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THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT of the first long incumbent of that post de volved upon President John Adams, already defeated for a reelection, who transferred his able secretary of state to the Bench when retiring from office. Marshall, though some thing of a thorn, politically speaking, in the flesh of Adams's next executive successor, Jefferson, mellowed, as we all know, during his long judicial tenure, into a Chief Justice beloved by the people, and made his exalted office felt in the quiet shaping out of a con stitutional policy favorable to national su premacy. The vacancy made by Marshall's death was filled by President Jackson, whose appointee, Taney, the Senate confirmed after a previous rejection of the same person to fill a simple vacancy among the associate justices. Here, as in other instances, the old warrior at the White House indulged his combativeness to doubly humiliate his adversaries by promoting to higher honors the man whom they had defeated for lower. For this new Chief Justice had chiefly won Jackson's preference because of his coura geous compliance in the cabinet when Jack son made aggressive war upon the United States Bank. Taney, with his newer asso ciates, set the Supreme Court for a time upon a new and reactionary tack towards state rights; and, like Marshall, a man of integrity and simple habits, he served a long career as Chief Justice, vacating his office only with his life. President Lincoln selected to succeed him in the Civil War a secretary of the treasury from whom he had lately parted under vexatious circumstances, and in doing so gave one of the strongest instances of sov ereign magnanimity known in history. Had Chase, on taking the ermine of his new office, foresworn forever all future hopes of the presidency, he might have lived longer and more happily in his new position. Upon his death the glorious opportunity of be stowing this office came to President Grant1, 1 Grant's civil appointments as President were as erratic as his military appointments while a general were praiseworthy. His administration is accused, not without reason, of favoring on oppor-

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who made one or two blundering appoint ments which the Senate refused to confirm before a fair and unopposed selection was found in Morrison R. Waite. Waite's death while in office afforded President Cleveland the casual chance of giving to the Supreme Court a new official head while the Demo cratic party briefly triumphed in the nation. And Melville M. Fuller, the seventh in order of all our Chief Justices actually sworn in upon the Supreme Bench, still sits at the center of the table. Resignation from this grand office has not been known since the nineteenth century opened. Upon the whole, and granting that perfec tion is not to be looked for in human institu tions under any circumstances, I, for my own part, favor strongly the present rule of our Constitution, both as to the method of appointing judges of the United States courts and the tenure of good behavior for each of them. Perhaps I am influenced in this respect by the example, almost solitary among the states at the present time, which Massachusetts sets in this respect, adhering to the older custom at the outset of indepen dence. No rule certainly suits so well the adjustment of a judiciary to our broad Union, whose interests are so vast, com plex, and antagonistic. And here, I think, Congress should always be heedful of local ity; requiring circuit and district judges to be identified as residents with their several jurisdictions, and incumbents of the Appel late and Supreme Courts to be broadly repre sentative, assembled from different quarters of the Union. Thereby does the executive range of selection for a vacancy become prac tically narrowed so that local opinion can tunity the schemes of party supporters who sought to have the Supreme Court minority reinforced -so that the first decision upon the Legal Tender Cases might be promptly reversed. But it should stand to his credit as President, that, when Congress greatly increased the federal judiciary by a cir cuit court act, he left the list of appointees to be made tip by competent professional advisers and gave to the country an admirable establishment in that respect.