was abolished, and amendments were made to the Constitution to make it conform to that great change in the social relations of the States affected by the event. New laws were passed extending the jurisdiction of the court and vastly augmenting its labors and responsibilities.

Gratitude is due to Providence that the lives and health of the present members of the court have been preserved throughout that period and for the success which has attended their efforts, aided by the wise counsels of the late Chief Justice, in upholding all the safeguards of liberty ordained in the Constitution. Civil war raged for a time with all its demoralizing influences, but the court continued calm and unswerved, and the Constitution remains unimpaired to shed its benign influences upon the whole people of the country and to secure the blessings of liberty to the present generation and to their posterity.

Death has now again entered these walls, and, for a second time within the period mentioned, has removed the Chief Justice of the court. Such a loss is deeply felt by the whole country, and by none more heavily than by those connected with this tribunal. Whenever a good man dies, in any walk of life, there group around him in his last repose a mourning throng of sad regrets from the hearts of all who may have either experienced or witnessed his beneficence. But when, from some dignified and elevated station of public trust, obedient to the inevitable summons, a great and good man drops suddenly and noiselessly away, in the comprehensive uphere of whose high duties nothing remains but the solemn and suggestive silence of vacancy, a people's grief surrounds the grave to do justice to his motives and to award their saddened and affectionate approbation of his official services and public acts.

Difference of opinion, envy, or jealousy may have created barriers to a just appreciation of such a man during the active and angry struggles of life, but when the curtain of death interposes its impenetrable mystery between him and the living, that involuntary homage which human nature instinctively pays to its true noblemen, is almost always sufficient to hush such influences and override every such barrier.

Passions of the kind cloud the understanding and too often prevent any impartial judgment upon the life and character of a contemporary until the brief contentions of the world are left behind him and he has passed that solemn portal towards which

all human life is only the pathway. Influences of the kind sometimes affect even the public judgment and compel men at last to exclaim, "Our blessings brighten as they take their flight." Whether good or bad, the public man to whom, under a government of the structure of ours, has been committed the sacred duty of high public office, can ask no more, nor can his friends, than that those who desire to review his acts shall be governed by the inflexible standard of justice, looking to his motives and purposes as embodied in his acts, when properly construed in the light of the circumstances of his life and the nature, difficulty, and peril of his public duty.

Without a thought of anything so invidious as a comparison of merit, it may be safely said that of all the characters who were chief and prominent amid the swift and terrible commotions from which our country has little more than just emerged, none bore a more perplexing and onerous share of the public duty than the man to whose memory, more especially as its Chief Justice, the supreme judicial tribunal of the nation now pays its sad tribute of mourning and respect.

Called to preside over the administration of the national finance at a most alarming and painful period, when the past systems were manifestly inadequate to the enormous and unprecedented strain upon their resources, the energies of a comprehensive and creative mind were demanded to wield and shape the available wealth of the nation into such a channel that it should, to the largest extent possible, promote the development of the military and naval power of the country and give it the most efficient and direct support. Manifold difficulties attended the undertaking as the vital forces of the nation were suddenly wrenched from their accustomed pursuits of peace and were assembled at the call of the government, in the tumultuous arena of civil war, the immediate effect of which was to diminish very largely the ordinary national income and to increase fearfully the national expenditure. Immediate decision was indispensable, as the emergency would admit of no delay, and the requirement was not only that the reserved wealth of the nation should be evoked to meet the public emergency, but that it should be fused and melted into a current form.

With such demands upon the position our lamented brother was called to the office of Secretary of the National Treasury, not to administer a settled and tried system, but in the rapid

whirl and rush of swiftly succeeding events to devise one that was new and commensurate with the public exigency. Experiment may be tried in the hours of peace, and if experience fails to demonstrate the wisdom of the measure or exposes its imperfections, it may be abandoned or another may be substituted in its place without great injury to the government

Not thus, however, when Secretary Chase was summoned to the performance of the great duty under consideration, as a failure might have been irreparable. Certain success was required, and the result shows that the duty was assigned to a strong, sagacious, practical intellect, which readily apprehended the nation's capacity, and was able to grasp the national wealth with a firm hand and appropriate it to meet the stern and inexorable demands of the public emergency. Complete success followed, and it would seem to be a sufficient commentary upon the usefulness of any man to be able to say of him, that under such momentous and inflexible conditions he could and did devise a system of finance which was commensurate with the unexampled demands upon the national treasury.

