during these few minutes, presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his gaunt figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his face expanded with emotion; the remainder of the court at the two extremities pressing, as it were, to a single point. Webster had now recovered his composure, and, fixing his keen eye on the chief justice, said, in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience: "Sir, I know not how others may feel [glancing at his opponents], but as for myself, when I see my alma mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate house, by those who are reiterating stab after stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me and say: 'Et tu quoque, mi fili."

His formal public speeches were revised for publication with great care. He was accustomed to have them reported by Henry J. Raymond, afterwards editor of the New York Times, in whose skill as a reporter he had great confidence; and Mr. Raymond says that Webster's conversation, when they would subsequently revise a speech, was a lesson in rhetoric. His main effort in revision, according to Mr. Raymond, was to strike out Latin words. This indicates the merit of his style. It is simple, straighforward Anglo-Saxon. His aim was to secure the greatest effort of power in the fewest and tersest words. "My style," he once said, "was not formed without great care and earnest study of the best orators. I have labored hard upon it, for I early felt the importance of expression to thought. I have rewritten sentence after sentence, and pondered long upon each alteration. For, depend upon it, it is with our thoughts as with our persons, their intrinsic value is mostly undervalued unless outwardly expressed in an attractive garb." His imagery was boundless; appealing now to the taste, now sentiment, often to both. His impressive peroration in the speech for Judge Prescott, a good specimen of his style, has been often admired:

"Mr. President, the case is closed. The fate of the respondent is in your hands. It is for you now to say whether, from the law and the facts as they have appeared before you, you will proceed to disgrace and disfranchise him. If your duty calls on you to convict him, let justice be done, and convict him; but, I adjure you, let it be a clear, undoubted case. Let it be so for his sake, for you are robbing him of that for which, with all your high powers, you can yield him no compensation. Let it be so for your own sakes, for the responsibility of this day's judgment is one which you must carry with you through life.

"Sir, the prejudices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if any there be, which have excited or favored this prosecution, will subside; but the consequence of the judgment you are about to render will outlive both them and you. The respondent is now brought, a single, unprotected individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand against

the power and authority of the state. I know you can crush him, as he stands before you, and clothed as you are with the sovereignty of the state. You have the power 'to change his countenance, and to send him away.' Nor do I remind you that your judgment is to be rejudged by the community; and, as you have summoned him for trial to this high tribunal, that you are soon to descend yourselves from these seats of justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world. I would not fail so much in respect to this honorable court as to hint that it could pronounce a sentence which the community will reverse. No, sir, it is not the world's revision which I would call on you to regard, but that of your own consciences, when years have gone by, and you shall look back on the sentence you are about to render. If you send away the respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet him in the world on which you cast him out. You will be called to behold him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a living fountain of grief and agony to himself. If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom vengeance has overtaken, and justice has blasted, you will be able to look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse. But if, on the other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if you shall see in him a man for whose condemnation any provision of the constitution has been violated or any principle of law broken down,-then will he be able, humble and low as may be his condition, then will he be able to turn the current of compassion backward, and to look with pity on those who have been his judges. If you are about to visit this respondent with a judgment which shall blast his house; if the bosoms of the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed under your infliction,-I beseech you to be able to state clear and strong grounds for your proceeding. Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will pass away. Political expediency, in matters of judicature, is a false and hollow principle, and will never satisfy the conscience of him who is fearful that he may have given a hasty judgment. I earnestly entreat you, for your own sakes, to possess yourselves of solid reasons, founded in truth and justice, for the judgment you pronounce, which you can carry with you till you go down into your graves; reasons which it will require no argument to revive; no sophistry, no excitement, no regard to popular favor to render satisfactory to your consciences; reasons which you can appeal to in every crisis of your lives, and which shall be able to assure you, in your own great extremity, that you have not judged a fellow creature without mercy."

He drew often, consciously or unconsciously, upon the imagery) and simple phraseology of the Bible. His impressive peroration in the Knapp case is expressed in the very terms of the 139th Psalm. In the Girard case he uses, with great power, the admonition of Jesus to suffer little children to come unto Him. With Webster, moreover, the style was truly the man. If his style was simple and forcible, his manner was quiet and restrained. "His mind," it has been well said, "is never exhibited in a state of eruption. A majestic self-possession presides over all the operations of his mind, and the impulses of his sensibility. He has his reason, his imagination, his passions, under full control.”

Webster's moral character was not equal to his intellect. With endowments seldom vouchsafed to man, he stood in the front rank of the senate and the bar for thirty years; yet he died a disappointed man. He aimed for the bauble of official power, and failed to realize its mockery. "I have given my life to law and politics,' he wrote in 1852. "Law is uncertain, and politics utterly vain." Nevertheless, the influence of his public service lives after him. That which Hamilton created he defended. And his grand and stirring appeals to the sentiment of nationality, echoed from generation to generation by youthful lips and warm hearts, are an influence still for liberty and union.

