'.■'i-,'.'''.'«'j5S;;t ;> KF 07 /r 7^ mmm'Mf:m4r:-: Digitized by Microsoft® CORNELIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. Hn /Iftemociam. Samuel Blatchford. Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924006134914 ^ I' , K'ff y ll^^A'Tj^-^TlU Hn /Iftemorlam. Samuel Blatchford. S14S PROCEEDINGS. Friday, October ij, i8gj. The Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States and the officers of the Court met in the Court Room in the Capitol at lo o'clock- Mr. George F- Edmunds said: Gentlemen of the Bar: We have assembled at this time, pursuant to previous notice given, to take such action as may seem fit in reference to the death of Mr. Justice Blatchford, a member of this Court. I move you that our Brother Choate, of New York, be made Chairman. Thereupon Mr. Joseph H. Choate was elected Chairman and Mr. James H. McKenney Secretary. On taking the Chair, Mr. Choate said: Gentlemen of the Bar : I could not find it in my heart to decline to come to Washington to take part in this meeting, where an appropriate tribute was to be paid to my life-long friend, Mr. Justice Blatchford, 4 before whom so large a part of my own professional life and labors have been spent. It would be a strange neglect of a most appropriate custom if the death of a man so honored and so beloved as Mr. Justice Blatchford could pass without appropriate notice and recognition from the Bar. The death of any Justice of this great tribunal is necessarily one of national interest. The vast questions upon which it is called to pass, the immense property interests that it disposes of from year to year, would alone command the attention and interest of the Nation ; but when we consider that unique province which is assigned to it, one never before intrusted to any judicial tribunal, by which a written constitution, made originally for thirteen little Atlantic States, with three millions of people, has been molded and adapted to the ever- increasing wants and the rapid growth of the great Nation which has grown out of them, so that to-day it satisfies exactly all the needs of this vast nation of forty-four States, with its seventy millions of people, covering the whole continent from sea to sea — it is perfectly evident that we owe the success of this novel and peculiar constitutional experiment not more to the foresight of the great statesmen who founded the Government than to the wisdom and the prudence 5 and the common sense of the Judges of this tribunal to whom its construction has been intrusted. Now, Mr. Justice Blatchford, for the last ten years of his service here, bore his full share in all these great labors and responsibilities. And we, who have labored before him and have observed his course, can bear testimony that from the beginning to the end his life here has been one of constant sacrifice and of absolute devotion to the great duties of his office, and that always, year after year, he has been growing in strength, learning, and power, so that when he put off his judicial mantle, he may justly be said to have been one of the most useful members of the Court of which he formed a part. It may not be inappropriate to trace from the begin- ning the steps by which he advanced; always gaining in popular confidence, always growing in personal weight and personal power, exhibited in the presence of the whole Nation. I think that he owed something to the principle of heredity, which marks so strongly the character of the individual man. His grandfather was a dissenting English clergyman, an immigrant to this country in the early part of the century, and he settled in that land of steady habits, the State of Connecticut, where his father, who afterwards became an eminent lawyer and a not inconspicuous public man, was born and bred; and I can not help thinking that from that New England discipline he transmitted to his more distin- guished son the qualities which characterized him through every period of his life. That overruling sense of duty; that devotion, always without flinching and without sparing, to hard work; and that self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of everything to the performance of the obligation that he had undertaken, were traits that distinguished him throughout his long career, and it is to that discipline, in a large measure, that, as it seems to me, he owes the foundation of his fame and character. His father, I have stated, was a lawyer of prominence in his day, and Mr. Justice Blatchford was not one of those who achieve early success in their professional career at the bar or on the bench without adventitious aids. His father occupied a very prominent position. For a long time counsel for the Bank of the United States, for a still longer time counsel for the Bank of England in this country, he founded and transmitted a business which to this day figures largely in the com- mercial circles of the city of New York. Young Blatchford was fortunate in all his early 7 experience. He had the good fortune to be the pupil of a great master. When preparing for college, he fell under the guidance of Dr. Charles Anthon, a man whose classical fame was not confined to his own State, but extended to the boundaries of the whole country. That he was an industrious, faithful, studious, painstaking, conscientious boy, as he was afterwards a man, is mani- fest from the fact that he succeeded in graduating with distinction from Columbia College at the age of 17, when the boys of to-day are still undisturbed at their games. Afterwards, his experience was equally