OF WENDELL PHILLIPS, Esq. BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL RELATIONS, (OF THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE,) IN SUPPORT OF THE PETITIONS FOR THE REMOVAL OF EDWARD GREELY LORING FROM THE OFFICE OF JUDGE OF PROBATE, FEBRUARY 20, 1855. BOSTON: J. B. YERRINTON & SON, PRINTERS. ARGUMENT.* MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN : THE petitions offered you on any one topic are usually all in the same words. On the present occasion, I observe on your table three or four different forms. This is very significant. It shows they do not proceed from a central committee, which has been organized to rouse the Commonwealth. They speak the instinctive, irrepressible wish of all parts of the State. It is the action of persons of different parties, sects and sections, moving independently of each other, but seeking the same object. Some persons have sneered at these petitions because women are found among the signers. Neither you, Gentlemen, nor the Legislature, will maintain that women, that is, just one half of the Commonwealth, have no right to petition. A civil right, which no one denies even to foreigners, will not certainly be denied to the women of Massachusetts. And is there any one thoughtless enough to affirm that this is not a proper occasion for women to exercise their rights? These petitions ask the removal of a Judge of Probate. Probate Judges are the guardians of widows and orphans. Women have a peculiar interest in the character of such judges. He chooses an exceedingly bad occasion to laugh, who laughs when the women of the Commonwealth ask you to remove a Judge of Probate, who has shown that he is neither a humane man nor a good lawyer. In the whole of my remarks, gentlemen, I beg you to bear in mind that we, the petitioners, are asking you to remove, not a Judge merely, but a Judge of Probate. A magistrate who is, in a peculiar sense, the counsellor of the widow and the fatherless. *Printed from the phonographic report of J. M. W. YERRINTON, revised and enlarged by Mr. PHILLIPS. The family, in the moment of terrible bereavement and distress, must first stand before him. To his discretion and knowledge are committed most delicate questions, large amounts of property, and very dear and vastly important family relations. Surely, that should not be a rude hand which is thrust among chords which have just been sorely wrung. Surely, he should be a wise and most trustworthy man who is to settle questions on many of which, from the nature of the case, there can, practically, be no appeal. His court is not watched by a jury. It is silent and private, and has little publicity in its proceedings. He should, therefore, be most emphatically, a magistrate able to stand alone; whose rigid independence cannot be overawed or swayed by cunning or able individuals about him; one skillful in the law, and who, while he holds the scales of justice most'exactly even, has a tender and humane heart; one whose generous instincts need no prompting from without. Some object to these petitions, that they ask you to do an act fatal to the independence of the judiciary. The petitioners are asked whether they do not know the value and importance of an independent judiciary. Mr. Chairman, we are fully aware of its importance. We know as well as our fellow-citizens the unspeakable value of a highminded, enlightened, humane, independent, and just Judge; one whom neither "fear, favor, affection, nor hope of reward," can turn from his course. It is because we are so fully impressed with this, that we appear before you. Taking our history as a whole, we are proud of the Bench of Massachusetts. You have given no higher title than that of a Massachusetts Judge to Sewall, to Sedgwick, to Parsons. Take it away, then, from one who volunteers, hastens, to execute a statute, which the law, as well as the humanity of the nineteenth century, regards as infamous and an outrage. We come before you, not to attack the Bench, but to strengthen it, by securing it the only support it can have under a government like ours-the confidence of the people. You cannot legislate Judges into the confidence of the people. You cannot preach them into it; confidence must be earned. To make the name of Judge respected, it must be worthy of respect-must never be borne by unworthy men. It never will be either respected or respectable while this man bears it. I might surely ask his removal in the names of the Judges of Massachusetts, who must feel that this man is no fit fellow for them. The special reasons why we deem him an unfit Judge, I shall take occasion to state by and by. At present, I will only add, that it is not, as report says, merely because he differs from us on the question of slavery, that we ask his removal. It is not for an honest |