have placed his defence mainly upon the ground, that the act complained of was not a crime at common law, nor was it made such by any positive law of the United States. Judge Jay, in his charge to the jury, ruled otherwise, and sustained the indictment on common law principles The prisoner was convicted, but was afterwards pardoned on surrendering his commission and exequatur.

It only remains to be added, on this subject, that this doctrine, so positively asserted, and rigorously applied by the Chief-Justice and most of his associates in the Supreme Court, was a few years after unsettled, and may now be considered as entirely overthrown. The keen, bold, and penetrating mind of Judge Chase, gave it the first blow on the trial of Worrall, at Philadelphia, in 1798, when in the face of the known opinions of all his associates, and as a very judicious writer remarks "with that quick perception of the spirit of the Constitution, for which his clear intellect was so conspicuous"—he abrubtly and boldly denied that the federal courts pos

and though several times elected to Legislative bodies, and for a brief period, under Washington's administration, holding the office of District Judge of Pennsylvania, yet it is as a lawyer, and mainly as an advocate at the bar, that he is best and most favorably known. Lewis commenced his practice in 1773, and though his business was interrupted during the Revolution, yet it again revived at the close of the war, and owing in some degree to his supposed partiality for the royal cause during the Revolution, he at once succeeded in obtaining a most extensive and lucrative practice among the Quaker loyalists of Pennsylvania. Mr. Lewis was engaged in some of those celebrated criminal trials which began to occupy the attention of the community, soon after Mr. Jay left the bench He was the leading counsel in the trial of the western insurgents, and it is said, that his pride of conscious superiority at the bar was so much wounded by the request of the defendants' friends to admit Mr. Dallas as his associate, that he expressed himself with such asperity and supercilliousness in regard to Mr. Dallas, as called out from the latter gentleman a callenge. This Lewis accepted, but the difficulty was amicably arranged, and both gentlemen afterwards appeared as counsel for Fries, the first of the insurgents who was brought to trial.

Mr. Lewis continued at the bar, in the practice of his profession, with increasing reputation and unabated ability, until the time of his death, which occurred on the 15th of August, 1819.

sessed any such common law Jurisdiction.* Soon after, Judge Washington, at the circuit, coincided in the opinion of Judge Chase. He was followed by that eminent jurist, Chief-Justice Marshall, who in more than one case advances the same opinion; and the question was finally put to rest by the decision of the Supreme Court, in United States vs. Hudson,† in which there appears to be no dissent from the opinion delivered by the Court, that a common law offence, not specified by statute, is not indictable in the Federal Courts.+

It was while the Chief-Justice and Judge Iredell, with the District Judge of Virginia, were holding the Circuit Court at Richmond, in 1793, that the great case of Ware, Administrator, vs. Hylton and others, relative to the right of British creditors to collect debts of American citizens, contracted before the war, came on for trial. This case called out a display of forensic talent, eloquence and learning, that hitherto had been without a parallel in the courts of Virginia, and placed the bar of that State, in the opinion of the federal judges, according to Mr. Wirt's account, ahead of all others in the Union. The cause was originally tried in 1791, and was now brought on a second time before the Chief

The District-Attorney, Mr. Rawle, was in the midst of his argument in reply to Mr. Dallas, discussing the question of jurisdiction in another point of view, when to his utter dismay, and the astonishment of the whole bar, Judge Chase interrupted him with the question: "Do you mean, Mr. Attorney, to support this indictment solely at common law? If you do, I have no difficulty upon the subject; the indictment cannot be maintained!" The question, it was supposed, had been long since put at rest, and beyond all hopes of a resurrection at the hands of the "metaphysical Virginia lawyers," as they were called by an eminent Federalist of that day.

+7 Cranch Rep., 32. See also U. S. vs. Coolidge, 1 Wheaton, 415.

The principle is considered too well settled to be again shaken. Justice McLean in his late opinion in the Wheeling Bridge case, says: "It is admitted that the federal courts have no jurisdiction of common law offences." And Chief-Justice Taney, in his dissenting opinion says: "It has been settled since the beginning of this government, that the courts of the United States, as such have no common law jurisdiction, civil or criminal, unless conferred upon them by act of Congress."-State of Pensylvania vs. Wheeling Bridge Co., 13 Howard, 519.

