Justice, Salmon Portland Chase, and will affectionately preserve the memory of his many virtues and high qualities, and will wear the usual badge of mourning during the term.

"Resolved, That the Attorney-General of the United States be requested to move the Court to direct these prcoeedings to be entered upon the minutes, and that a copy thereof be transmitted to the family of the deceased Chief-Justice, with the respectful assurance of the sincere sympathy of the members of this meeting.'

When the Court opened on Thursday, October 23d, Mr. Attorney-General Williams presented the resolutions, and spoke as follows:

"May it please the Court, I have been charged with the sad duty of formally announcing to your honors the death of Chief-Justice Chase, and of presenting, to be spread upon the records of the Court, the resolutions of the bar, touching that mournful event. On the first day of last May, by the adjournment of this Court for the term, he laid aside his official robes to seek that temporary repose which his arduous labors and bodily infirmities seemed to require; but in a few days thereafter, to the great disappointment and grief of his family and friends, he laid aside all that was mortal of his nature, and passed to where the weary are forever at rest. While spring was revealing its new and beautiful forms of life upon earth, he was carried in the gentle arms of hope and faith to the new life of another world. To recount the public incidents of his eventful career upon this occasion, would be to repeat what is as familiar as household words to the people of this country. Suffice it to say, that, as the Governor of a great State, as a Senator in Congress, as a Secretary of the Treasury and as a Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he was distinguished for great abilities and great devotion to duty. Conspicuous among his many claims to popular and lasting regard were his early, continued, and effectual labors for the universal freedom of man. His fame, in this

respect, will be as enduring as the love of liberty in the hearts of the American people. To say that he administered the finances of the country through the late war of the rebellion, is enough to establish his pre-eminence, and show his title to a nation's gratitude. Jay, Rutledge, Ellsworth, Marshall and Taney, are the few imperishable names of the great departed who have filled the chief seat in this Court, and to those is now added, with new lustre to the galaxy, the name of Chase. Posterity will know of him through his public services, but we, his associates and friends, know and can appreciate, as well, his private virtues. All the influences of his example were for good. He was above reproach in his relations to society. His physical proportions were in harmony with his high intellectual qualities. He was dignified and graceful in his deportment, and especially kind and courteous to the members of the bar. His writings are remarkable for their clearness and force, and all who knew him know how instructive and charming he was in conversation. Physically, intellectually and morally, he was all that a Chief-Justice ought to be. Impelled by what has been called the infirmity of noble minds, he pursued with untiring zeal his lofty aims, and whatever else may be said of his aspirations, happily no one can say that they marred the excellence or purity of his personal character. Early in life he emigrated from New Hampshire, where he was born in 1808, and soon became a citizen of Ohio, where, unaided by fortune or friends, he commenced his successful public career. Inspired by an ardor that spurned all obstacles he pressed onward and upward until he was exalted to the head of this high tribunal, a place that but few men can ever attain. Thence he has come down to his grave, crowned with years and many honors. He leaves to his children and his country the record of a life

Rich in the world's opinion and men's praise,
And full of all we could desire, but days."

Mr. Justice Clifford, who was the senior Associate

Justice in commission, responded as follows in behalf of the Court:

"Gentlemen of the Bar-Providence has ordained that man must die, and it is matter of solemn import to every reflecting mind that the sentence applies to the whole human family, without regard to station, attainment, or usefulness. None of those who occupied these seats sixteen years ago are now here to participate in these commemorative proceedings, and only two of the number then in office survive to join in the general sorrow, so well expressed in the resolutions of the bar, for the great loss which the country has sustained by the death of the late Chief-Justice of this Court. Vacancy followed vacancy subsequent to that period, until the place of the Chief-Justice and those of his associates were all filled by new appointments, and the junior of the immediately succeeding period, who was appointed to fill a prior vacancy, has become the senior Associate Justice of the Court. Great events in the meantime have occurred. State after State seceded, and the rebellion came and was crushed. Slavery was abolished, and amendments were made to the Constitution to make it conform to that great change in the social relations of the States affected by the event. New laws were passed extending the jurisdiction of the Court and vastly augmenting its labors and responsibilities. Gratitude is due to Providence that the lives and health of the present members of the Court have been preserved throughout that period, and for the success which has attended their efforts, aided by the wise counsels of the late Chief-Justice, in upholding all the safeguards of liberty órdained in the Constitution. Civil war raged for a time with all its demoralizing influences, but the Court continued calm and unswerved, and the Constitution remains unimpaired to shed its benign influences upon the whole people of the country and to secure the blessings of liberty to the present generation and to their posterity. Death has now again entered these walls, and, for a second time within the period mentioned, has removed the Chief-Justice of the Court.

Such a loss is deeply felt by the whole country, and by none more heavily than by those connected with this tribunal. Whenever a good man dies, in any walk of life, there group around him in his last repose a mourning throng of sad regrets from the hearts of all who may have either experinced or witnessed his beneficence. But when, from some dignified and elevated station of public trust, obedient to the inevitable summons, a great and good man drops suddenly and noiselessly away, in the comprehensive sphere of whose high duties nothing remains but the solemn and suggestive silence of vacancy, a people's grief surrounds the grave to do justice to his motives and to award their saddened and affectionate approbation of his official services and public acts. Difference of opinion, envy or jealousy may have created barriers to a just appreciation of such a man during the active and angry struggles of life, but when the curtain of death interposes its impenetrable mystery between him and the living, that involuntary homage which human nature instinctively pays to its true noblemen, is almost always sufficient to hush such influences and override every such barrier. Passion clouds the understanding and too often prevents any impartial judgment upon the life and character of a cotemporary until the brief contentions of the world are left behind him and he has passed that solemn portal towards which all human life is but the pathway. Influences of the kind sometimes even affect the public judgment and compel men at last to exclaim, 'Our blessings brighten as they take their flight.' Whether good or bad, the public man to whom, under a government of the structure of ours, has been committed the sacred duty of high public office, can ask no more, nor can his friends, than that those who desire to review his acts shall be governed by the inflexible standard of justice, looking to his motives and purposes as embodied in his acts, when properly construed in the light of the circumstances of his life and the nature, difficulty and peril of his public duty. Without a thought of anything so

invidious as a comparison of merit, it may be safely said that of all the characters who were chief and prominent amid the swift and terrible commotions from which our country has little more than just emerged, none bore a more perplexing and onerous share of the public duty than the man to whose memory more especially as its Chief-Justice, the supreme judicial tribunal of the nation now pays its sad tribute of mourning and respect. Called to preside over the administration of the national finance at a most alarming and painful period, when the past systems were manifestly inadequate to the enormous and unprecedented strain upon their resources, the energies of a comprehensive and creative mind were demanded to wield and shape the available wealth of the nation into such a channel that it should, to the largest extent possible, promote the development of the military and naval power of the country, and give it the most efficient and direct support. Manifold difficulties attended the undertaking, as the vital forces of the nation were suddenly wrenched from their accustomed pursuits of peace and were assembled at the call of the government, in the tumultuous arena of civil war, the immediate effect of which was to diminish very largely, the ordinary national income, and to increase fearfully the national expenditure. Immediate decision was indispensable, as the emergency would admit of no delay, and the requirement was not only that the reserved wealth of the nation should be invoked to meet the public emergency, but that it should be fused and melted into a current form. With such demands upon the position, our lamented brother was called to the office of Secretary of the National Treasury, not to administer a settled and tried system, but, in the rapid whirl and rush of swiftly succeeding events, to devise one that was new and commensurate with the public exigency. Experiments may be tried in the hours of peace, and if experience fails to demonstrate the wisdom of the measure or exposes its