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for recreation and repose, his serious thoughts should all be turned to his official duties; he should be omnis in hoc. I think, sir, there is hardly a greater mistake, than has prevailed occasionally in some of the States, of creating many judges, assigning them duties which occupy but a small part of their time, and then making this the ground for allowing them a small compensation. The judicial office is incompatible with any other pursuit in life, and all the faculties of every man who takes it ought to be constantly exercised, and exercised to one end.

IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER.

The fate of the respondent is in your hands. It is for you now to say, whether, from the law and the facts as they have appeared before you, you will proceed to disgrace and disfranchise him. If your duty calls on you to convict him, convict him, and let justice be done! but I adjure you let it be a clear, undoubted case. Let it be so for his sake, for you are robbing him of that, for which with all your high powers, you can yield him no compensation; let it be so for your own sakes, for the responsibility of this day's judgment is one, which you must carry with you through your life. For myself, I am willing here to relinquish the character of an advocate, and to express opinions by which I am willing to be bound, as a citizen of the community. Sir, the preju. dices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if any there be, which have excited or favored this prosecution, will subside; but the consequence of the judg ment you are about to render, will outlive them and you. The respondent is now brought, a single, unprotected

individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand against the power and authority of the State. I know you can crush him, as he stands before you, and clothed, as you are, with the sovereignty of the State. You have the power to "change his countenance, and to send him away." Nor do I remind you that your judgment is to be rejudged by the community; and as you have summoned him for trial to this high tribunal, you are soon to descend yourselves from these seats of justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world. I would not fail so much in respect to this honorable court, as to hint that it could pronounce a sentence which the community would reverse. No sir, it is not the world's revision, which I would call on you to regard; but that of your own consciences when years have gone by, and you shall look back on the sentence you are about to render. If you send away the respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet him in the world, on which you cast him out. You will be called to behold him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a living fountain of grief and agony to himself. If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom vengeance has overtaken, and justice has blasted, you will be able to look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse. But, if, on the other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if you shall see in him, a man, for whose condemnation any provision of the constitution has been violated, or any principle of law broken down ; then will he be able, humble and low as may be his con. dition-then will he be able to turn the current of com.

passion backward, and to look with pity on those who have been his judges. If you are about to visit this respondent with a judgment which shall blast his house; if the bosoms of the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed, under your infliction, I beseech you to be able to state clear and strong grounds for your proceeding. Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will pass away. Political expediency, in matters of judicature, is a false and hollow principle, and will never satisfy the conscience of him who is fearful that he may have given a hasty judgment. I earnestly intreat you, for your own sakes, to possess yourselves of solid reasons, founded in truth and justice, for the judgment which you pronounce, which you can carry with you, till you go down into your graves; reasons, which it will require no argument to revive, no sophistry, no excitement, no regard to popular favor, to render satisfactory to your consciences; reasons which you can appeal to, in every crisis of your lives, and which shall be able to assure you, in your own great extremity, that you have not judg ed a fellow creature without mercy.

Sir, I have done with the case of this individual, and now leave him in your hands. But I would yet once more appeal to you as public men; as statesmen ; as men of enlightened minds, capable of a large view of things, and of foreseeing the remote consequences of important transactions; and, as such, I would most earnestly implore you to consider fully of the judgment you may pronounce. You are about to give a construction to constitutional provisions, which may adhere to that instrument for ages, either for good or evil. I may, perhaps overrate the importance of this occasion to the

public welfare; but I confess it does appear to me, that if this body give its sanction to some of the principles which have been advanced on this occasion, then there is a power in the state above the constitution and the law; a power most essentially arbitrary and concentrated, the exercise of which may be most dangerous. If the full benefit of every constitutional provision_be not extended to the respondent, his case becomes the case of all the people of the Commonwealth. The constitution is their constitution. They have made it for their own protection, and for his among the rest. They are not eager for his conviction. They are not thirsting for his blood. If he be condemned, without having his offences set forth, in the manner which they, by their constitution have prescribed, and proved, in the manner which they by their laws have ordained, then, not only is he condemned unjustly, but the rights of the whole people disregarded. For the sake of the people themselves, therefore, I would resist all attempts to convict, by straining the laws, or getting over their prohibitions. I hold up before him the broad shield of the constitution; if through that he be pierced and fall, he will be but one sufferer, in a common catastrophe.

JOHN JAY.

Your recollections, gentlemen, your respect, and your affections, all conspire to bring before you, at such a time as this, another great man, now, alas! numbered with the dead. I mean the pure, the disinterested, the patriotic John Jay. His character is a brilliant jewel in the sacred treasures of national reputation. Leaving his profession at an early period, yet not before he had sin

He

gularly distinguished himself in it, from the commencement of the revolution, his whole life, until his final retirement, was a life of public service. A member of the first Congress, he was the author of that political paper which is generally acknowledged to stand first among the incomparable productions of that body; productions which called forth that decisive strain of commendation from the great Lord Chatham, in which he pronounced them not inferior to the finest productions of the master States of the world. Mr. Jay had been abroad, and had also been long entrusted with the difficult duties of our foreign correspondence at home. had seen and felt, in the fullest measure, and to the greatest possible extent, the difficulty of conducting our foreign affairs, honorably and usefully, without a stronger and more perfect domestic union. Though not a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution, he was yet present while it was in session, and looked anxiously for its result. By the choice of this city, he had a seat in the State Convention, and took an active and zealous part for the adoption of the Constitution. On the organization of the new government, he was selected by Washington to be the first Chief-Justice of the United States; and surely the high and most responsible duties of that station, could not have been trusted to abler or safer hands. It is the duty, one of equal importance and delicacy, of that tribunal, to decide constitutional questions, arising occasionally, on State Laws. The general learning and ability, and especially the prudence, the mildness, and the firmness of his character, eminently fitted Mr. Jay to be the head of such a Court. When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe

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