Jay's administration might be called the reward days of earnest, able men, whose meritorious service became their passport to office. Upon the retirement in 1798 of Robert Yates and John Sloss Hobart from the Supreme bench, he appointed James Kent and Jacob Radcliff. If Jay had never done anything else, the appointment of Kent would immortalise him, just as the selection of John Marshall placed a halo about the head of President Adams. Kent, now thirty-five years old, a great lawyer and a strong partisan, had the conservatism of Jay, and held to the principles of Hamilton. He was making brilliant way in politics, showing himself an administrator, a debater, and a leader of consummate ability; but he steadily refused to withdraw from the professional path along which he was to move with such distinction. Until Kent's appearance, the administration of the law had been inefficient and unsatisfactory. Men of ability had occupied the bench; but the laborious and business methods which subsequently gave strength and character to the court, had not been applied. The custom of writing opinions in the most important cases did not then obtain, while the principles and foundation of the law were seldom explored. But Kent began at once, after a most laborious examination of the cases and the law, to bring the written opinions which enrich the reports of Caines and Johnson, to the consultations of the judges, thus setting an example to his associates, and opening the way for that admirable and orderly system of jurisprudence that has adorned the judiciary of New York for more than a century. The men of the older school had had their day. The court of Hobart was closed; the age of Kent had opened. Radcliff, the other judicial appointee, was not a new name in 1798; but it was destined to become dearer to every lover of a chancery lawyer. He had a natural gift for chancery, and no natural inclination whatever for politics or the bench. So, after serving a single term in the Assembly, two years as an assistant attorney-general, and six years on the Supreme Court, he returned to the practice, to which he devoted the remaining forty years of his life, save when holding the office of mayor of New York in 1810, and again in 1815 during the brief retirement of DeWitt Clinton. Wherever he appeared, Radcliff's erect, dignified bearing and remarkably handsome face, illuminated with large eyes and a highly intellectual expression, marked him as a man of distinction. He set the custom of dictating bills in chancery to an amanuensis, doing it with such accuracy that a word had seldom to be changed. Of the same age as Kent, he must have been of great help to that distinguished jurist, had he continued with the court. While hovering somewhat uncertain between the bench and the bar, he removed to New York City, where the opportunities for one of his gifts soon settled the question.