judge. We part with him on the Bench with sincere regret.

The resolutions of the Bar, with the remarks of the Attorney-General in presenting them, will be entered on the records of the Court, and we shall take pleasure in sending a copy to Judge Strong, as requested.

cised before this era in but two instances, which are found in the cases of Marbury v. Madison, and Scott v. Sanford. But there followed upon the amendments, and the consequent legislation, a large series of constitutional inquiries which are by no means concluded.

In all these great judicial debates the subjects of which I have so hastily sketched, Mr. Justice Swayne bore his full share. His ability, his learning, his acquirements, and his ready capacity to acquire, his calm judgment and his sound common sense caused his influence to be

MONDAY, January 31st, 1881.-Retirement of everywhere felt in all their various stages. Mr. Justice Swayne.

Mr. Attorney-General Devens, addressed the Court as follows.

His opinions, which will be found in more than one third of the volumes of the U. S. Re ports, commencing with the first of Black and extending through the twelfth of Otto-some thirty-seven volumes-are the enduring monument of his honestly earned fame as a jurist. Such a fame may appear to the casual ob soldiers and the statesmen who were his con temporaries when it was won; yet it is not less dear, nor less valuable, in the eyes of every thoughtful lover of the institutions of this Republic.

May it please your Honors,-The Bar were aware last Monday, when Mr. Justice Swayne delivered the opinion, the preparation of which had been intrusted to him, that they were list-server less brilliant than that of the orators, the ening to his words for the last time in this place. His retirement, in advanced life indeed, yet with his natural force unabated, is an event that they would not willingly pass without proper expression of the respect in which they hold his eminent public services, and of the honor and love which they bear to him personally.

Nineteen years have passed since he became a justice of this Court. With one exception, the senior Associate Justice, detained from us during this term by a protracted and distressing illness, all who originally sat with him are gone. While no "cold gradations of decay" have given admonition of the necessity of repose, he has deemed it wiser to seek it.

His judicial life includes a great historic or perhaps I should say two historic periods, one the supplement and consequent of the other. The novelty and importance of the questions that were once pressed upon the attention of the Court by the civil war will be readily admitted when we remember that questions concerning all the rights of belligerents, of confiscation, prize, blockade and non-intercourse were to be at once discussed. The vast expenditures required novel systems and modes of raising revenue, and the legislation by which it was sought to meet the exigency became here, of necessity, the subject of inquiry and interpretation.

The singularly amiable disposition and cordial manner of Mr. Justice Swayne were irresistibly attractive to all who practiced before him. He had a patience which was proof against dullness. He would listen after he himself was satisfied, in order that counsel might feel they had been fully heard.

I have not spoken of his anxiety to do always what was just and right. Happily I stand before a tribunal which has endured nearly an hundred years, upon no member of which was there ever the imputation that he did not mean to deal justly and to do the right as it was given him to see the right. It was one of Mr. Jus tice Swayne's strongest characteristics.

In the fine chapter of the Old Testamentwhich describes the farewell of the aged Samuel to his people, ruler, priest and judge though he was, he desires to know, before he parts with his power to Saul, if he has done wrong to any man, that he may then rectify it: "I am old and gray-headed," says he; but behold, here I am; whose ox or whose ass have I taken? Whom have I defraued? Whom have I oppressed? At whose hands have I received any His last opinion considers fully the import-bribes to blind mine eyes?" And the people anant subject of the income tax imposed by the swered "as God is our witness, there is no such United States, and defines clearly and authori- man." tatively the meaning of "direct taxation," as the term is used in the Constitution.

At the close of the war came the period of reconstruction. As pointed out by Mr. Justice Swayne himself, it was sixty-one years since there had been any amendments of the Constitution. All the earlier amendments had been prompted by the anxiety of the States lest their autonomy should be invaded by the Federal Government; but a time had arrived when it was clearly necessary that rights acquired and results determined by the civil war should be placed under the guardianship of the Federal Government; and this was done by three constitutional amendments.

