and thus protect the soil from the influence of the sun and winds, and insure the regularity and permanence of the flow. These forests at the same time might aid in protecting the vicinity of the city from the spread of the dunes or sands. And, lastly, the restriction of the use of public water to the amount specifically paid for, being only a question of time, all are interested to provide for the different uses of city life, such an amount of water as can be obtained from wells and cisterns on their own premises. Others also might be maintained at the public expense.

Chief Justice Taney-A Sketch and a Criticism.

By ISAAC EDWARDS, Esq.

[Read before the Albany Institute, January 7, 1873.]

The recent publication of a memoir of Chief Justice Taney, naturally attracts attention. I do not propose a review of that work. My purpose is rather to draw attention to the true features and characteristics of a distinguished man, in a candid and truth loving spirit.

There are some characters, in history, apparently condemned by destiny to fight in a lost cause. The stars in their courses fight against them. The Emperor Julian, nicknamed the apostate (and rechristened the apostle by an erudite Lord Chief Justice of England), is a conspicuous representative of the ill-starred company; a unique figure in history, with genius and virtues that qualify him to shine as the ruler of an empire, he stands condemned and stained by an epithet of infamy, because he strove to restore the fading glories of pagan Rome, and entered into controversy with a new and subtle power, which had the promise of the future, and was already growing into the empire of mind. He could conquer the open enemies of Rome, but he could not extinguish the Christian faith. With all his power and enthusiasm for the old pagan faith, he could not bring back the worship of Jupiter and Minerva. All that battle, therefore, with infinite skill and pious fraud and smoking altars, was delivered in a lost

cause.

Roger Brooke Taney, was born on the 17th of March, 1777, in Calvert county, Maryland. He was the third child and second son in a family of seven children. His ances

tors were among the early emigrants to that state; Roman Catholics seeking refuge from the severe penal laws of England. His father, Michael Taney, was educated in the Jesuits' college at St. Omers; he returned home and was married to Monica Brooke, daughter of a neighboring planter or farmer, a little while before the commencement of the American Revolution. The Brookes were an English family, of the same faith, and among the early emigrants to the Catholic colony of Lord Baltimore; they appear to have settled first on the banks of the Patuxent, and were a family of a large estate in lands. The mother of the future chief justice was a very pious woman, of excellent judgment, and great gentleness. Her influence upon the character of her son, appears to have been deep and lasting; it shows itself long afterwards, in the wish expressed by him, that he might at last be buried by her side near the little Catholic Church in Frederick city.

His father owned a good landed estate, and slaves. Though not rich, his property was sufficient to enable him to live comfortably and educate his children. He loved the amusements of the country, and he was fond of fox hunting; a sport in which the circumstances of the country enabled him to indulge with great freedom.

The son was prepared for college, mainly, by the aid of private tutors; he entered Dickinson college at Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, in 1792, a little more than fifteen years of age, and graduated three years after. He returned home but twice during his college course, walking on both occasions from Carlisle to Baltimore, about eighty miles. From his own account of his college life, his studies were prosecuted with reasonable diligence. Dr. Nesbit, the president of the college, a Scotch Presbyterian, appears to have been a favorite with the class; under him our student was trained in Ethics, Logic, Metaphysics and Criticism. He was a close student, of an active habit, and, as

he tells us, read much not prescribed in the college course. His standing in college may be inferred from the fact that, though much younger than many in his class, he was elected to the second honor, in a class of about twenty-five.

The winter after he left college was spent at home, chiefly in the amusement of hunting. In the spring it was necessary for him to enter upon a new course of life. It was his father's plan to give his landed estate to the eldest son, and throw the rest of his children upon their own resources; thus working out in his own family the good and evil flowing from the English law of primogeniture.

In the spring, after an idle winter, he commenced the study of law at Annapolis, in the office of Jeremiah Townley Chace, then one of the judges of the General Court of Maryland, a court of general jurisdiction, which held four sessions a year for the trial of causes; two at Annapolis with a jury summoned from the western shore, and two at Easton, with a jury summoned from the eastern shore. Annapolis, being the chief centre of population and commerce, was naturally the place where the most important litigation was carried on, and where eminent lawyers and judges either resided or attended court. It was therefore considered the place of all others in the state where a man should study law. His mode of study here is noteworthy. It is an admonition worth remembering. He says himself: "I associated only with the students, and studied closely. I have, for weeks together, read law twelve hours in the twenty-four. But I am convinced that this was mistaken diligence, and that I should have profited more, if I had read law four or five hours, and spent some more hours in thinking it over, and considering the principles it established, and the cases to which it might be applied." With an ordinary man the mode of reading pursued by him, ends in a dismal swamp, in much vague knowledge, without any clear apprehension of principles.

success.

On the other hand, following the plan he recommends, and studying the law distributively, in its application to subjects and transactions as they arise in the ordinary course of life, as a system of principles founded in reason and justice and public policy, even an ordinary man may get on with some The question is interesting. How can a man grasp and appropriate the reason and spirit of the law? A verbal answer may be easily given: it can be done by drawing largely upon the fountains of the law, by deep insight into the nature and wants of man, as an individual and as a member of society; and by an earnest inquisition into the intent and purpose of the law. It can be done as Kent did it, and Marshall and Mansfield; it requires experience, the wisdom of practical knowledge; it is gained through all the powers of the mind, preeminently through the moral sense.

Mr. Taney was admitted to practice in the spring of 1799, after a clerkship of three years. He was now twentytwo years of age, ambitious of distinction, full of courage and high hopes. He had witnessed the professional efforts of many distinguished lawyers, Luther Martin, William Pinkney and several others, who held almost equal rank with them, and he aspired to a like eminence. And yet we find him, on his own confession, so oppressed with a species of morbid sensibility that he could not rise to address a jury or an audience with calmness and self possession. This quality, this susceptibility to the influences that converge upon the advocate in his highest efforts at the bar, is worthy of note; he was never able to conquer it. Every address, every argument cost him an effort of his firm and resolute will.

He was tall and slender, and his health was infirm from his earliest years; in his later years, his frame became very much attenuated.

Soon after his admission to the bar, he was chosen from