sylvania — took the letter and the review to court; and after the other motions were concluded he rose with great gravity and said : "There is an unfortunate man who has incurred your Honor's displeasure, and has received a severe sentence; but I hope these papers which I hand up will cause the sen tence to be reconsidered." The Chief-Jus tice looked at the papers, and when he saw what they were he roared out laughing — his laugh was loud — and wrote on the back of the letter in Latin, " Let him return," and handed it back. The other lawyers stand ing round did not know what to make of it. One day some time after this, Gibson had been bothered all the morning by some law yer and had got into a thoroughly bad humor. The same gentleman who had once handed him the papers, and who had now to reply, saw that he would do nothing with the Judge unless he put him in a good humor, — which he did by alluding to a "certain rat in China; " and Gibson laughed. During these years the Philadelphia Bar helped not a little to increase the brilliancy with which Gibson and Black filled the courts of law. Of Hamilton and Francis in the last century, mention has been made; and as their worthy successors, the names of John Sergeant, Jared Ingersoll, and Horace Binney have incidentally appeared in this present narrative; and of a slightly later date comes William M. Meredith, made AttorneyGeneral of the State June 3, 1861. He ap pears as council on the famous Donoghue riot case alluded to above. Brief mention must be made of these men who were not Chief-Justices; and of Mr. Meredith per haps the most fitting thing to record is the circumstance of his consenting to be Attorney-General. It was in war-time, and owing to too many dark reasons to print here, a disastrous crash of ruin was immi nent. No bank would take up the State loan. During a memorable evening, known to few, this danger was what persuaded Mr. Meredith to leave his practice and accept the position; and when in the morning it
became known that he had consented to be Attorney-General, every bank took up the State loan. Chief-Justice Gibson's will contains a striking sentence at its beginning: "I, John Bannister Gibson, the last of the ChiefJustices under the Constitution of 1790*' This means that in 1848- 1850 the old method of appointing the judges was relin quished, and the people became the electors of their judges. Gibson had been consist ently frank in expressing his low value of popular judgment, and from this well-known attitude of distrust it is easy to see how he came to begin his will in such a way. The words sound ominous; and when one may be sure that " there is not a political party in this country which would not hesitate for a moment to drop the name of such a man as Gibson from its ticket if in a contest characterized by partisan zeal and clap-trap he did not seem to have the shallow quali fication of availability," — those words be come prophetic. His nomination in 1851 was not due to any popular appreciation of his brilliant services, but the hair-breadth result of the work of two personal friends. Upon the other hand, were it at any time to befall Pennsylvania to have for her Gov ernor a thief, or other jail-bird at large, — and even this unlikely misfortune should be taken into account in such a discussion, — then the power that was Governor McKean's when he made Tilghman Chief-Jus tice in the people's face might be even worse than the election system. But it is futile to weigh these matters. Pennsyl vania has taken this step, concerning which a brother judge said to Gibson, " Probably the people will get tired of the new system and return to the old." " No," said the Chief-Justice; "the people are like the grave, — what they get they never give up." From this incisive truth it is quite plain what Gibson thought of the change. His old age must have been in many ways full of sad retrospect. His health was going, and he saw by his near failure to be elected