Justice and his associates. Among the array of counsel for the defendants, the American debtors, were Patrick Henry and John Marshall. Mr. Wirt, in his life of Henry, gives a very graphic and animated description of this celebrated trial, and a copious sketch of the speech of the great Virginian orator, which is said to have required three days for its delivery. He was followed by Marshall, who brought the heavy batteries of his logic to bear upon the breach made by the powerful eloquence of his associate. Alexander Campbell and Col. Innis, two of the most distinguished orators at the bar of Virginia, took the floor on the same side, and the counsel for the plaintiff followed in reply.* Some idea of the effect of this magnificent exhibition of forensic skill, this grand and imposing display of eloquence, may be obtained from the impression left upon the mind of Judge Iredell, who in his written opinion, after the argument, declares with more warmth and enthusiasm than usually belongs to the unimpassioned judicial mind, that the arguments in the case display d an ingenuity, a depth of investigation, and a power of reasoning, equal to anything he ever witnessed, and that some of them had been "adorned with a splendor of eloquence surpassing what I have ever felt before."+

Chief Justice Jay presided for the last time at the . term of the Supreme Court, in February, 1794. It was at this term that the issue in the case of Georgia vs. Braislford, which I have already alluded to, was tried. At the same term the case of Glass vs. The Sloop Betsey,+ presenting one of the earliest questions raised in the Supreme Court on the subject of admiralty jurisdiction, was argued and decided. The Betsey was a Swedish vessel, the cargo of which was owned jointly by Americans and Swedes. She had been captured by the "Citizen Genet," a French privateer, and sent into Baltimore. The owners of the Betsey filed a libel in the

*See notice of this trial in the following sketch of Chief-Justice Marshall. + See opinion of Judge Iredell in the Report, 3 Dallas, 275.

+3 Dallas Rep. 6.

District Court of Maryland, claiming restitution, and the captors (who had undertaken to proceed before the French Consul for a condemnation of the vessel) pleaded to the jurisdiction, that the Federal Courts had no power to take cognizance in the case of a captured vessel, belonging to a foreign and neutral power. After an elaborate and exhausting argument, Chief-Justice Jay delivered the unanimous decision of the Court, wherein, without assigning any reasons, he overruled the plea as insufficient, and reversed the decision of the District Court. In respect to the admiralty jurisdiction claimed to be exercised within the limits of the United States by the Consuls of France, it was determined by the court that no such power could be exercised, inasmuch as none was reserved or conferred upon these functionaries by the treaty. This important case established the admiralty jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, in cases of prize and captures on the high seas.

At the expiration of this term of the court, Judge Jay, as has been mentioned, presided at the April session of the Circuit Court at Philadelphia, and it was during this session that Ravara was tried. About the same time he was commissioned as Minister to England, and although he accepted this appointment without vacating his seat on the bench, yet he never afterwards. acted in a judicial capacity. On his return to America, in 1795, having in the mean time been elected Governor of New York, he resigned the office of Chief-Justice of the United States.

No portion of the public career of Mr. Jay has been the subject of more unsparing criticism, than that upon which he was now about to enter. A full history of it involves the discussion of political questions, happily long since laid at rest, and revives the memories of party controversies, which for animosity and bitterness of feeling, have never been surpassed in this country or Europe. Such a review would be fruitless and unprofitable. Without entering upon it in detail, therefore, I shall allude to these events only so far as may be neces

sary, in order to trace the history of the mission to England, and to sketch, briefly, the part sustained in it by Judge Jay.

On the execution of Louis XVI., England joined the European coalition, and commenced hostilities against the French republic. Up to this period, and even long afterwards, and as late as the overthrow of the republic by Bonaparte, the popular feeling in America was warmly enlisted on the side of France, and the prominent republican leaders did not hesitate to express their sympathy with the progress of popular principles in Europe.* A class of public men in America, however, like Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and their adherents in England, never could be brought to regard with satisfaction the rapid progress of the democratic principle in Europe, as developed in the startling drama of the French Revolution. At the head of these stood the acknowledged chiefs of the Federal party, Hamilton, Adams, and Gouverneur Morris, and with these, doubtless, Jay concurred in sentiment on this subject. So strong was this bias against the French Revolution on the mind of Hamilton, that with all his clear, far-seeing sagacity, and practical statesmanship, he doubted whether it would be proper for the United States to receive a minister from the

* At a public dinner in New York, in 1796, Chancellor Livingston gave the following toast:

"May the present coolness between France and America, produce, like the quarrels of lovers, a renewal of love."

The journal of Gouverneur Morris-an acute observer, as well as an accomplished gentleman-during his stay in Paris, exhibits his strong conservative, perhaps we may say, monarchial, sentiments. Mr. Morris had no faith in the revolution from the outset. He sided with the King, on all occasions, against the liberals. He sneered at Sieyes, disputed constantly, and always warmly, with that "strong-minded woman," Madame De Stael, in her own drawing-rooms, and almost quarrelled with Lafayette at his own dinner table. Mr. Morris denounced the Constitution of 1791 as "a wretched piece of paper "-the same Constitution which Lafayette regarded as the perfection of wisdom, and that liberal and enlightened British statesman, Mr. Fox, pronounced "the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which has been erected on the foundation of human integrity, in any age or country."