fortunate. Having begun the study of the law, he was interrupted in that by an invitation from William H. Seward, then governor of the State of New York, to serve as his private secretary, and there his mind was opened and expanded to the consideration of public questions, which, I think, prevented the narrowing, sharpening effect which the profession of the law is unhappily said to have upon many of us who do not enjoy such opportunities in early life. Returning from this valuable experience, he com- menced the practice of his profession with his father in the city of New York, and it would seem strange that, with the opportunities for wealth and rapid promotion 8 that opened to him at that metropolitan bar, he should be willing, as he was, at the close of Governor Seward's term of office to accept his further invitation to join him in the practice of the law in the little village of Auburn, where for nearly nine years he applied himself, as we may well believe, with diligence and great devotion to the study of the fundamental principles of jurisprudence. The study of the law in those days was free from some of the embarrassments that must now attend it. The whole body of the law was contained in a comparatively limited number of books. Without consulting several hundred thousand volumes, a student could be sure that the entire principles of the common law and equity, as so far developed, were within his easy reach. There is no doubt that those nine years of quiet practice, of opportunity for study, and especially of close association with so great, so active, and so ambitious a spirit as Governor Seward did vastly contribute to his subsequent success; for, when he returned to the city of New York, as he did when Mr. Seward's summons to the Senate removed him practically from professional life, he came fully equipped as a well-rounded, able, and accom- plished lawyer. I need not say to you that at that bar he soon achieved a very prominent and useful place. 9 He was ready to do everything that offered to the prac- titioner of law, except one subject, which he always avoided. On the bench or at the bar he could not bring himself to have anything to do with criminal law. As a lawyer, and afterwards as a judge, he avoided as much as possible any part in the administration of criminal justice. He was too tender-hearted for that branch of the business, and eagerly transferred it to any of his colleagues who could be induced to take it out of his hands. It was not merely in the common law or the study of the principles of equity that he had made this substantial progress. His mind had been opened to questions of public and international law, and he very soon found an opportunity to manifest his usefulness in that direction. It was after the close of the war, when our Court of Prize and Admiralty in New York was still occupied with the immense and important questions growing out of the events of the rebellion and of reconstruction, that he was able, even before he became a magistrate him- self, to render efficient aid to the then Presiding District Judge, Samuel R. Betts, who had been in his day a great admiralty judge, able and commanding in all great questions of national and international law, but who had really fallen into a superannuated condition. That ven- lO erable judge quickly found that he could rely upon the aid of the young advocate, Mr. Blatchford, for sub- stantial assistance. So, upon Judge Betts's retirement in 1867, I think it was. President Johnson saw fit to appoint Mr. Blatchford as his successor as Judge of the District Court of New York, and the whole com- munity responded with one voice to the fitness and excellence of the selection. To any of you who wit- nessed his labors for five years on the district bench it is not necessary for me to attempt to describe them. I do not believe that any other man — at any rate at our bar — could have been found adequate to the discharge of the terrific labors that were thrown upon his unaided hands. The court of admiralty itself was sufficient to engage the entire attention of one man, filled as it was on the prize side with important cases. It is true that he had not the opportunity, like Stowell or Lushington, to establish new principles of admiralty law, but in applying those that had already received the sanction of this Court and of the great British courts of admiralty, he covered the whole region of that interesting branch of the profession. No student need go outside of the decisions of Justice Blatchford to' make himself master of the law, theory, and practice of admiralty. 11 But hardly had he entered upon these great duties when the passage of the bankruptcy act imposed upon him a world of labor in enunciating, following out, and applying the principles of that act, novel, difficult, all of which rested upon him. But he had a prodigious faculty of labor. The power of labor in Justice Blatchford, from beginning to end, was unsurpassed and hardly equaled in any instance that I have ever known. No man that I have ever seen could take a great record in print or in manuscript and so soon pluck from it the vital facts of the case and the questions that had to be disposed of He seemed to have only to turn it over to draw out the matters that were to be passed upon by himself, and I think you all know that the Federal courts of the rest of the country relied upon and followed his decisions in that unattractive and not very interesting branch of our jurisprudence. Upon the death of Justice Johnson, one of the most honest, faithful, and