men of letters, and the people is apt
to mistrust the wealthy; lawyers consequently form the highest political
class, and the most cultivated circle of society. They have therefore
nothing to gain by innovation, which adds a conservative interest to
their natural taste for public order. If I were asked where I place the
American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not
composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that
it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.

The more we reflect upon all that occurs in the United States the more
shall we be persuaded that the lawyers as a body form the most powerful,
if not the only, counterpoise to the democratic element. In that country
we perceive how eminently the legal profession is qualified by its
powers, and even by its defects, to neutralize the vices which are
inherent in popular government. When the American people is intoxicated
by passion, or carried away by the impetuosity of its ideas, it is
checked and stopped by the almost invisible influence of its legal
counsellors, who secretly oppose their aristocratic propensities to its
democratic instincts, their superstitious attachment to what is antique
to its love of novelty, their narrow views to its immense designs, and
their habitual procrastination to its ardent impatience.

The courts of justice are the most visible organs by which the legal
profession is enabled to control the democracy. The judge is a lawyer,
who, independently of the taste for regularity and order which he has
contracted in the study of legislation, derives an additional love of
stability from his own inalienable functions. His legal attainments have
already raised him to a distinguished rank amongst his fellow-citizens;
his political power completes the distinction of his station, and gives
him the inclinations natural to privileged classes.

Armed with the power of declaring the laws to be unconstitutional, *a
the American magistrate perpetually interferes in political affairs. He
cannot force the people to make laws, but at least he can oblige it not
to disobey its own enactments; or to act inconsistently with its own
principles. I am aware that a secret tendency to diminish the judicial
power exists in the United States, and by most of the constitutions of
the several States the Government can, upon the demand of the two houses
of the legislature, remove the judges from their station. By some other