Wide differences of opinion exist as to the wisdom of the system as a permanent one, but this is not the occasion for a discussion of the system, nor is such an examination necessary to a correct view of the mental and moral condition of its author, as it is rather from the survey of a long and carnest life of public service and the diversity of the labors to which his powers of mind were so nobly and successfully devoted that the inquirer is enabled to draw the most correct conclusions concerning his worth and capacity.

Superior fitness for a particular station is frequently the result of experience in the performance of the same or similar duties, and the mistakes resulting from the want of such qualifications have proved that they can hardly be too highly estimated, but we know that there are some few in every generation to whom are vouchsafed an intellectual elevation that enables the possessor almost instinctively to comprehend many of the perplexities of life, for the unravelling of which by others must be paid the hard tuition of patient toil and study and long investigation. Sagacity and forecast, when such gifts are possessed, supply to a large extent the usual demand for an acquaintance with the duties of the particular station or for an extended preliminary preparation for their performance.

Gifts of the kind in a high degree were possessed by the sub

ject of these remarks, as shown throughout his public career as Governor of a great State, Senator in Congress, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of this high tribunal. Mere versatility of mind could not have so honorably met the demands. of these high positions. Success in so various and such important labors, without much opportunity for previous preparation, furnishes indubitable evidence of a strong and vigorous mind and a high order of intelligence, which enabled the possessor to analyze and comprehend many things with ease and facility, which a mind of lesser grasp would only have pushed further off with every attempt to encompass and expound.

Opportunity for preparation in legal knowledge he did have in his early manhood. Prior to the time he entered public life he was engaged in the practice of the law, and became eminent in his profession, as sufficiently appears in the volumes of the published decisions of this court; and he was eminent as the Governor of his adopted State, and as a Senator in Congress before he was called to preside over the national treasury, until it may be said, if the period of eight years during which he was the Chief Justice of this court be included, that he has exemplified his greatness in almost every variety of trial which arises in civil life.

. Difficult and untried questions were constantly arising during the early stages of the late rebellion, and none will deny the eminent usefulness of the Chief Justice in solving the difficulties, or call in question his sagacity or forecast in respect to the effect and termination of that unhappy conflict, as it is within the recollection of many that he was able to look beyond the mist of civil agitation, and even through the darker and more frightful cloud of civil war, and to see nearer and nearer every hour the approaching dawn of a day under whose light all those threatening aspects would be dispelled.

Difference of opinion cannot exist as to the variety or importance of his public services, but it is a mistake to suppose that purely intellectual efforts are in every case the unfailing index of the greatness of a man, or that they always furnish the correct means of estimating the value of his public services; as such efforts, though great, may be accompanied by such vices. of heart and defects of disposition as greatly to lessen or even destroy their influence in such an estimate. Purity, impartiality, love of justice, and respect for public and private rights are essential elements of greatness in a public man, and in every

such respect the character of our deceased brother challenges our highest admiration. His respect for public and private rights is universally acknowledged, and neither envy nor malice ever called in question the purity of his life or his impartiality in the performance of his public duties.

Throughout his career as Governor, Senator in Congress, and Secretary of the Treasury, he always manifested a love of justice, and the same trait of disposition and character is evinced in all his judgments, whether rendered in this court or the Circuit Court. We all know with what diligence and patience he investigated litigated questions, and how willing he was to review or even to surrender his own opinion in order to be right at last.

Men find it easy to review others, but much more difficult to criticize and review their own acts, and yet that is the very summit to which the upright judge should always be striving. Judges sometimes surrender with reluctance a favorite opinion, even when condemnation confronts it at every turn, and they find it wellnigh impossible to yield it at all when it happens to harmonize with the popular voice or is gilded with the rays of successful experiment.

Pride of opinion at such a time is too apt to predominate over a love of justice, but it was exactly under such circumstances that the late Chief Justice was called upon to review as a judge one of the most striking and conspicuous of his acts as the guardian of the national treasury at a moment when the fate of the nation so much depended upon its correct administration. Great success attended the financial scheme when it was adopted, and time had secured for it an extensive approval, as the war of the rebellion was victoriously ended and the national wealth was rapidly increasing. Circumstances better calculated to foster pride of opinion cannot well be imagined, but the Chief Justice, who had so creditably met the demands of duty in such a great variety of other responsible positions, did not hesitate to apply his best powers to the task of reviewing the measure in question, and finally recorded his opinion that it was not justified by the Constitution.

Judges and jurists may dissent from his final conclusion and hold, as a majority of the justices of this court do, that he was right as Secretary of the Treasury, but every generous mind, as it seems to me, should honor the candor and self-control which inspired and induced such action.