learned judges, he was promoted to the Circuit Judgeship. There he won that fame in patent cases which has made him so conspicuous before the profession of the country. I do not know that he had any special faculty or love for the mechanical arts or chemical research and investigation, but I think that 12 all of us who have perused patent cases know that common sense is the great solvent in these apparently insoluble problems as it is in the other departments of the law. His decisions in these three branches of the law — patents, admiralty, bankruptcy — stood the test of appeals to this Court, and I think that you will find that he was very seldom reversed except when sitting as a judge of this Court, he, with infinite judgment, candor, and good humor, consented in more than one instance to a reversal of his own decision. It was a manifest departure from the old tradition which prescribed the selection of Judges of this Court from the bar at large, or from distinguished judges of State courts, when President Arthur, upon the death of Mr. Justice Hunt, promoted him to a seat in this tribunal; and I think that the success of the experiment proved that it was a wise departure, for he brought here a wide experience in the same course of studies which he was here to follow, having already devoted to them fifi;een years of his honorable life. It must have been a most delightful experience for him to be thus promoted into the serene atmosphere and calm repose of this Court, in contrast to the constant collisions and the hand-to-hand conflicts over which he had presided for fifteen years; and here he exhibited that sweetness of 13 temper, that uniform serenity and courtesy, which had always been inherent in his character. I need not say to you how faithfully he discharged the duties of this office. He had one or two striking characteristics, not peculiar to himself, but yet not universal with the Judges of this Court. He had an abiding conviction that the decisions of this Court should be unanimous; that it should declare the law with one unbroken voice, and that the law and the right ot each individual case and each individual question should, after discussion and consideration, be so clear and manifest that all could unite. And you will find that in his long course of ten years here he almost never dissented, and I think hardly once read or published a dissenting opinion. Then, too, although he was a strong partisan — a Republican through his whole life — yet never once in his whole judicial career of twenty-five years did he allow politics to affect in the slightest degree his judicial decisions. Filled, as he was, with Federal traditions — traditions of the Federal party and the old Whig party, an active member of the Republican party that succeeded it — he, of course, was a very doughty champion of Federal power. In all those cases that came up in his time in which the supremacy H of Federal power, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, was involved, he necessarily went all lengths, he could not possibly help it, in upholding this great centralized Government, of which this Court forms so important a part. His courtesy to young men was one of the most marked attributes of his judicial career. In my own experience 1 could say I have observed it, and I know hundreds of others will bear witness that he would accept and give full weight to an argument presented to him by the youngest and least experienced tyro at the bar, just as if he had been backed up by a formidable array of its leaders. So he won for himself the confidence, the admiration, and the great respect of the Bar. He stood before the country as an honorable, faithful, good, industrious judge. He has left behind him a great record. The fame of the advocate dies with his own breath, but that of the judge, and especially a judge of such distin- guished place and powers, lives after him, and many generations to come will derive benefit from those learned opinions which he has placed upon record. There is hardly a branch of the law which he has not in this way explored and illustrated. He lives with us, gentlemen, a fresh memory as a 15 beloved friend, as a wise tutor, as a dignified and hon- ored magistrate, and I do not wonder that you have assembled this morning in such numbers to pay your respect to his memory. Mr. JuLiEN T. Davies moved that the Chairman appoint a committee to draft resolutions expressive of the sense of the meeting in respect to the death of Mr. Justice Blatchford; which motion being adopted, the Chair appointed the following-named Committee: Mr. JuLiEN T. Davies, Chairman. Mr. George F. Edmunds. Mr. Walter D. Davidge. Mr. George F. Hoar. Mr. J. M. Wilson. Mr. William A. Maury. Mr. Solomon Claypool. Mr. Lawrence Maxwell, Jr. Mr. Calderon Carlisle. The Committee, through its Chairman, Mr. Davies, reported the following RESOLUTIONS: Mr. Justice Blatchford has closed a judicial career of over twenty-five years. Appointed in 1 867 to the bench as district judge for the southern district of New i6 York, he brought to the discharge of his judicial duties capacity for labor and habits of exhaustive research acquired during his experience for nine years at the bar in the quiet town of Auburn, together with the qualities of promptness in dispatch of business and quickness of apprehension that had been cultivated by thirteen years of active practice in the city of New York. His labors as district judge will live in the shape and form that the law of bankruptcy and of admiralty received from his judicial