The two grand figures in the judiciary of this country are Marshall and Taney. These two men presided over the supreme court for sixty-three years, Marshall for 35 years, from 1801 to 1836; Taney for 28 years, from 1836 to 1864.

Marshall was appointed by John Adams about a month before the inauguration of President Jefferson, and it was said he owed his appointment to his defense of the administration in the case of Jonathan Robbins, who claimed to be an American citizen, but the British government declared he was a deserter, and the president ordered him to be turned over to them, and he was executed.

Taney was appointed by Andrew Jackson shortly before the accession of Van Buren, and it was said his appointment was due to his support of Jackson in the Bank cases, and for removing the government deposits.

Marshall was a legacy left by the defeated Federalists to the victorious Republicans of that day; Taney was a legacy left by General Jackson to the people of the United States.

Marshall was born on the Virginia side of the Potomac in 1755; Taney on the Maryland side in 1777.

Marshall was a Churchman; Taney a Romanist.

Marshall was assailed by the Republicans of his day because of his acts in connection with the trial of Aaron Burr and his decision in the case of Marbury v. Madison. Taney received like treatment from the Republicans of his day because of his decision in the Dred Scott case, and in the Merryman habeas corpus case.

With Marshall ended the chief justices who had participated in the

Revolution.

Taney, though born during the Revolution, was but 22 when Washington died.

Marshall was a jurist of remarkable abilities and great attainments. In public strong, firm, and courageous; at home gentle, tender, and affectionate. His wife was a Miss Ambler, a belle of Williamsburgh. He was her devoted lover every day of their forty years of married life, and after her death he wrote to a friend that "with the loss of her I lost the solace of my life, yet she remains the companion of my retired hours, and still occupies my inmost heart." One of his descendants wrote that the family knew full well she would learn from others he was a great man,-they told her "he was only a good one." Marshall was a devout Churchman, a sincere Christian, and all through his manhood and declining years never failed to nightly say the little prayer, “Now I lay me," which he, like so many of us, learned at his mother's knee.

Taney was a man of will and courage, a thoroughly trained lawyer, a classical scholar, and a constant student. The touch of romance in his nature is shown by his fondness for flowers and his beautiful devotion to his mother. He married Miss Key, the sister of the author of the "Star Spangled Banner," January 7, 1806, and on the anniversary of their wedding, in 1852, he commenced a letter to her from Washington by saying, "I cannot, my dearest wife, suffer the seventh of January to pass without renewing to you the pledges of love which I made to you forty-six years ago, and now pledge to you again a love as true and sincere as that I offered on the 7th of January,

1806." And four years later, upon her death, after they had been married half a century, he said in writing to a friend, "I shall meet you with a broken heart and a broken spirit."

What a rebuking commentary upon the divorce courts, the divorce laws, and the divorce seekers of to-day is the attitude toward his wife of each of these two magnificent men, these two chief justices of the supreme court of the nation. Marshall, a devoted lover for forty years of married life, and after his wife's death declaring that she still remained the companion of his retired hours and still occupied his inmost heart. Taney, writing his wife that sweet and faithful love letter upon the forty-sixth anniversary of their marriage, and after her death, four years later, telling his friend that her loss had left him with a broken heart and a broken spirit.

Salmon P. Chase succeeded Taney as chief justice upon the latter's death in 1864. Chase was a son of New Hampshire, born in Cornish. In face, figure, and presence he was more distinguished than either Marshall or Taney. He was less of a lawyer than Taney, but he brought to the bench an amount of learning equal to that with which Marshall began. When appointed he had been for many years engaged in political affairs, and it was difficult for him to throw off the aspirations and love of power which political life engenders. During this period his legal studies had been laid aside, and when he went upon the bench he found himself fifteen years behind his associates in knowledge of the decisions, and familiarity with

Roscoe Conkling, who declined it, and Morrison R. Waite was appointed January 21, 1874. Waite was a native of Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale, but removed to Ohio in early manhood and was appointed from that state by Grant.

Associate Justice Nathan Clifford.

He was well trained in the ways of the law, and of the courts, and although his opinions may not convey the impression of a commanding intellect, yet they are clear, vigorous, and judicial. He was plain in manner, but genial and courteous in nature; an upright judge and a Christian gentleman.

In the case of one Reynolds, who married in Utah, knowing that he had a wife living elsewhere, and who attempted to justify his conduct by an appeal to Article I of the Constitution, which secures civil and religious liberty, and thereunder urging in his defense that the Mormon church of which he was a member, enjoined polygamy, Waite,

as chief justice said, "That while marriage was a sacred obligation, it was also a civil contract regulated by law, lying at the foundation of society, and the source of social relations, obligations, and duties, and although congress could not pass a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, yet it was within the power of every civil government to determine whether polygamy or monogamy should be the law of social life under its dominion. Those who are by religion polygamists cannot commit a crime and go unpunished for that which would make those who are not polygamists answerable to the criminal courts. Suppose," said he, "that one sincerely believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, could it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice?"

