32 LIFE OF 



meiit of the public discussion had gone by. The con- 

 tents of twenty volumes of reports, and upwards of 

 two tliousand judgments, most of them elaborate, all 

 of them sufficiently reasoned, very few upon matters 

 of practice, or on points of fugitive interest, attest 

 the devotion of his judicial life; and although it is 

 not meant to deprive of their share of the merit of 

 these labours, the eminent men who survive him on 

 the 35ench, and who remain to continue and I hope to 

 exalt the fame of our jurisprudence, 1 may say, and 

 they will cheerfully admit, that he was the presiding 

 spirit of their consultations, as he was of their court. 

 In addition to these strictly official duties, the Le- 

 gislature of Pennsylvania, committed to the Judges 

 of the Supreme Court, in the year 1807, the critical 

 duty of reporting the English statutes in force within 

 this commonwealth. The duty is called critical, for 

 so undoubtedly it was considered by the Chief Jus- 

 tice. The service exacted an unlimited knowledge 

 of our colonial legislation, and of the practice and 

 administration of the law in the Province, though a 

 period of nearly a century, in which there was not 

 the light of a reported case. It required also an in- 

 timate familiarity with the written law of England, 

 its history both political and legal, and a knowledge 

 of the impressions which it had given to and received 

 from the common law, during the course of many 

 centuries. The selection moreover was to be made 

 in the chambers of the Judges, without the aid of 

 that best of all devices for eliciting the truth, an ar-\ 