hand. Later, from 1872 until 1882, as circuit judge, the law of patents especially owes much in its development to his patient research and faithful exposi- tion. Appointed to the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1882, he brought to the dis- charge of his high duties an intellect trained and dis- ciplined by his former labors in directions especially adapted to increase his usefulness in his new sphere. In this great tribunal he was distinguished as theretofore for his careful study of his cases, his patient and full statements of facts, and his learned and luminous expo- sitions of the law. Always he wrought to the full measure of his strength He gave to the service of his chosen profession and of his country all that was best of himself He concentrated all his energies upon his judicial duties. Neither pleasure nor change of mental occupation had much charm for him. His life work was the discharge of the functions of a judge, and all his powers were consecrated to this lofty end. Resolved, That in the death of Mr. Justice Blatch- FORD his friends have lost a kind and amiable companion, his profession a conscientious and earnest brother, the Supreme Court of the United States a faithful, able, and industrious member, and the people of these United States an honest judge. 17 Resolved, That the Attorney-General be requested to lay this minute and these resolutions before the Court, and to ask that they be spread upon the record. Resolved, That the Chairman be requested to transmit a copy of them to the family of Mr. Justice Blatchford. Remarks of Mr, Julien T, Davies. Mr. Chairman : In speaking to these resolutions I shall leave to those who were the intimate personal associates of Mr. Justice Blatchford to deal with those features of his character, his attainments, and disposition, that were reserved for them and not generally exhibited to those with whom he came in contact in the discharge of his judicial duties. To those of us whose principal knowledge of him was derived from seeing him upon the bench and appearing before him, his bolder and more striking elements of character were more particularly displayed. We are not here, Mr. Chairman, to mourn the premature demise of a man who had but partially fulfilled the promise of his early days, but to record our sense of the great loss the bar, the bench, and the country have sustained in the death of a profound jurist, a laborious and conscientious administrator of 12696 2 i8 the law, who has left nothing unfinished in his career. He ceased from his labors at an age greater than that usually attained by man, after twenty-five years of judicial service in the courts of the United States, having discharged the duties of his last term in the Supreme Court with faculties unimpaired, with the full strength of his vigorous and powerful intellect, with a record of ten years of faithful service in one of the most dignified and powerful tribunals of the world, justifying during every day of that service his right to enjoy the honor of his seat in that Court. An examination of the experience that Mr. Justice Blatchford had at the bar discloses how admirably it was adapted to train him for the bench. After four years' experience in the office of his father, in the city of New York, in 1845 ^e formed a partnership with Governor Seward, at Auburn, a small town in the central part of the State of New York. This association con- tinued for nine years. Apart from the special advantages of daily contact with a mind as broad and statesmanlike as was that of Governor Seward, the young lawyer must necessarily have found the conditions of his practice during this period eminently fitted to develop those habits of exhaustive research, patient and thorough examination of both facts and law, and of deep and 19 full reflection upon his cases, were prominent character- istics of his subsequent judicial labors. A country practice, especially in early life, appears to be far better adapted to produce a deeply read lawyer, and one who is capable of long-continued concentration and tireless effort upon one subject, than practice in a city. The country lawyer, with long periods of time during which the courts are not sitting, possesses opportunities for study, reflection, knowledge of the books and assimi- lation of their contents, that are denied to his brother in the city, whose hours for research and reflection must frequently be snatched from needed recreation, or even sleep. Thus drilled and disciplined, in 1854 Mr. Justice Blatchford came to the city of New York and founded the firm of Blatchford, Seward & Griswold, on the basis of his father's practice. The stimulus and pressure of city life developed the qualities of prompt and quick appreciation of a situation, speedy methods in dispatching business, and keenness and clearness of mental vision. He was marked as a man of distinction at the bar of the city of New York from the time of his reentry into that arena. Thirteen years of hard and successful labor at the bar brought him to the year 1867, when he received the appointment as District Judge for the Southern District 20 ot New York. The bankruptcy law was but two months old when he took his seat. During his five years of service in that court his labors were Herculean. The bankruptcy division ot the court would alone have taxed the powers of any ordinary judge, yet he was able to dispose of its mass of business, elucidating and in many respects forming the law of bankruptcy, deciding almost daily novel questions for which there was no established