the men possessing these qualities requires extensive and
protracted inquiry and patient consideration, such as are not and
cannot be exercised by the people directly. The task should be deputed
in the first instance to the head of the state, the chief executive.
He has the best means of ascertaining who possesses the requisite
qualifications in the greatest degree. He would feel that he alone was
responsible for a proper selection, and that feeling of responsibility
would tend to make him deliberate and painstaking in his choice. On
the other hand, if the original selection be entrusted to the
legislature or left with the people acting directly, individual
members would have a much lower sense of personal responsibility and
the individual members of the electorate scarcely any at all. True, in
those states where the judges are elected by the people directly,
excellent judges are often and perhaps ordinarily chosen, but I think
I state a truth in stating that upon the whole those courts composed
of judges with a long tenure and appointed by the executive stand
higher in public estimation and their opinions have greater weight.
Such courts are certainly a greater protection to those guilty of no
wrong, but who have been so unfortunate as to incur the displeasure of
an excited community.

Nevertheless, despite the lessons of history and the reasons contra,
it is proposed in this twentieth century that the tenure of the judges
shall again be during pleasure only,--this time during the pleasure of
the majority of the electorate. The proposition is not stated so
baldly by its proposers. They phrase it as the right of the people to
remove or recall unsatisfactory public servants, whether judges, or
governors, or other officials. They propose that at the request of a
certain small percentage of the electorate, setting forth their
dissatisfaction with a judge, he may be removed by a majority of the
voters. As precedents for their proposal they point triumphantly to
the provision of the British Act of Settlement that judges should be
removable by the crown upon the request of both Houses of Parliament,
and to similar provisions in many of our state constitutions.

Of course, there should be lodged somewhere the power to remove judges
proven to be unworthy of their high office, or incapable of performing
its high duties, but it should be lodged in a body of men before whom
the accused judge can appear in person or by counsel, h