Founding of the Institution 29 



Rush, of Pennsylvania, a lawyer of high standing, who had 

 been Attorney-General of the United States, Secretary of the 

 Treasury, and a candidate for the office of Vice-President. 

 He had also been Minister to France and to England, and 

 his official residence of eight years at the Court of Saint 

 James fitted him admirably for the mission which he now 

 undertook. He proceeded at once to London, entered a 

 friendly suit in the Courts of Chancery in the name of the 

 President of the United States, and, notwithstanding there 

 were eight hundred cases ahead of this, he obtained a favora- 

 ble decision in less than two years, an event without example 

 in the annals of chancery, for the English lawyers them- 

 selves admitted that a chancery suit was a thing which might 

 begin with a man's life, and its termination be his epitaph. 



The success of Mr. Rush was due in a large degree to the 

 extreme friendliness and consideration manifested by the Brit- 

 ish law officers from the Attorney-General down, without 

 which it would have been scarcely possible for him to have 

 accomplished in so short a period what in the ordinary course 

 of events would at that time have required twenty or thirty 

 years. His skill in the conduct of the case also counted for 

 much, the American Minister testifying that no litigant ever 

 displayed a more ardent zeal, or a more sagacious, devoted, 

 and unremitting diligence, in the prosecution of a suit. 



A still more potent influence, however, must have been his 

 own enthusiasm for the work in which he was engaged, an 

 enthusiasm which he succeeded in imparting to all with 

 whom he came in contact. "A suit of higher interest and 

 dignity," he wrote, " has rarely, perhaps, been before the tri- 

 bunals of a nation. If the trust created by the testator's will 

 be successfully carried into effect by the enlightened legisla- 

 tion of Congress, benefits may flow to the United States and 

 to the human family not easy to be estimated, because oper- 



