sensible how much I owed you-and now pledge to you "Mrs. Anne Taney." R. B. TANEY." It is a pity that more letters like this are not written in these days. Mr. Taney was a thoroughly trained lawyer in every department of the profession. He had studied the principles from the "old masters" of the law-Coke, Littleton, Bracton, Fleta and others and not from the digests and encyclopedias of the present day, which, whilst being great labor savers in supplying precedents, practically paralyze both the inclination and power of thought and the application of principles. Whilst a member of the Frederick bar, Mr. Taney's reputation as a lawyer was such that he argued cases on appeal from every part of Maryland and stood in the very front rank of the Maryland bar. In 1823, William Pinckney, "the greatest forensic character who has ever appeared in the American courts," had died, whilst representing Maryland in the United States Senate. In announcing his death to the House of Representatives, John Randolph of Roanoke said: "I arise to announce to the House the not unlooked-for death of a man who filled the first place in the public estimation in the first profession in that estimation in this or any other country." Luther Martin had then become such a mental and physical wreck that the General Assembly of Maryland had passed an act taxing every lawyer who applied for admission to the bar five dollars annually for Mr. Martin's support during his life. The opening at the Baltimore bar caused by the retirement of these great lawyers suggested to Mr. Taney the propriety of removing to that city and placing himself in the position he felt he was entitled to occupy at that, the leading bar of the State. About this time the party to which Mr. Taney belonged had so far disintegrated that in the election of a successor to Mr. Monroe all four of the candidates for the presidency were Republicans; but Mr. Taney had become so thoroughly disgusted with the conduct of the eastern Federalists, now masquerading as Republicans, in the war of 1812, when they acted as traitors to their country and as the abettors of its enemies, that he has left on record his condemnation of this unpatriotic and cowardly conduct on their part. General Andrew Jackson, a successful military hero, had then asserted his ascendency in the political horizon, and it was not long before Mr. Taney became one of his most devoted followers, although in doing this he seems at the time to have had no political aspirations. William Wirt, Walter Jones and Taney were then the recognized leaders of the Maryland bar, and on the unanimous recommendation of the Baltimore bar, Mr. Taney was appointed Attorney-General of his State by an administration opposed to him politically, the only office he said then he had ever desired to hold. HIS POLITICAL CAREER. We must now take a glance at Mr. Taney's political career, a career apparently wholly unsought, undesired, uncongenial and unexpected to him, but as stormy in many of its aspects as the fiercest of some of those in his judicial career, to which we shall allude hereafter. General Jackson was elected President and inaugurated on March 4th, 1829. Soon after his inauguration, and because of difficulties which occurred in his cabinet about Mrs. Eaton, every member of his cabinet resigned. There were then so many aspirants to the succession to the presidency, that General Jackson became greatly concerned how to form a new cabinet of such material as would make his administration a success. On the 21st of June, 1831, he appointed Mr. Taney AttorneyGeneral, and subsequent events showed he could scarcely have made a more fortunate selection; from the President's point of view. The administration of John Quincy Adams, with Mr. Clay as its inspiration, had been rankly federal in its tendencies, and among other things had fostered the operations of the Bank of the United States, and, by a scheme of high tariff and internal improvements, with the influence and co-operation of the moneyed power of the country, through the influence of the Bank, was striving to introduce the centralizing policy which had been rejected by the country in the election of Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Clay went even further in the direction of encouraging measures of centralization than had ever been advocated by Alexander Hamilton. This was the issue then between the two great parties led by giants on both sides when Mr. Taney was called into Jackson's cabinet, and we shall presently see that it was upon him, in the fiercest struggle of the administration, with its powerful antagonists, that the hardest blows fell. We shall also see that these blows were returned with such force and effect that the Democratic policy triumphed and that party came out of the contest victorious. In his first message to Congress in December, 1829, Jackson avowed his hostility to the Bank of the