shut their mouths. The office in each case was bestowed as a reward for political services. But the eminent fitness of each man justified his appointment on grounds of patriotism and good government. The rewards were not offered beforehand, but after great services rendered in the interests of the country. And as the great Marshall fulfilled the high trust to the uttermost, so, we shall see, did his successor. Their successive administration of justice is the noblest chapter in the history of our Government.

In order to show the services which Mr. Taney rendered to his country as Chief Justice, it is first necessary to give some account of the Court over whose deliberations he presided, and point out its functions in the working of the Federal Government.

The framers of the Constitution of the United States were men familiar with the history of nations. They had studied human society in its progress through all recorded time, in relation to Governments as they had sprung up in various forms suited to the peculiarities of different peoples. When, therefore, they were about to frame a general Government for the purpose of uniting a number of small, independent sovereign States into one body politic, their thought was some device by which questions which lead to war between States should be settled by judicial adjustment. For this purpose they gave to a Supreme Court, and such inferior courts as Congress may from

time to time ordain and establish, judicial power over all cases in law and equity arising under the Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made under their authority; over all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; over all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; over controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more States; between a State and citizens of another State; between citizens of different States; between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States, citizens, or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, or other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make.

The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trials shall be held in the State where the said crime shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may, by law, have directed. The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign State.

All the legal ideas of the framers of the Constitution, and especially of the judicial department, were derived from the common law of England. The fundamental principle of the common law, as a scheme of administrative justice, is, that a decision once made by a Court of the last resort, like the Supreme Court, shall not only bind the parties to the suit, but, the principle decided, shall be a precedent which all subsequent judges must follow as fixed law.

The Supreme Court, with the jurisdiction given to it under the Constitution, is a co-ordinate department of the Government. It is the equal, under the Constitution, with the legislative and executive departments. It sits in the Capitol the supreme dispenser of Federal law. It has the high function because of the limitations which the Constitution has imposed upon the legislative department, to declare any of its enactments null and void which it may deem in conflict with the Constitution, when the question arises in a case litigated before it by parties to a suit. This is the highest function ever bestowed upon a Court. And it is the provision of the Constitution which, above all others, signalizes it as having ordained and established a Government of limited powers. It clothes the Supreme Court with moral sublimity. It supposes that, without patronage, and without any other power than its own character for learning, virtue, patriotism, and a love of justice, it will declare, as it is its duty

under the Constitution to do, an act passed by Congress and approved by the President, null and void, when not authorized by the Constitution. And above all, it supposes that the people will have such reverence for its decisions that they will go into effect by the simple forms of civil process as certainly as the silent laws of nature take effect.

It was over the deliberations of such a tribunal, the most august ever established among men, that Mr. Taney was called to preside. No man ever realized more entirely the grandeur of high judicial functions, and felt more profoundly its responsibilities. And never did a man bring to the discharge of duty a more sublime moral courage. As to his qualifications as lawyer for the office, they were the most complete. He had not only mastered every branch of legal learning in every form of judicial tribunal, from the highest to the lowest, but he was extraordinarily familiar with practice in every species of Court. No matter from what Court, whether on the law or the equity side, a record came up on writ of error or appeal, he could see at once its full import. And his long and diversified experience as a practising lawyer in courts of original jurisdiction, had made him as familiar with rules of practice as the most experienced clerk of a Court. He was marshalled to his place by a divine tactic, for the good of his country, if ever a public functionary was, just as his great predecessor had been.

Before I sketch the judicial career of Mr. Taney, it is important, in order to understand the influence of the Supreme Court in the working of the Federal Government, to give some account of the conduct of his predecessors in the high office of Chief Justice.

John Jay, the first Chief Justice, was a Federalist of the extremest political views of his party. He may be said to have had none but an entirely perverted view of the character of the Federal Government. In 1785, in a letter to a friend, he wrote: "It is my first wish to see the United States assume and merit the character of one great nation, whose territory is divided into different States merely for more convenient government and the more easy and prompt administration of justice; just as our several States are divided into counties and townships for the like purposes." And in a letter to General Washington, just before the convention which framed the Constitution met, he wrote: "What powers should be granted to the Government so constituted is a question which deserves much thought. I think the more the better; the States retaining only so much as may be necessary for domestic purposes, and all their principal officers, civil and military, being commissioned and removable by the national Government." When the Constitution was agreed upon and submitted to the States for ratification, he became its zealous advocate. He saw it through his theoretic view of what he