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EVERYTHING IN SIGHT”
W. J. Thom: Wyoming Convention
(Continued from page 13)
Upon your decision stands or falls the state bankers association. If you will attach concrete interests, no bank in the state can afford to stay outside of your fold. If you ding to abstractions and generalities, your influence will be nil and the country banker will be forced to paddle his own canoe. My letter of June first covers the ground which I believe the banks should take.
The writer has in person visited attorney-general of the state and asked for an opinion on the law. He has called on his county assessor for a citation to the statutes under which he was working. The attorney-general very sensibly declined to give an opinion until it was asked for by the tax commissioner, the assessor very sensibly took refuge behind “orders from the commissioner.’' What we need is more information in regard to the law upon which the commissioner bases his rulings, and less in regard to arbitrary “orders.”
Now, gentlemen, it is up to you. All the satisfaction we have obtained, and I venture to say all that any of you have obtained from the assessors when asked for a citation of the law is “we do not know anything about the law; these are the commissioner’s orders.” I want to say to you that the present tax commissioner has no more ardent admirer or staunch friend in Wyoming, for what he has done and is doing for the state, than myself, but this paper is based upon the supposition that the tax commissioner was appointed to enforce existing laws—that he is endowed with executive and not legislative power, but if it appears from the tax situation that I am mistaken, for we are cheerfully informed,— not that the law says you must pay a certain tax, but that the commissioner says so.
Gentlemen, I will be the first to insist that the banks of Wyoming pay every dollar of tax that the law required, but, craving your pardon, I will be the last to advocate paying what any man or set of men demand, without authority of law.
The commissioner says, “I hereby order that you assess the capital and surplus of all banks.” The banks have their sober judgment, plus the law, to back their position. The commissioner has his arbitrary “order,” minus the law, to back his. The chimera of assessment at full value has been chased to a finish this year, and you all know what an absolute failure it has been.
Surplus is a sinking fund provided for, partly by the wisdom of the lawmakers, and partly by the conservatism of the bankers, as a guaranty that the capital stock of the bank shall never fall below par,—it is. in a sense, a buffer provided (Continued on page 22)
confronted with the fact that your term of office is expiring. The practice you had before you went upon the bench has long since been scattered to the four winds. Every client who has survived the period of ten years is now safely cared for in some lawyer’s office. You have saved but little out of your salary, and your expenses have increased with time. The possibility of having to start again to build up a practice as you did thirty years before, with the heavy handicap of age and responsibility, is fraught with such possibilities of want and suffering for those dependent upon you, as to cause you to discard such a step as hardly to be considered. Would you then in this situation, in these circumstances of your affairs, if approached by a politician who represents many votes, and who asked you, for example, to approve the pardon of a man you had just sentenced for his crime, be able to tell him to get behind you ? Or, if you sat in judgment upon some cause of great popular interest, where many thousand votes might rest upon the scales, would you be able to hold those scales as impartially as if your own political destruction did not rest upon the result? These are only some of the things which have to be met and encountered day in and day out by the men who perform the very highest duties that the state can demand, and who do it with a firmness and courage which can but excite respect and admiration on every side. But why should they be ])lit in this position ? Why should they be required to seek the position through the maze of practical politics? Why should they be required to hold it at the favor of partisan leaders? Is it not apparent that here is one of the things which in the world's to-morrow must be worked out along different lines and the time come when the selection of a judge shall be simply made by the chief executive, and, when selected, he shall hold his place until death calls him, or a wise age limit shall provide for his future maintenance, without further trial on his part ?
These are some of the questions which I have sought to present before you, needing at least the attention of the intelligent and thoughtful portion of the community. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and eternal vigilance can nowhere be better directed than on the foundation stratum of the social house, its judiciary; and, as I have said in the beginning, to you, of all men in the community, these subjects should have consideration, for as the watchman of a financial state, you are also the watchman of all that goes to preserve, protect, and keep pure, the institutions of that state.
judge cannot lay aside his character and reputation as a license judge as he hangs up his robe of office, and go back into the common pleas a distinct and different individual, but these criticisms hang to him and touch his usefulness through all his public life. As I have said before, his integrity must not only be spotless, but it must be free from suspicion. It has always been so kept in Pennsylvania, and it seems now that the public conscience must be asleep to permit its highest class of public officials to be charged with the administration of a traffic which reeks with accusations of unfairness, impartiality, and even of crime.
One other matter, which is at least a subject of consideration, whether or not any change of this sort could be effected, is the extension of the term of the judges and the taking of their creation as far as possible out of the realm of politics. Your federal judiciary are appointed and their tenure of office is for life, or until a certain age limit is reached, when they are retired upon a pension equivalent to the full salary. Men of the highest professional standing are willing to accept these positions, which come in a dignified way, without any political appeal being necessary, and with an assured position for life, at a less salary than they would receive in the state judiciary. Any of you who have had occasion to conduct litigation in another state, will bear me out when I state that your first direction to counsel is, to have the case brought in, or removed to, the federal courts. You do this, not because of any reflections upon the local judiciary, but because you know the federal judiciary and know that in that court you will get exactly the law as the judge believes it to be, without a hair’s breadth more and without a hair’s breadth less.
In England the same system has always been at work, and her experience for nearly a thousand years shows how highly she has valued the placing of her judges above the reach of any political fear or favor, and supported in their actions by the whole power of the crown; that that judicial system stands unexcelled in the civilized world will be conceded by every one. Let me put to you a typical case, and let your answer determine the merits of our present system. Suppose, at the age of forty, you felt that your services to your party and to your profession entitle you to a judicial position. Suppose you had made this want known to your brethren in question and to the party leaders, and your request was approved and your ambition was gratified by your being elected judge. Ten years soon pass by and, as you approach fifty, you are