91 



1876.J • ■^J- [Strong. 



United States. All these offers he promptly declined. 

 It was not because he did not value distinction, and 

 not because he did not know his own superior fitness 

 for the posts offered, but he valued excellence above 

 place, and his chosen road to excellence was the path 

 he had marked out for himself at the commencement 

 of his career. 



Yet, though he would not suffer himself to be di- 

 verted from entire devotion to his profession by office, 

 or by seductive hope of gain in other directions, he did 

 not decline calls that he thouorht consistent with that 

 devotion. In 1808, when only twenty-eight years of 

 age, he was chosen a director of the first bank of the 

 United States. This appointment he accepted, and he 

 continued to act as a director and a trustee very many 

 years. It was in the service of the bank he argued his 

 first case in the Supreme Court of the United States, 

 The case was The Bank vs. Deveaux et al, reported 

 in 5 Cranch, page 61. No one can read his argument, 

 condensed as it is in the report, without admiring its 

 orderly arrangement, its reach and its logical power. 

 It was the effort of a lawyer well trained and well 

 furnished. 



In 1827, Chief Justice Tilghman died. He had in 

 1806, succeeded Chief Justice Shippen in the headship 

 of the Supreme Court of the State, and he remained 

 its head during the long period of twenty-one years. 

 It was under his administration that the law of the 

 State had grown into an orderly and well adjusted sys- 