precedent, and at the same time impressing himself most vigorously upon the law of admiralty, and, in addition, frequently acting as Circuit Judge, and discharging the multifarious and responsible duties of that position. It is doubtful if the records of the bench in this or in the old country will show an amount of judicial labor performed by any other single judge so thoroughly, so learnedly, and so rapidly, equal to the extent of work that was executed by Mr. Justice Blatchford during these five years. In 1872 he became Circuit Judge, and for ten years brought to that position the same unflagging energy, the same conscientious discharge of duty, the same patient methods of exhaustive statement of fact, laborious examination of authorities, and careful exposition of results that had characterized him as District Judge. In the law of patents especially he found the field that 21 was worthy of his greatest mental efforts, and on this branch of jurisprudence Mr. Justice Blatciiford has left a broad and deep mark. In 1882 was conferred upon him the highest prize of our profession — a seat in the Supreme Court of the United States. His selection was received by the bar with deep satisfaction, for in his choice its members saw the fitting reward of laborious duty thoroughly performed by a judge of high intelligence and spotless purity of personal character. It was truthfully said then, as it is truthfully said now, that the promotion of Mr. Justice Blatchford to the Bench of the Supreme Court was a just recognition of his personal deserts, and brought to the Court a man who was in every way fitted by experience, by learning, by natural parts, and by moral purity, to exercise in that great tribunal the divinelike power of pronouncing final judgment on the interests of his fellow-man. No function of the human intellect excels in its importance that of judgment in settlement of conflicting claims and rights. No duty calls for greater purity of personal character, greater freedom from any motive but desire to seek and grasp the truth, more unswerving self-sacrifice in labor, and higher intel- lectual powers. Clearness of mental vision, ripe judg- ment derived from ample experience in human affairs. 22 absolute integrity, intellectual courage — all these quali- ties go to the creation of the pure and lofty character, the keen and broad intellect, the knowledge that is derived only from sympathy with his fellow-man, that combined, make the judge worthy of the judgment seat. How much more worthy here than elsewhere must the judge be when, in addition to the settlement of principles of law upon which individual liberty or rights of property between man and man depend, the tribunal of which he is a part is called upon to decide between contend- ing States, and to determine whether or not a statute passed by the representatives of seventy millions of peo- ple and approved by their chosen Executive is yet the law of the land. The consequences of such judgments are so momentous, upon their results depend the lives, the liberties, and the happiness of so many, that the nation justly demands that those who wield this awful power shall be themselves as spotless as the ermine the people have thrown upon their shoulders. Faithfulness, conscientiousness, purity, intelligence, learning, industry must combine to mark one worthy of a place in this great Court. Samuel M. Blatchford possessed all these requirements. Absolutely without stint, he poured into his life work all he had to give. All his thoughts, all his strength, all his faculties, he devoted unremit- 23 tingly to the discharge of his duties as a judge. While we regret, and deeply regret, that he was not permitted to give us still more years of this faithful service, yet to-day our predominant thought must be of thanks that we have had so much; and as we lay our wreaths upon his bier, it must be with the reflection that he himself, had he expressed a choice, would have preferred that it should be as it was — that he should pass away leaving behind him the memory of his great labors undimmed by any recollection of a time of struggling to carry the burden, after it had become plain to all but him that his strength was inadequate to the mighty task. Remarks of Mr, William A. Maury. Mr. Chairman: After the eloquent and admirable remarks of the Chair and of the gentleman through whom the resolutions were reported, it must be admitted that there is not room for a single word more; but I trust it may not be inappropriate for me to use the occasion for the purpose of giving myself the personal satisfaction of paying some small tribute to the memory of an old and valued friend. 24 It is well for the dignity of human nature, Mr. Chairman, that it can not be said to be quite so hard for the rich to attain judicial eminence as for a camel "to thread the postern of a needle's eye." But, as Lord Bacon truly remarks, riches, like the baggage of an army, seriously hinder the march to every kind of greatness. Mr. Justice Blatchford, however, rose superior to the allurements ot wealth, having early discovered that the noblest fruition lies beyond the circle of money's purchasing power. W hen a man of this order appears, we are proud of the kinship of a common nature, and reverence the divinit} that shines forth in him. If we search for the inspiration which is his strength, it will surely be found in some overmastering con- viction to which he clings as to a religion. It was from the abiding, never-wa^'ering conviction that failure of justice means failure of government