ARGUMENT IN THE CASE OF THE TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE AGAINST WOODWARD, IN

THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNIT

ED STATES, 1818.

STATEMENT.

Probably no case ever heard in the supreme court of the United States has attracted so much discussion as the case of the trustees of Dartmouth College against Woodward. The actual controversy turned upon the question whether the charter of the college 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 purposes. The corporation of Dartmouth College existed under a charter granted by the British crown to its trustees in New Hampshire in 1769. This charter conferred upon the trustees the entire governing power of the college, among which was that of filling all vacancies occurring in their own body, and of removing and appointing tutors. It also declared that the number of trustees should forever consist of twelve. In 1816, the legislature of New Hampshire passed certain acts to amend the charter, to improve and enlarge the corporation, to increase the number of trustees, giving the appointment of the additional members to the governor of the state, and creating a board of overseers of twenty-five persons, of whom twenty-one were also to be appointed by the governor. These overseers were given power to inspect and control the most important acts of the trustees. The operation of this statute raised the general issue involved in the case.

The form of the actual proceeding was a declaration in trover for the books of record, original charter, common seal, and other corporate property of the college, which were alleged to have been converted on October 7, 1816. The facts in the case were drawn up in the form of a special verdict for submission to the supreme court of New Hampshire. The question made was whether the acts of the legislature of New Hampshire were valid and binding upon the corporation, without their acceptance and consent, and were not repugnant to the constitution of the United States. If so, the verdict found for the defendants; otherwise, it found for the plaintiffs. The case was argued in the state court with distinguished ability by Jeremiah Mason, Jeremiah Smith, and Daniel Webster, on one side, and by Ichabod Bartlett and Geo. Sullivan, on the other. The line of argument pursued by the plaintiff was largely drawn from an argument made by Theophilus Parsons, of Massachusetts, in regard to the visitorial powers at Harvard College,that the college was an institution founded by private persons for particular uses, which the charter had been given to perpetuate, and that the legislature, by its interference, transcended its powers. On these general principles, strengthened by particular clauses in the state constitution, the argument mainly rested. The supreme court of New Hampshire decided in favor of the validity of the acts of the legislature, and judgment was accordingly entered for the defendant. The plaintiffs thereupon appealed to the supreme court of the United States.1

Where the case was argued by Francis Hopkinson and Mr. Webster for the plaintiffs in error, and by Attorney General Wirt and Mr. Holmes for the defendant.

Of course the plaintiffs could get their case before this tribunal only on the constiutional question, but their main reliance was again placed on the general principle that the state legislature could not divest vested rights. The fact is that the constitutional point with respect to the impairment of the obligation of contracts originated with a layman was regarded by Webster as a forlorn hope, and was very briefly discussed by him in the argument.

The decision of the supreme court of the United States was in favor of the plaintiffs. Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the court (Mr. Justice Duvall alone dissenting), held that the charter of the college was a contract, and therefore inviolable under section 10 of article I of the constitution, which declares that "no state shall make any law impairing the obligation of contracts."2 This decision has met at once with the highest praise and the most severe criticism. It has been insisted that, even if a legislative grant be a contract, this corporation existed under a charter granted by the British crown, and was therefore a royal charter, not a legislative grant. On the other hand, Mr. Binney said, in his eulogy on Marshall: "If I were to select in any particular, from the mass of judgments, for the purpose of showing what we derived from the constitution, and from the noble faculties which have been applied to its interpretation, it would be that in which the protection of chartered rights has been deduced from its provisions." Certainly no other decision has ever had such an influence over legislation. The supreme court has since been compelled, where relief has been sought against subsequent legislation, to insist upon the existence of an express contract by the state with the corporation; but the main features of the decision, to the effect that a state may make a contract by legislation which no subsequent legislation can annul, is as firmly fixed as any principle of our federal jurisprudence.

ARGUMENT.

May it please your honors, the general question is whether the acts of the legislature of New Hampshire of the 27th of June, and of the 18th and 26th of December, 1816, are valid and binding on the plaintiffs, without their acceptance or assent. The charter of 1769 created and established a corporation, to consist of twelve persons, and no more, to be called the "Trustees of Dartmouth College." The preamble to the charter recites that it is granted on the application and request of the Reverend Eleazer Wheelock. That Dr. Wheelock, about the year 1754, established a charity school, at his own expense, and on his own estate and plantation. That for several years, through the assistance of well-disposed persons in America, granted at his solicitation, he had clothed, maintained, and educated a number of native Indians, and employed them afterwards as missionaries and schoolmasters among the savage tribes. That, his design promising to be useful, he had constituted the Reverend Mr. Whitaker to be his attorney, with power to solicit contributions, in England, for

Wheaton, 518.