A country judge of reasonable intellegence, secure in his community, open in his thinking to the world, steeped in the law and committed to the good order and liberty of that jurisdiction -- this is a beautiful possibility. That it is so often actualized in our world and in our country -- well, I honor such judges.
It also gives me a little window into what Jefferson was getting at with his agrarianism, which, overall, has always struck me (and I think struck most of his contemporaries) as loopy. The insight is this: when Jefferson glorifies the agrarian life, he is not thinking of the farmhand -- the population or citizenry -- but the manor, the petty gentry, and their freedom from institutional compression.
And the type is utterly charming: the able, honest judge in a remote county seat, doing justice. But that judge isn't in any way better than the overworked, neurotic, vaguely shifty urban judge: bring the rural judge into the city and the results will be disappointing.
What is wonderful is the correspondence between the individual, the profession, and the setting. Yes, I basked in it on Tuesday.