The great power possessed by this Court, that of declaring a law, which had the sanction of all the forms of legislation, void, because in violation of the Constitution, had been exer

Sure I am, that should the distinguished magistrate who retires from the Bench ask, "Who is there that has stood before me to whom I have not striven to do equal and exact justice?" the answer would be like that of the Hebrew people to the royal Judge of Israel: There is no such man.

The good wishes of all will go with him in his honorable retirement consoled by those lit erary studies which have long been his delight, and by the dearer comfort of friends and family. As he may may look back to the life that is past without regret, so he may look forward with serenity and confidence.

At a meeting of the Bar held this morning, over which Mr. Shellabarger presided and of which Mr. J. H. McKenney was secretary, the resolutions which I read were unanimously passed.

their duty and their privilege to express their sentiments of sincere respect for Mr. Justice Swayne, which have been inspired by the largely American. We live too near them to appreJudge Clifford's entire career was eminentcapacity, the full and accurate learning, the ciate the true heroism of such lives, and we anpatient and persistent investigation, the anxious desire to do justice, the genial and benevolent courtesy he has uniformly accorded to the members of the Bar, which have distinguished him throughout the long period of his service on the Bench of the Supreme Court.

RESOLUTIONS.

The members of the Bar and officers of the Supreme Court of the United States have come together to express their profound sorrow for the death of the venerable senior Justice of the Court, Nathan Clifford.

Very many of them have received, as they deserved, marked attention; none more so, perhaps, than his first, which was delivered in Goodman v. Simonds, a case that was argued in 1858, only a few days after he took his seat on the Bench. He was never disloyal to the high pooath he had taken to "Administer justice withsition he occupied, and never unmindful of the the rich and to the poor." From the beginning to the end of his long judicial career he was an No labor was too great for him if his duty reupright, conscientious, and painstaking judge. quired it, and his delight was to search diligentResolved, That they are duly penetrated by a ly for the right, and when found, declare it. sense of the calamity which they, in common It would be difficult to overestimate his loss. with the rest of the people of the United States He was the last of the connecting links between have sustained in the death of the Honorable the long past of the Court and the present. His Nathan Clifford; and that they will ever knowledge of what had been done, whether cherish his memory, which is endeared to them shown by the records or tradition, was extenno less by many personal attractions and asso-sive and accurate. He was always ready, in conciations than by his eminent ability and wis- sultation or elsewhere, to give his brethren the full benefit of what he knew, and nothing grieved him more than to feel that what had

As a slight tribute to his memory they desire to place on some permanent record the expres-out regard to persons, and to do equal right to sion of their admiration of his civic virtues, and their appreciation of the integrity and great ability with which for near a quarter of a century he discharged the arduous duties of his

high office. Therefore,

dom.

Resolved, That the members of the Bar and officers of the Court will wear the usual badge of mourning during the Term.

Resolved, That the Attorney-General be desired to present these proceedings to the Court with the request that they be entered on its minutes.

Resolved, That the same be published in the journals of the city, and that a copy thereof be forwarded to the family of the deceased, with the respectful assurance of the sympathy of this meeting.

Mr. Chief Justice Waite replied as follows: We are glad to receive from the Bar this expression of their high regard for our deceased brother. The records of the Court contain

abundant evidence of the truth of the most that has been said of him. His opinions are to be found in forty-two volumes of our reports, and every one was unmistakably the result of his honest convictions and patient investigations,

8

once been deliberately done was to be undone. The Court and the Bar have abundant reason to regret that his usefulness has become a thing of the past. He died full of years and full of

honors.

for myself. When I came to the place I now I may, perhaps, be permitted here a word occupy he was the Senior Associate. For months he had presided over the deliberations of the Court with all the dignity and ability which were due to the position. We were strangers to each other. He had never seen me to know me before; but time will never efface from my memory his cordial and affectionate greeting. He was a man of kindly nature, and was never consciously guilty of a wrong.

The resolutions of the Bar and the remarks of the Attorney-General in presenting them will be entered on our records, and we will now adjourn out of respect to the memory of him that is gone.