bosom. To a person which in youth was very attractive, to manners uncommonly pleasing, she added a fine understanding, and the sweetest temper which can accompany a just and modest sense of what was due to herself. She was educated with a profound reverence for religion, which she preserved to her last moments. This sentiment among her earliest and deepest impressions, gave a coloring to her whole life; hers was the religion taught by the Savior of men. She was a firm believer in the faith inculcated by the church (Episcopal) in which she was bred.

"I have lost her and with her I have lost the solace of my life. Yet she remains still the companion of my retired hours, still occupies my inmost bosom. When alone and unemployed, my mind still recurs to her. More than one thousand times since December 25, 1831, have I repeated to myself the beautiful lines written by General Burgoyne, under a similar affliction, substituting Mary' for 'Anna':—

One of his descendants, a great-grandchild, writes me that the family knew well she would learn from others that he was a great man; "they told me he was only a good one. My father spent many Christmas holidays with his grandparents. His grandmother was an invalid and intolerant of the slightest noise, but his grandfather was ever ready to be his playfellow and companion. Every morning and evening he would take him by the hand and bid him be very quiet; then on tiptoe, with finger on his lips, he would take him to her room to say good-morning and good-night. He was a devoted lover every day of her life. He was a humble but devoted Christian. And he said he never failed nightly to say the little prayer, 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' which he learned at his mother's knee as soon as he could lisp."

With Marshall, the Chief Justices who had participated in the Revolution ended. Taney, though born during the

At

Revolution, was twenty-two when Washington died. fifty-nine he was Chief Justice; he died in the eightyeighth year of his age in Washington.

Taney was a man of iron will and undaunted courage, braved public opinion boldly when he thought it his duty, and, though naturally vehement and passionate, he used no harsh or vindictive language toward his traducers, and his temper was kept under perfect control. Even when engaged in politics, the harshest expressions ever used by him were at a public meeting called by his political friends to greet him after his nomination as Secretary of the Treasury had been rejected by the Senate. It was the first time in the history of the Government that the Senate had refused to confirm a Cabinet Minister nominated by the President. Mr. Webster, in a speech at a public dinner, had alluded to Taney as "the pliant instrument of the President, ready to do his bidding"; for Taney, as Secretary of the Treasury, had ordered the removal of the public deposits from the United States Bank. At the meeting to which I refer Taney said: "Neither my principles nor my habits lead me to bandy words of reproach. with Mr. Webster or any one else. But it is well known that he has found the bank a profitable client, and I submit to the public whether the facts I have stated do not furnish ground for believing that he has become its 'pliant instrument' and is prepared on all occasions to do its bidding whenever and wherever it may choose to require him. In the situation in which he has placed himself before the public, it would far better become him to vindicate himself from imputations to which he stands justly liable than to assail others."

He had advised General Jackson in 1832 to veto the bill renewing the charter of the United States Bank, and he aided in preparing the veto message; in fact, he was the only member of the Cabinet who favored the veto. The correspondence between General Jackson and Taney in August, 1833, has convinced every one that the removal of the public deposits from the United States Bank was not the act of the pliant instrument of the President, but of a Cabinet Minister in execution of a policy which he had urged upon the President.

The opinion in the Dred Scott case elicited storms of

disapprobation from heated partisans; the political leaders in paroxysms of rage traduced the Court and the Chief Justice, and, for the first time in the history of the nation, a political party through its platform of principles and the President elected by them, inculcated the doctrine "that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

The arbitrament of the Supreme Court being rejected, nothing was left but the sword. The judgment delivered in the Dred Scott case has been tried, as in the olden times, by an appeal to the wager of battle, and in that way it has been reversed.

When war came, Taney was not deterred by clamor, nor by flaming swords, nor by the insolence of power, nor by threats, from the performance of his official duty.

