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The Green Bag.

Congress several years later. He was ap pointed judge of the Court of Appeals, a seat which he resigned after occupying it two years, and subsequently he was elected United States senator for Kentucky. William T. Barry, who was the chief justice of the "New Court" was elected lieutenant governor of Kentucky in 1820, was a candidate for governor in 1828 and was defeated then because of his alliance with the " New Court " party. Notwith standing his defeat, however, he greatly helped to carry the State for Jackson at the presidental election in the same year. He was appointed postmaster general under Jackson and held that office as long as his health permitted. In 1835 he was appointed minister to Spain, but died in Liverpool be fore he reached his post of duty. The lessons taught by the results of this contest have been of the greatest value, not only to Kentuckians, but to all who feel an interest in the institutions of free government. They serve to show that ultimate reliance can be placed in the honesty and good sense of the people. It was Abraham Lincoln who said that " You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time," and the history of Kentucky proves that he was right. In the early days of the republic no

lesson could be more important than to learn that the sudden impulses of the people are not to be trusted, and that the dangers of a republic lie in the substitution of popularity for patriotism and in forgetting that a true democracy is a government of as well as a government for and by the people. The last and now the most important les son to be drawn from this great controversy is one which the people then learned for the first time and, it is to be feared, are now too near forgetting — the importance of a pure and independent judiciary. Said Chief Justice Marshall in the Virginia Convention of 1829- 1830: "I have always thought from my earliest youth that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever in flicted upon an ungrateful and sinning people was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary." In the days of Boyle, Owsley and Mills the judiciary of Kentucky was her crowning glory. May the memory of their dis tinguished services in behalf of constitutional government never fade away and, while it endures, let good citizens keep in mind the lessons of the " Old Court" " New Court" controversy, and remember that the triumph of the "Old Court" was the triumph of the people over themselves and is another proof that " Peace hath her victories no less re nowned than those of war."

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