equal on earth; " his eulogy of President Jackson, certainly the most notable of all made on the occasion of his death, and es pecially forceful and original in its presen tation of Jackson as a lawyer; and his tribute to the memory of Senator Matt H. Carpen ter, — are specimens of pure diction, ranking among the best in American literature. Judge Black fiercely and uncompromis ingly opposed the encroachments of corpo rate power in his own Commonwealth. He made elaborate arguments before its legisla tive committees in behalf of the enforcement of the provisions of the new Constitution of 1 873 against such usurpations of public rights, and he always commanded a hearing. He served without pay in the convention which framed that instrument, and earnestly but ineffectually pressed upon his colleagues the adoption of a provision to make legisla tors purge themselves by an official oath at the end of their term of service, as well to take a pledge of duty at the outset. In the course of his remarks on this ' subject, he ' used the following figure which has given to his address on this occasion the familiar name of " the bird speech : " — "My friend from Dauphin (Mr. MacVeagh) spoke of legislation under the figure of a stream, which, he said, ought always to flow with crystal water. It is true that the legislature is the fountain from which the current of our social and political life must run, or we must bear no life; but as it now is, we keep it merely as ' a cistern for foul toads to knot and gender in.' He has described the, tree of liberty, as his "poetic fancy sees it, in the good time coming, when weary men shall rest under its shade, and singing-birds shall inhabit its branches and make most agreeable music. But what is the condition of that tree now? Weary men do indeed rest under it, but they rest in their unrest, and the longer they remain there the more weary they become. And the birds, — it is not the woodlark, nor the thrush, nor the nightingale, nor any of the musical tribe, that inhabit the branches of our tree. The foulest birds that wing the air have made it their roosting-place, and their
obscene droppings cover all the plains about them, — the kite, with his beak always sharpened for some cruel repast; the vulture, ever ready to swoop upon his prey; the buzzard, digesting his filthy meal and watching for the moment when he can gorge himself again upon the pros trate carcass of the Commonwealth. And the raven is hoarse that sits there croaking despair to all who approach for any clean or honest purpose." He was, it will be easily recalled, of coun sel for the Democrats in the Tilden-Hayes electoral controversy; he was in the Vanderbilt will case, in the cases involving the Goodyear rubber patents,1 and in many of the issues growing out of the extreme legis lation of the Reconstruction period. With Senator Carpenter and Hon. Montgomery Blair, he defended Secretary Belknap. In the later years of his life he was advisory counsel for the Mormon hierarchy in Utah, who had good reason to apprehend ruthless sequestration of the estates of their church. He was one of the arbitrators to settle the controversy over the Virginia-Maryland inter state line. Black's name is associated as judge or counsel with hundreds of leading cases that enrich the American reports; but none of them more admirably illustrates his relations to the public and to the profession than that of the U. S. v. Blyew et al. (13 Wallace, 581), involving the civil rights bill, — fn which one of his successors, AttorneyGeneral Garland, declared Judge Black's argument to have been the finest combina tion of law, logic, rhetoric, and eloquence he had ever listened to. In that, as in the still more important case of Milligan, Judge Black pleaded the cause of his client without fee or hope of reward, because he felt that he represented not only the principles of his political party, but the highest interests of his country. He was moved by his consist ent consecration to the loftiest patriotism; 1 After his speech in the Goodyear case, Judge David Davis said : " It is useless to deny it. Judge Black is the most magnificent orator at the American bar."