A distinguished gentleman of the Baltimore bar, who witnessed the trial of the Merryman habeas corpus case in Baltimore, thus described the scene to me:—

"I do not think that there ever was a more striking illustration of judicial dignity and self-restraint than what occurred at the hearing of the celebrated habeas corpus case of John Merryman in 1861. It would not be easy to conceive a more remarkable manifestation of the control which one old and infirm man could exercise over a large and highly-excited crowd by the mere force of his own personality and his hold on the public respect and affection. Long before the hour of the hearing the streets leading to the Court-house were filled with a dense mass of people. It was not long after April 19, 1861, and the popular mind had lost but little of the excitement of that occasion. The crowd, nevertheless, was comparatively quiet, but the suppression of feeling only added to its intensity. It would have needed but a word to start a popular movement which would not have been checked, in any way, by the knowledge that a very considerable body of regular troops was at Fort McHenry. As the Chief Justice came down for the meeting of the Court he was leaning upon the arm of his young grandson. As he approached the crowd, half a square from the court-room, every man lifted his hat, and a pathway was opened through the dense mass of people for him and his companion to pass. As the Chief Justice walked through, the whole crowd uncovered them

selves, and they continued uncovered until he entered the Court-house. The immediate approach to the entrance was so closely packed that the Chief Justice was compelled to pass down the side of the Court-house to a private entrance, which gave him access to the bench from the rear of the building. The court-room itself was so much crowded that I think it would have been difficult to pack a half dozen more men in it. "When the Chief Justice came in the most absolute silence prevailed. He asked the clerk in his usual quiet and low tones, whether any return had been made to the writ. The officer whom General Cadwalader had made the bearer of his return proceeded to read it. His manner was not calculated to diminish the feeling of indignation and resentment, which was caused by the avowed determination of the General to disobey the, mandate of the Court and disregard the rights of Mr. Merryman as a citizen. An intense but subdued excitement became visible throughout the court-room, though the dead silence continued. The same excitement was soon communicated to the people outside. Nothing but the manner and bearing of the Chief Justice, and the veneration in which he was held, prevented an outbreak on the spot, of which General Cadwalader's messenger would probably have been the victim. So great, however, was the silent influence of the Chief Justice, and the respect for his person and authority, that no demonstration of any kind was made, and the city was thus saved from a catastrophe which, in the then state of the public mind, could not have been otherwise than very disastrous, both in itself and its consequences. It was very difficult to conceive, without witnessing it, that in a case involving the liberty of the citizen, and the legal and constitutional guarantees that secure it, any judicial officer impressed with the responsibility of the occasion, and indignant, as he must have been, at the defiance of his mandate and the asserted supremacy of the Federal Executive over the Constitution and laws, could have so dealt with the matter that the most careful observer would trace no departure, in the slightest degree, from the tranquil dignity which characterized the Court in the daily exercise of its ordinary jurisdiction."

His

Taney was not ambitious of political office; political life. did not suit his taste, because he was a thoroughly trained lawyer and devoted to his profession. He was a classical scholar and studied English with uncommon care. style was simple and severe; in perspicuity of finish and language he was unsurpassed. He was a constant student; his studies embracing literature ancient and modern. His memory was surprising and his mind so logical that its power of subtle analysis, says Mr. Justice Curtis, exceeded that of any man he ever knew. He was a man of high

member of the New York Convention, had taken a leading part in framing the Constitution of that State in 1777. It was he who prepared the address of the Continental Congress to the people of Great Britain, a vigorous, patriotic paper which fixed the eyes of the people upon him.

His skill in negotiating the Treaty of Peace is universally recognized. He induced Franklin to concur with him and John Adams, in disregarding the instructions of Congress, to act in concert with our ally, the King of France, because he believed Vergennes, the French Minister, was playing a double part, injurious to the interests of the United States. At the time the propriety of his conduct was questioned, but subsequent disclosures of contemporary correspondence have vindicated his sagacity. While holding the office of Chief Justice he was appointed Minister to Great Britain, and negotiated the celebrated treaty which, though approved by Washington, was so much condemned by the public. On his return from England, having resigned the office of Chief Justice, he was elected Governor of New York, which office he filled for two terms. During his second term the political tide was turning against the Federalist party to which he belonged.

The Republicans in the New York Legislature introduced a bill to divide the State into election districts, and provide for the choice of Presidential electors by the people in the respective districts; this was defeated by the Federalist majority on Constitutional grounds. After the adjournment of the Legislature, it was thought that the district system would best promote the political interests of the Federal party. Hamilton, in a letter dated May 7, 1800, proposed to Jay that he should reconvene the Legislature for the purpose of having passed the very bill which they had just defeated. Hamilton urged Jay not to be over-scrupulous, and that to the extraordinary nature of the crisis scruples of delicacy and propriety ought to give way. This letter was found among Jay's papers thus endorsed: "Proposing a measure for party purposes which I do not think it becomes me to adopt.'

Washington placed the untried Constitution under the guardianship of a Chief Justice who was not only a lawyer, but a statesman and a diplomatist, and especially a man