ume of
Barr's Reports had been published, in which the Supreme Court said:
"The time is come, when the doctrine of Steele _v._ The Ph[oe]nix Ins.
Co. must be exploded altogether. The essential interests of justice
demand that the decision in that case be no longer a precedent for
anything whatever." (McClelland _v._ Mahon, 1 Barr, 364.) And the Judge
before whom the cause was then tried had no other course left, but again
to reject the witness, the very same thing on account of which a new
trial had been ordered.

The case of Post _v._ Avery is a most striking illustration of judicial
legislation and its mischievous results. It is usual to hear it excused
on account of the unequal and unjust operation of the rule reversed, by
which one party was heard but not the other, and the temptation it held
out for the manufacture of false claims, to be supported by perjury. But
it is to lose sight of the real question involved to raise such an
issue: for, like the execution of a notorious culprit by the expeditious
process of a mob and a lamp-post, instead of the formalities and delays
of law and courts, it may be a very good thing for the community to
have rid itself of the offender, but the way by which it was
accomplished was a heavy blow at the very root of the tree of public and
private security.

There is another decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, not so
bold and avowed an act of judicial legislation as that just mentioned,
but not less transparent, which may be cited as strongly illustrating
the same consequences of uncertainty and litigation flowing from a
disregard of the principle adverted to. From the year 1794, there had
existed in Pennsylvania an act of Assembly limiting the lien of the
debts of a decedent on his real estate, at first to seven, afterwards to
five years. No question ever arose before the court in regard to it.
Lien was considered to mean lien and not obligation: lands to be subject
to execution for all debts of the owner prosecuted to judgment, and of
course not barred by the Statute of Limitations; and the limitation of
the lien merely intended for the protection of purchasers from the heirs
or devisees or their lien creditors. Such was recognized to be the true
meaning of the law in 1795 (Hannum _v._ Spear, 1 Yeats, 566), and so
distinctly ruled in 1830 (Bruch _v._ Lantz, 2 Rawle, 392); yet on
grounds palpably only relevant to what, in the opinion of the court, the
law ought to be, it