United States, and advised against the renewal of its charter, which would expire by limitation in 1836, not, it seems, on the ground of the doubtful constitutionality of the act creating the bank, but because it had "failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." The country was thus notified that the decentralizing policy of Jefferson would be attempted to be restored, and it was to assist Jackson in carrying out this policy that Mr. Taney consented to become a member of his cabinet. As is well known, Congress passed an act extending the charter of the bank, which was vetoed by Jackson, Mr. Taney assisting in the preparation of the famous veto message. Mr. Taney also advised the removal of the deposits from the bank to the State banks, and when the President ordered Mr. Duane, Secretary of the Treasury, to have this done, and Duane refused either to obey the order or to resign, he was removed by the President, and Mr. Taney appointed in his stead. No man ever lived who dreaded the baneful influences of the combinations of the moneyed power more than Mr. Taney. He said: "It is a fixed principle of our political institutions to guard against the unnecessary accumulation of power over persons and property in any hands, and no hands are less worthy to be trusted than those of a moneyed corporation." Almost immediately on his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Taney ordered the removal of the deposits to the State banks. No one understood better than he the violence of the storm which this act would bring upon his head, but he saw his duty clearly, and did not hesitate to perform it. The manner in which he was assailed for this conduct in the Senate, especially by the great triumvirate Clay, Calhoun and Webster and in the House by McDuffie, Binney, Adams and others, is perhaps without a parallel; so that when his nomination as Secretary of the Treasury was laid before the Senate, it was promptly rejected, the first time in the history of the country where the Senate refused to confirm a cabinet appointment named by the President. Mr. Webster even went so far as to refer to Mr. Taney as the "pliant instrument of the President, ready to do his bidding," to which Mr. Taney, at a dinner given him at Elkton, replied: "Neither my habits, nor my principles, lead me to bandy terms of reproach with Mr. Webster, or anyone else; but it is well known that he has found the bank a profitable client, and I submit to the public whether the facts I have stated do not furnish ground for believing that he had become its pliant instrument, and is prepared on all occasions to do its bidding whenever and wherever it may choose to require him." There was no more chivalrous man than Mr. Taney, and so with all his intellectual powers, the thin texture of Mr. Webster's moral armour was easily pierced by this arrow from the quiver of Mr. Taney. The rottenness of the bank, and the corruption and subsequent indictment of its officers, were a complete vindication both, of the patriotism and wisdom of the course pursued by the President and Mr. Taney in the removal of the deposits; and whilst the Senate adopted a resolution of censure on the President for his course in this matter, that resolution was subsequently, through the efforts of Mr. Benton, expunged from the record. In January, 1835, Judge Gabriel Duval resigned his position as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and President Jackson at once nominated Mr. Taney as his successor. Although his confirmation was urged by Chief-Justice Marshall, at the last hour of the session of the Senate, it was indefinitely postponed, which was equivalent to a rejection. Chief-Justice Marshall died in the summer of 1835, and in December following, President Jackson nominated Mr. Taney as his successor. Although the complexion of the Senate had changed since the previous session, yet the confirmation of Mr. Taney was again vigorously opposed, the opposition still led by Clay and Webster, yet smarting under the effects of the blow inflicted by Mr. Taney on the bank, and, through that, on the country, as these Senators insisted. He was, however, confirmed on March 16th, 1836, by a majority of fourteen, and Mr. Clay subsequently apologized to Mr. Taney for the part he had taken in opposing his confirmation, and admitted that he was wholly wrong in the strictures he had then brought against him. HIS JUDICIAL CAREER. We come now to consider, by far, the most eventful, as well as the most important and interesting, part of Mr. Taney's life—his judicial career. Of course, within the limits of this address, it will be impossible to do more than to glance at some of the most important incidents of that career. In a work entitled, "The Dartmouth College Case and the Supreme Court of the United States," published in 1879 by John M. Shirley of New Hampshire, that writer, in speaking of the Supreme Court, says: |