[Pennsylvania County Histories]

s-n f 7 P 3 pen V. C 7 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries https://archive.org/details/pennsylvaniacoun67unse f _ Mr. Binney so long survived those who we^e. that, to the errors of the science there are jsotne engaged with him in active practice at the limits, but none to the evils of a licentious In¬ bar. vasion of it., he left it to our auuual legisla¬ tures to correct such delects in the system as Taking up these works in the order of their time either created or exposed, and better foundations in the law can no man lay. publication we notice first “An Eulogium While unusually sparing of references to upon the Hon. William Tilghman, late Chief authority, and not a great case lawyer, yet Justice of Pennsylvania,” delivered at the this was “the result of selection and not of request of the Philadelphia bar, in 1827, and penury.” He was familiar with “the light¬ which will be found by the professional houses of the law, and kuew tbeir bearings student in the appendix to the sixteenth vol¬ upon every passage into this deeply indented territory.” ume of Sergeant and Rawle’s Reports. The opening sentences are of marked beauty: While not bringing into his judgments an histoiical account of the legal doctrine on If the reputation of the living were ihe only source from which the honor of our race which they turned, nor illustrating them by Is derived the death of an eminent man frequent references to other codes, yet he was would be a subject of Immitigable grief. * * To part with the great and good from a world competent to the task by the variety as well which thus wants them and not to receive as extent of his labors. His judgments were thereafter the refreshing influence of their perspicuous, precise and single. No reader purified and exalted fame would be to make death almost the master of our virtue, as he ever lost the meaning; the language was appears to be of our perishable bodies. The direct, nature!, PTn’int without living and the dead are, however, but one family, and the moral aDd intellectual afflu¬ involution, parenthesis or complication. His ence of those who have gone before remains style defied the extraction of a double sense— to enrich their posterity. The spirits of all an excellence of the very first order in ju¬ ages, after their sun is set, are gathered into one firmament to shed their unquenchable dicial compositions.” “ The language of the lights upon us. law, as he uses it, is vernacular, and his He then states the birth of the Chief Jus¬ arguments the most simple that the case will tice as of the 12th of August, 1756, on the bear. They are not an intricate web, in which filaments separately weak obtain eastern shore of Maryland, and traces his paternal ancestry to emigrants from Kent strength by their union, but a chain whose county, England, in 1662. His father, James firmness arises from the solidity of its links, and not from the artifice of their con¬ Tilghman, was a distinguished lawyer of Pennsylvania, at one time secretary of the nexion.” Faithful in investigation, just in Proprietary Land Office. His maternal reasoning, impartial in conviction, “justice was the object of his affections, and he de¬ grandfather was Tench Francis, the elder, one of the most.eminent lawyers of the fended her with the ardeut devotion of a lover.” His opinion at Nisi Prius, or on the Province, the brother of Richard Francis, author of “Maxims of Equity,” and of Dr. circuit, was never overruled, nor was his Philip Francis, the translator of Horace. judgment in banc ever made ineffectual by a. With a glance at the removal of the majority of the court, save in a single in¬ stance. His great work was “ the thorough family from Maryland to Philadelphia, in 1762, he dwells upon the early incorporation of the principles of scientific equity with the law of Pennsylvania, or education of the young lawyer, his devotion to Littleton, Coke and Plowden, at ■ ather. the reiterated recognition of the bench, that with few exceptions they form an in¬ that time the manuals of the legal student, separable part of that law.” “His equity his admission to the bar, his powers as an was as scientific as his law. It was the equity advocate, the distinctness with which his of the Hardwicks, the Thurlows and the cases were presented, the perspicuity and iLldons, of England; of the Marshalls, the accuracy of his legal references, his concise, Washingtons and the Kents of the United simple and nervous style, and his appoint¬ States; and equity without discretion, fixed ment by President Adams as Chief Judge of as the principles of the common law, and, the Circuit Court of the United States—one like it, worthy of the freemen of whose of “the midnight Judges,” as the followers of fortunes it disposes.” To these properties of Jefferson were wont to stigmatize them. a great Judge he added the happiest temper, a benevolent ieart, agreeable manners, liter- When the court was abolished, in the face ary and ckjjiical accomplishments, moral of the most strenuous opposition of the Fed¬ qualities of the highest order, and a serene, eralists, Mr. Tilghman became president of unshaken faith in Christianity. the Court of Common Pleas and in 1806 Chief Justice of the State as the successor of Chief such, in outline, is the portrait drawn by Justice Shippen. Mr. Binney then dwells Mr. Binney of Chief Justice Tilghman. He upon the labors of Tilghman during the closes in these words : twenty-one years of his presidency in the Su¬ ui» course uoes not exhl bit the magnificent vauety ol the ocean, sometimes uplifted to preme Court, giving in concise form the re¬ me skies, at others retiring into its darkest sults of the contents of twenty volumes of re¬ caves—at one moment gay with the ensigns ports and upwards of 2,000 judgments. He ?i/.k',er an<? we!fkh, aDd at another strewing Its shores with (he melancholy fragments of points to his veneration of the law, above all shipwreck; but tt is the equal current of a of the fundamental common law. majestic river, which safely bears upou its bpsom the riches of the laud, and reads its There is not a line from his pen that trifles history in the smiling cities aDd villages that with the sacred deposit in bis hands, by are reflected irom its unvarying surface.” claiming to fashion it according to a private opinion ol what it ought to be. Judiclal legis¬ Mr. Binney’s next judicial portrait—un¬ lation he ahhorred. I should rather say, doubtedly his masterpiece—was that of Chief dreaded, as an Implication of his conscience. Justice Marshall, drawn at the request of the He acted upon the sentiment of Lord Bacon, that it Is the foulest injustice to remove land Councils of Philadelphia in 1835 and pub¬ marks, and that to corrupt the law is to poison lished in pamphlet form in that year In I the fountain of Justice. Wit h a consciousness perfect accordance with the Chief justice in c 2 r : He looked through the constitution with his political principles'and in "the rules the glance ol Intuition. He had been with it adopted by him of constitutional interpreta¬ at its creation, and had been in comraunlou tion, with a profound reverence for his judg¬ with it. from that hour. As the fundamental law, instituted by the people for the concerns ments and a warm admiration of his private of a rising natloo, he revolted at the theory character, with an ample knowledge of the that seeks for possible meanings of its lan¬ majestic domain of national jurisprudence, guage that will leave it the smallest possible over which Marshall had exercised un¬ power. Both his judgment and aflections bounded and undisputed intellectual sway, bound him to It as a government supreme In Its delegated powers and supreme tu the au¬ and with a full comprehension of the sig¬ thority to expound and enlorce them, proceed¬ nificance and value of the work of the late ing from the people,designed lor their welfare, Chief Justice, Mr. Binney in speaking of accountable to them, possessing their confi¬ this work exerted his highest powers. His dence, representing their sovereignty, and no conception of the character of the tribunal more to be restrained in the spirit of jeal¬ ousy within less than the fair dimensions of: over which Marshall had so long presided its authority, than to be extended beyond had been expressed elsewhere in exalted them iu the spirit of usurpation. These were terms which have been selected by a recent his constitutional principles, and he Inter¬ historian of tho Supreme Court of the United preted the Constitution by their light. States as a fitting inscription for the title His decisions Taised the renown of the page. country, and confirmed the Constitution. What, sir, is the Supreme Court of the Of all the constitutions of government United States? It Is the august representa¬ known to man, none are so favorable to the1 tive of the wisdom and justice and conscience development of judicial virtue as those of of this whole people la the exposition ol their America. None else confide to the Judges Constitution and laws.

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