38 LIFK O^ 



to his own. You may search his opiaions in vain, 

 for any thing like personal assertion. He never threw 

 the weight of his office into the scale, which the 

 "weight of his argument did not turn, lie spoke and 

 wrote as the minister of reason, claiming obedience to 

 her, and selecting with scrupulous modesty such lan- 

 guage, as while it sustained the dignity of his office, 

 kept down from the relief, in which he might well 

 have appeared, the individual who filled it. Look 

 over the judgments of more than twenty years, many 

 of them rendered by this excellent magistrate after 

 his title to unlimited deference was established by a 

 riglit more divine than that of Kings, — there is not to 

 be found one arrogant, one supercilious expression, 

 turned against the opinions of other judges, one vain 

 glorious regard toward himself. He does not write 

 as if it occurred to him, that his writings would be 

 examined to fix his measure, when compared with the 

 standard of great men, but as if their exclusive use 

 was to assist in fixing a standard of the law. 



It is to all these qualities that Chief Justice Tilgh- 

 man owed the confidence of his brethren on the 

 Bench. It does not appear that his opinion at Nisi 

 Prius or on the Circuit was ever over-ruled, nor that 

 his judgment in Bank was made ineffectual by a ma- 

 jority of the Court, except in a single instance ; and 

 it will not be deemed offensive to say, that when the 

 same question shall recur, it will probably be con- 

 sidered without any decisive influence from this un- 

 supported case. 



