tinually enlarged upon the importance of laborious effort, affirming that, in his opin ion, the " paucity of great men, in all ages, has proceeded from the universality of in dolence," and that, " glory is not that easy kind of inheritance which the law will cast upon you, without any effort of your own; but — you are to work for it, and fight for it, with the patient perseverance of a Her cules." His appointment as attorneygeneral in President Monroe's first cabi net, was the occasion for magnificent eulo gies from the press of the country, and the popular approval even went beyond the officer and attached to his principal literary effort, the " Life of Henry," then recently published. The venerable John Adams, ' foregoing his native prejudice against Southern men, expressed to Mr. Wirt his unqualified gratification at the honor be stowed. Contrary to all his previous in clination, Mr. Wirt was now drawn from private life to figure conspicuously before the country in an official capacity during three presidential terms; a longer period of service than that of any man who, either before or after Wirt's time, has filled the office of attorney-general. He had ever been out-spoken in his repugnance against politics, declaring that he would never enter on the political highway in quest of happi ness, that it never appeared to him to be a desirable field or one for which he was fit ted, either by nature or habit; and on two occasions, when the subject of his candidacy for a seat in the United States Senate was agitated, he positively refused to allow his name to be discussed. He entered on his duties at the beginning of that "era of good feeling " which marked the repose of party antagonism and characterized the adminis tration of Mr. Monroe. Wirt threw him self heartily into the arduous labors of his office, involving the delivery of opinions up on the most intricate and important ques tions of municipal, constitutional, and inter national law. At his suggestion, the opin
ions of his predecessors and himself were printed and preserved for the use of future incumbents; a practice continued to the present day. The comparative extent of his labors may be estimated from the fact that, although there had been prior to Mr. Wirt's retirement from the President's cabi net, and during the forty years of the operations of the government, six attorneysgeneral, whose opinions filled a volume of nearly fifteen hundred pages, Mr. Wirt's opinions alone comprised one third of the whole. It was during his term as attorney-gen eral that Mr. Wirt performed a prominent part in two of the most important cases which up to that time, had engaged the attention of the Supreme Court, — the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, involving the right of Congress to establish a National Bank and the right of a State to tax it; and the case of Dartmouth College v. Wood ward. In the former the attorney-general was associated with Webster and won; in the second, he was opposed by Webster, and lost. His practice extended into the courts of Maryland, where he crossed swords with his former antagonist and prede cessor in office, William Pinkney, whom he generously described as "an excellent lawyer who had very great force of mind, great compass, nice discrimination, strong and accurate judgment, and for copiousness and beauty of diction was unrivalled.— No man dared grapple with him without the most perfect preparation and the full possession of all his strength." After Pinkney's death, Wirt partially filled the position at the bar formerly held by his rival. The high professional standing of the attorney-general appears from the fact that in the important and leading case of Gib bons v. Ogden, reported in 9 Wheaton, 1, in which is presented the question whether a State has the right to regulate commerce between itself and another State while Con