that proceeded the inspiration which gave Mr. Justice Bi.ntchi-ord courage and endurance under labors that, for arduousness, may be likened to those of the anvil and the mine, to borrow the comparison used by Scaliger and Dr. Johnson to denote the severity of the lexicographer's task. Further we need not seek for the 25 source of that stern adherence to duty, that abhorrence of delays of justice, that intrepidity and integrity, and that invincible industry which marked his service on the bench. In very truth did the country possess in this man an example of judicial excellence worthy of reverence and of remembrance, and we do well to be here to com- memorate that example. On the bench he was a mirror of justice and the law's majesty, and, by his single presence, imparted something of the impressiveness of religious ministra- tions to the proceedings of the Circuit and District Courts in which he sat. Like the late Chief Justice Taney, he realized that it was no small part of the judge's duty to enhance the moral power of the law by a proper attention to the requirements of dignity and decorum. Mr. Justice Blatchford not only strengthened the administration of the law, but he also left his impres- sion on it, especially in the departments of commercial, admiralty, revenue, and patent law, and the law of bankruptcy. When raised to the Supreme Court, his reputation was already national, and his judgments, as circuit and 26 district judge, had become authoritative, so that it could hardly have been expected that his work in the higher sphere would do much more than confirm the fame he had won in the lower. It was at once his safety and his value as a judge that he kept to the ancient ways and faithfully handed down the traditions of the law as he had received them. It was his guiding star that "no man out of his own private reason ought to be wiser than the law." If his judg- ments have not the elegance of the classic Stowell, or do not exemplify "the strength and stretch of the human understanding," like those of Marshall and Mansfield, they do possess, to his enduring honor be it said, lucidity, accuracy, and soundness, without which other merit is of small value. If it is difficult to attribute to any part of his work a preeminence over the rest, it is because his habitual employment of a steady, undissipated attention raised the whole of that work to nearly one level of excellence. It is this uniformity, this equality in his merit that entitles his name to distinction. His painstaking accuracy, his capacity for handling details, and his love of dispatch, together with a close observation and an inquiring turn of mind, ever on the alert, gave him a somewhat unique influence and use- 27 fulness, which, we should think, must be missed in the quarter where it was most felt. His recorded labors are a monument pregnant with the teaching that marvels may be wrought by industry and a steadfast purpose under the guidance of method and a good understanding. It can not be, Mr. Chairman, that the saving, redeem- ing power of this life lesson will be spent before it has turned some one purposeless soul, at least, from the draff and husks of vanity, and pressed home to it " the sin " of " the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin." Remarks of Mr. Calderon Carlisle. Mr. Chairman and Brethren of the Bar: If it were not that the late Mr. Justice Blatchford had honored me with his personal friendship and considera- tion throughout the time of his service upon this Bench, I would not presume to arise in this presence to lay a very humble tribute upon his bier; nor do I now pre- sume to say one word of his great judicial reputation, which is recorded in his own opinions in three courts, and which has been characterized so ably by the remarks 28 of the Chairman of this meeting and in the presentation of the resolutions. But, Mr. Chairman, I do presuine to say a word upon some traits of Mr. Justice Blatch- ford's character which have not been touched upon; that is, upon the social side of his nature, not gener- ally, but as applied to the members and interests of our profession. It has been said that no pleasure turned Judge Blatchford from his duty and persevering labor. All who knew him recognize the justice of this statement, but we also knew him at the proper periods of relaxa- tion, fully enjoying and fully sharing the ordinary social intercourse with men; and we of the bar, and especially of the bar of Washington, where, from time to time, there were local and national gatherings, knew that he had an unflagging interest in everything that aifected the happiness and welfare of the profession; that he never failed to attend one of these gatherings; that at them, while welcoming the older members, he paid particular attention to the younger, and encouraged them always to meet together and to hold to the bonds which should unite the bar, of which he loved to speak as a fraternity united by kindly and noble motives. All of us who have seen that side of Mr. Justice Blatchford's char- acter remember it gratefully and affectionately. 29 It did not seem to me fitting, Mr. Chairman, that I should be silent on this occasion, because this thought occurred to me as one worthy to be added to those already laid before you. The resolutions were then adopted, and, on motion of Mr. George F. Edmunds, the meeting adjourned. