Since our meeting on Tuesday-evening,1 I have revolved in my mind the subject of our consultation, & having thought proper, merely for my own use, to make a short minute of what passed at that time, or of what made the most forcible impression on my understanding, I have briefly expressed the substance in the few observations hereto subjoined. As these were much better enforced then than I can pretend to do, especially in short notes, designed only as a help to my own memory, I should not have thought of laying them before you, if it had not happened that in the progress of my reflections, one circumstance occur’d which I do not remember to have heard mentioned at our conference. It is the last of the objections minuted against the judiciary-bill— Whether it may have weight enough to deserve a place in our joint representation2 I am not sure; yet, believing it to be the duty of every judge to contribute every thing in his power towards placing in a fair point of view the real objections to the judiciary system, I thought I ought not to suppress any thing which has suggested itself to me on that topic; requesting at the same time that if it should appear to you to be frivolous, or at best specious, you would not admit it in the catalogue of our objections. I am, with the highest esteem & respect, Dear Sir, Your most obedient servant,

Objections to the judiciary-bill—

In case of stationary allotments of the judges to the several circuits, there will be great inequality of burden, tho very great in all; perhaps it may be found impracticable to perform constantly the severer duties, if even the less severe should prove practicable. If, to avoid this the allotments should be rotatory, justice is not likely to be so well administered. Judges must hastily decide the most knotty cases; for, upon that plan, postponement for farther argument or farther consideration would be absurd— Indeed, on any circuit-plan, the judges would be so constantly employed in riding, & so long absent from those facilities which they might find at home, as to have no Opportunity of consulting books, or of studying to advantage— It is, besides, liable to objection, that men who have decided a cause in one court, should determine it again in an appellative capacity. Congress seems in the judiciary bill to have attended to that circumstance in the case of the district-judges.3 And if to avoid this inconvenience, all appeals to the supreme court should be decided by those judges only who had not before sat on the cause, mutual reversals seem not likely to put things into a happier train— Possibly too, the circuit system may not be perfectly consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, which intended the supreme court as a dernier resort only, except in a few instances where they are to originate business; & it is perhaps rather nice to distinguish between a court & the judges of that court— But the constitution seems also to have intended, that the judges of such inferior courts as Congress might see fit to establish should be a sett of judges distinct from those of the supreme court— “The judges both of the supreme & inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behaviour” &c— While the same judges receive an unapportioned salary for both duties— to be secured in the enjoyment of the inferior jurisdiction does not look like an advantage, & yet, an advantage was certainly intended by the constitution in respect to both jurisdictions—