Waite died March 23, 1888, and was succeeded as chief justice by Melville Weston Fuller, who was commissioned the 20th of the next July, and is still the incumbent.

Fuller was born in Augusta, Me., in 1833; graduated from Bowdoin college in 1853; studied law; was admitted to the bar in Maine; practised there a short time, and removed to Chicago in 1856, where he was engaged in active practice until his elevation to the place he now holds.

Fuller's eight associates to-day are John Marshall Harlan, appointed from Kentucky in 1877; Horace Gray, from Massachusetts, in 1881; David Josiah Brewer, from Kansas, in 1889; Henry Billings Brown, from Michigan, in 1891; George Shiras, Jr., from Pennsylvania, in

1892; Edward Douglass White, from Louisiana, in 1894; Rufus W. Peckham, from New York, in 1895; and Joseph McKenna, from California, in 1897.

The salary of the chief justice is $10,500, and of each of his associates $10,000 per year.

Several women have been admitted to practice before the supreme court. Belva A. Lockwood, in 1879, was the first; Marilla M. Ricker, of Dover, N. H., in 1891, was the eighth, and I think there have been two or three since.

The temper and tendencies of the court change slowly and rarely, because vacancies are infrequent, and it often represents the political predominance of the past rather than that of the present. From its establishment in 1789 to the death of Marshall in 1835, it inclined to the extension of Federal power and its own jurisdiction, because the ruling spirits belonged to the old Federalist party, although that party fell in 1800, and disappeared in 1814. From 1835 to 1861, when Taney was chief justice, the sympathies of the court were with the Democratic party, and it was disinclined to any further extension of either the Federal power or its own. During and after the war the tendency of the court was again toward centralization of government. The vast powers asserted by congress in connection with the war were generally sustained by judicial decision; the rights of the states were maintained as against private interests, but for a time were less favorably regarded when they seemed to conflict with those of the Federal government. But in none of the three periods did the court allow private

prejudice or political sympathy to control its judicial action for party purposes.

The history of the court as a part of the history of the government is in its decisions; they are the record of the work it has accomplished and the results it has secured. Many of those decisions are not of general or public interest, but some of them denote the progress of the rights and liberties of the people under our form of civil government, and others are identified with marked events in the history of our country.

Three leading and famous cases decided before the war were Marbury v. Madison, in 1803; the Dart

President Adams had nominated Marbury a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia. The nomination had been confirmed by the senate, and the commission was duly signed and sealed, but had not. been delivered to Marbury when Jefferson came into the presidency, and he directed that it be withheld. Marbury petitioned the supreme court to order Madison, the then secretary of state, to deliver to him the commission. The court declined to issue the order on the ground that in passing the act under which Marbury claimed the court had the right to make the order congress had exceeded its constitutional powers. constitutional powers. The legal point and importance of the decision is that it was a declaration, and the first one in that regard, by the supreme court that it had the right and power to declare null and void any act of congress passed in violation of the constitution, or not within the limit of its constitutional powers. In so far as the case was a contest between Jefferson and Marshall, the president was defeated, his object being to prevent Marbury from becoming a justice of the peace, for, although the court decided that it could not order Madison to deliver the commission, it, at the same time held that Marbury's nomination being confirmed by the senate, and his appointment being signed and sealed, duly constituted him a justice of the peace in law and in fact, and that the delivery of the commission was not necessary to confirm him in the office.

The Dartmouth College case is of interest to us, because, if it had not been decided as it was, the fame and future of old Dartmouth might have

been very different, and the state of New Hampshire would have been responsible therefor. Dartmouth college, as a corporation, existed under a charter granted by the British crown in 1769. The charter conferred upon the trustees the entire governing power of the college, including the right to fill all vacancies occurring in their own body; it also declared that the number of trustees should forever be twelve and no more. After the Revolution the legislature of New Hampshire passed an act to amend the charter; to improve and enlarge the corporation, and to increase the number of trustees, giving the appointment of the additional number to the governor of the state; also creating a board of twenty-five overseers, twenty-one of whom were also to be appointed by the governor, and these overseers were to have power to inspect and control the most important acts of the trustees. The effect of all this would have been to take the college, its property and funds, out of its own hands and place it and them in the hands of the state, or more immediately in those of the governor. The legal controversy turned upon the question whether the charter was a grant of political power which the state could resume or modify at pleasure, or a contract for the security and disposition of property bestowed in trust for charitable educational purposes. The supreme court held it to be the latter, that it was a contract, that the college was a party to it, and that it made no difference if the other original party to it was George III instead of the United States, it was none the less a contract, and that as Section 10, Art. I, of the