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. Monday, November i^, iSgj. Present: The Hon. Melville W. Fuller, Chief 'Justice. Stephen J. Field, John M. Harlan, Horace Gray, David J. Brewer, Henry B. Brown, George Shiras, Jr., Howell E. Jackson, Associate Justices. Mr. Attorney-General Olney addressed the Court as follows: The Bar, may it please the Court, have requested me to present the resolutions lately adopted by them upon the occasion of the death of Mr. Justice Blatchford. They are as follows : Mr. Justice Blatchford has closed a judicial career of over twenty-five years. Appointed in 1867 to the bench, as District Judge for the southern district of 31 32 New York, he brought to the discharge of his judicial duties capacity for labor and habits of exhaustive re- search acquired during his experience for nine years at the bar in the quiet town of Auburn, together with the qualities of promptness in dispatch of business and quickness of apprehension that had been cultivated by thirteen years of active practice in the city of New ^'ork. His labors as district judge will live in the shape and form that the law of bankruptcy and of admiralty received from his judicial hand. Later, from 1872 until 1882, as circuit judge, the law of patents especially owes much in its development to his patient research and faithful exposition. Appointed to the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1882, he brought to the discharge of his high duties an intellect trained and disciplined by his former labors in directions especially adapted to increase his usefulness in his new sphere. In this great tribunal he was dis- tinguished as theretofore for his careful study ot his cases, his patient and full statements of facts, and his learned and luminous expositions of the law. Always he wrought to the full measure of his strength. He gave to the service of his chosen profession and of his country all that was best of himself He concentrated all his energies upon his judicial duties. Neither pleas- ure nor change of mental occupation had much charm for him. His life work was the discharge of the func- tions of a judge and all his powers were concentrated to this lofty end. Resolved, That in the death of Mr. Justice Blatch- FORD, his friends have lost a kind and amiable companion, his profession a conscientious and earnest brother, the Supreme Court of the United States a faithful, able, and 33 industrious member, and the people of these United States an honest judge. Resolved, That the Attorney-General be requested to lay this minute and these resolutions before the Court, and to ask that they be spread upon the record. Resolved, That the Chairman be requested to transmit a copy of them to the family of Mr. Justice Blatchford. These resolutions, as I am sure the court will agree, justly estimate and express the loss sustained, not merely by the judiciary, not merely by the profession, but by the entire community as well. It does not follow that the community is necessarily or even probably sensible of its loss. Judge Blatchford bore his high honors so meekly, fulfilled his important functions so quietly and unostentatiously, as to attract to himself but slight notice from the public he so faithfully served. Nothing, indeed, was more alien to his thoroughly genuine nature than the mere trappings of office, than the notoriety and conspicuousness which, in these days of the interviewer and the illustrated daily press, so easily become the inseparable attendants of high station. Judge Blatchford was the model of a competent, well trained, laborious, conscientious, and, above all, modest public servant. It is not given to every man to be instinct with true genius, to exult in acknowledged intellectual superiority, to be chief among the chiefs of 12695 3 34 his chosen calling. Such men are rare and their exam- ples as often provoke despair as excite emulation. But to every man it is given to make the most of the faculties that he has, to cultivate them with unflagging diligence, to make sure that they deteriorate neither from misuse nor disuse, but continue in ever-growing strength and efficiency until the inevitable access of years and infirmities inexorably bars all further progress. By such means alone, without the aid of any transcendent powers, it is astonishing to what heights men have climbed, what conquests they have made, and what laurels they have won. Judge Blatchford would have been the last to claim for himself those extraor- dinary gifts which have made some men seem and be called the giants of the law. But he had tireless industry, persistent application, a determination to work the powers he possessed to their utmost capacity, and the result is now seen in an honorable judicial career on the Bench of the highest court of the country and in an example full of encouragement and promise for every ambitious and struggling spirit. If it be asked what was Judge Blatchford's chief characteristic as a judge, it may be said to consist in the strictly business quality of his work. By that I do not merely mean that he was specially conversant with the multifa- 35 rious affairs of trade as daily transacted in the commer- cial centers of the world, and dealt with the questions arising out of them with peculiar intelligence and skill. No less could be expected of one who came to the bench from a successful practice in the commercial metropolis of the country. But his judicial work was businesslike, in that its sole aim was the right determination of the particular case in hand. He never made its decision an occasion for philosophic disquisition. He never under- took by an opinion in one case to settle principles for other anticipated cases. He never indulged in "large