ity--_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 Cou