In a numerous court, that the Chief-Justice should have a prevalent and gracious authority, as first among equals, to adjust, arrange, and facilitate the cooeperative working of its members, will not be doubted. For more than sixty years, at least, this court had felt this authority--_potens et lenis dominatio_--in the presence of the two celebrated Chief-Justices who filled out this long service. Their great experience and great age had supported, and general conformity of political feeling, if not opinion, on the bench, had assisted, this relation of the Chief-Justice to the court. When Mr. Chase was called to this station, he found the bench filled with men of mark and credit, and his accession made an exactly equal division of the court between the creations of the old and of the new politics. In these circumstances the proper maintenance of the traditional relation of the Chief-Justice to the court was of much importance to its unbroken authority with the public. That it was so maintained was apparent to observation, and Mr. Justice Clifford, speaking for the court, has shown it in a most amiable light: "Throughout his judicial career he always maintained that dignity of carriage and that calm, noble, and unostentatious presence that uniformly characterized his manners and deportment in the social circle; and, in his intercourse with his brethren, his suggestions were always couched in friendly terms, and were never marred by severity or harshness." As for the judgment of the bar of the country, while it gave its full assent to the appointment of Mr. Chase, as an elevated and wise selection by the President, upon the general and public grounds which should always control, there was some hesitancy, on the part of the lawyers, as to the completeness of Mr. Chase's professional training, and the special aptitude of his intellect to thread the tangled mazes of affairs which form the body of private litigations. The doubt was neither unkind nor unnatural, and it was readily and gladly resolved under the patient and laborious application, and the accurate and discriminating investigation, with which the Chief-Justice handled the diversified subjects, and the manifold complexities, which were brought into judgment before him. In fact, the original dubitation had overlooked the earlier distinction of Mr. Chase at the bar in some most important forensic efforts, and had erred in comparing, for their estimate, Mr. Chase entering upon judicial employments, with his celebrated predecessors, as they showed themselves at the close, not at the outset, of their long judicial service. I feel no fear of dissent from the profession in saying that those who practised in the Circuit or in the Supreme Court while he presided, as well as the larger and widely-diffused body of lawyers who give competent and responsible study to the reports, recognize the force of his reason, the clearness of his