discourse looking before and after," much less in any flights of rhetoric. It satisfied his idea of judicial duty that the controversy before him was settled aright by the application of a rule of law broad enough to cover that case. Thus, if he was not brilliant, he was safe ; if he did not make large contributions to the science of juris- prudence, he won respect for the law and its administration by the uniform righteousness of the results reached in actual causes. It must add to our admiration of Judge Blatchford that he toiled assiduously, both at the bar and on the bench, not from necessity, but from choice ; that the allurements of an ample fortune neither belittled his aims nor benumbed his energies, and that in his hands wealth was but the supplement and aid to an industry 36 and zeal rarely excelled even under the spur of poverty. His orderly, prosperous, and placid career, notable in itself, is even more so by contrast with that of his colleague on the bench whose death preceded his own by only a few months. Judge Blatchford rose to the highest of professional honors by unswervingly treading the beaten path of the law and by a regularly graduated ascent, every stage of which, from country lawyer to city lawyer, from District Judge to Circuit Judge, and from Circuit Judge to Judge of the Supreme Court, was in natural and logical succession. Mr. Justice Lamar, on the other hand, was called to the like honors after a career of extraordinary vicissitudes, in which the life of the camp and the battlefield alternated with that of the forum and the hustings; almost without probation as a legal practitioner, but with a thorough theoretical and practical knowledge of great affairs of State and with a well-earned national renown as an orator, statesman, and leader of men. And nothing could better illustrate the wide scope and variety of the functions of this high tribunal than the fact that, notwithstanding their wholly diverse training and experience, each of them found here a fitting field for his own peculiar gifts and attain- ments, and each in his own line proved himself an acces- sion and an ornament to the bench. I have the honor 37 to ask that the resolutions of the Bar be spread upon the records of the Court. The Chief Justice responded: To Mr. Justice Blatchford the discharge of duty was an impulse, and toil a habit; and since to thorough training as a scholar and in professional practice, a wide and varied knowledge of the law, a keen and discrimi- nating intellect, and an indomitable patience, he added "the transcendent capacity of taking trouble," the volume and extent of the work he was enabled to accomplish during twenty-six years of judicial life should occasion no surprise. If his death admonishes us of the swiftness of the passage of time, his example teaches, through the results of the orderly method which regulated his every action, how time may be redeemed. Mr. Justice Blatchford was at home in every branch of the jurisdiction of the courts in which he sat. It is not easy to distinguish, where all was done so well, but it may be justly said that he displayed uncommon aptitude in the administration of the maritime law and of the law of patents, his grasp upon the original princi- ples of the one and his mastery of details in the other aiding him in largely contributing to the development 38 of both. His experience in adjudication and in affairs bore abundant fruit during his incumbency of a seat upon this bench, and in the domain of constitutional investigation and exposition he won new laurels. As suggested by the Attorney-General, he did not attempt in his judgments to "bestow conclusions on after generations," yet when the four hundred and thirty opinions, to be precise as he would have been, in which he spoke for the court, contained in the volumes of our reports from the latter part of the one hundred and fifth to the close of the one hundred and forty-ninth, are examined, it will be found that he dealt with large questions, in many of them, with a breadth and lumi- nousness of treatment and at the same time with a cir- cumspection and sagacity which entitle them to high rank as judicial compositions, and will make them monuments to be seen hereafter of those concerned in looking about them for guidance in the present by the wisdom of the past. And, as rightly indicated in the thoughtful tributes paid to him to-day, the memory of this conscientious and faithful public servant will be perpetuated, not through his decisions alone, but in the profound convic- tion, the contemplation of his career will ever produce, that he kept, to use the language of another, the great 39 picture of the useful and distinguished judge "con- stantly before his eyes, and to a resemblance of which all his efforts, all his thoughts, all his life were devoted." Upon the loss to us personally in parting with this beloved friend and helpful fellow-laborer we do not care to dwell. We take up our burdens again, con- scious of the absence of the relief his participation would have afforded, but feeling as to him the truthful- ness of the thought : "Above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc Dimittts, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations." The minute and resolutions of the Bar and the remarks of the Attorney-General will be entered on our records, and as a further mark of respect the Court will adjourn until to-morrow at the usual hour. Cornell University Library KF 8745.B64U58 in tnemoriam. Samuel Blatchford. 3 1924 006 134 914 .hn...i Digitized by Microsoft®