicial powers; as if it were not to
mix those powers, and to mix them in the most dangerous and oppressive
manner, to invest the government with the office of judging and
administering at the same time.]

There exists amongst the modern nations of Europe one great cause,
independent of all those which have already been pointed out, which
perpetually contributes to extend the agency or to strengthen the
prerogative of the supreme power, though it has not been sufficiently
attended to: I mean the gr