WILLIAM TILGHMAN. 29 



lasting monument to liis fame. No man understood 

 better than himself the complicated mechanism of our 

 federal system ; no one perceived with a clearer ken 

 the limits which separate the rights and powers of 

 the national and state authorities ; none ever defined 

 those rights with greater precision and accuracy, or 

 asserted them with greater firmness and impartiality. 

 He never would assume jurisdiction when it appeared 

 to him that the courts of the United States were exclu- 

 sively entitled to it, and on the other hand, he never 

 shrunk from the exercise of his own rights as a state 

 judge. Thus, in a well known case, he maintained 

 the doctrine, that a state court might interfere and 

 give relief, w hen a citizen was illegally deprived of 

 his liberty under colour of the federal authority. 



In cases depending on international law, his vast 

 knowledge and erudition particularly shone. He 

 settled several important points, on questions of 

 conjlictus legiim ; a branch of the legal science not 

 yet sufficiently investigated, either in Europe or in 

 this country, and the principles of which still remain 

 to be fixed on that broad and liberal basis, which the 

 mutual convenience of nations seems to require. 



The higher judicial offices in our country, are posts 

 of great distinction, and they owe it to their attendant 

 exertion and responsibility. They put in requisition 

 the noblest faculties of the mind, the finest properties 

 of the temper, and not unfrequently they task to the 

 utmost the vigour of an unbroken constitution. Very 

 few, if any, of their duties are mechanical. There 



