James Iredell. been halted by the stern mandate, " so far shall ye go and no further." England's great est statesman once said, " The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown — it may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England may not enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement. But this vaunted liberty of the British subject can bear no compari son to that of the American citizen, who, dwelling under the shadow of the mighty Constitution, is secured by it in the fullest enjoyment of his life, his property and his liberty. In the famous state trials at Warrenton in January, 1787, Alfred Moore prosecuted for the State and Iredell and Davie defended. In November, 1787, Mr. Iredell was ap pointed by the General Assembly a member of the Council and sole Commissioner to re vise and compile the acts of the General Assemblies of the late Province and present State of North Carolina. This task was faithfully and ably executed by him, and the work, printed in 1789, afterwards became widely known and celebrated as " Iredell's Révisai." In 1787, the question of the adoption of the new Federal Constitution was agitating the people. Iredell was one of its ablest and most energetic advocates, and by his labor and eloquence more than any one else contri buted to its final ratification and adoption in November, 1789. In January, 1788, he pub lished a long and most admirable pamphlet in its support in reply to the objections of George Mason. He was a member of the convention which met at Hillsboro on July 2 1, 1788, to consider its adoption. Alfred Moore and William Hooper were both candidates for this convention. In instance of the strong ties of friendship which bound these two men together we read that Moore, certain of his election in Brunswick, and fearing Iredell's defeat in Chowan, urged Iredell to become a
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candidate from Brunswick. Preferring to represent his own people, however, he for tunately declined and was elected, while Moore and Hooper were both defeated. In this convention Iredell was the leader of the Fed eralists, and the burden of the argument for his party was thrown -upon his shoulders. McRee tells us : " He defended, he removed objection, he persuaded, he appealed to in terest, and awakened into life the spark of national pride. His vigor, and the extent and variety of his attainments, excited the admiration of his adversaries. His words were neither too few nor too many, but such as were in common use and conveyed his ideas clearly and distinctly to the simplest understanding; his style was terse and con densed; his arguments, direct and solid, struck the mark with the force of cannon balls." Though not successful he was not defeated, for the convention would neither reject nor adopt. His fame had now reached far be yond the limits of his State, and Washing ton, led to a conviction of his great abilities by his debates in the convention and his an swer to Mason's objections, appointed him to the Supreme Bench of the United States in place of R. H. Harrison, who had declined. On the roth of February, 1790, Pierce Butler, of the Senate, writes him : " You have this day been nominated by the Presi dent and unanimously appointed by the Sen ate to the Supreme Federal Bench. I con gratulate the States on the appointment, and you on this mark of their well-merited opinion of you." That he had won the respect and confidence of Washington is well known to us. In a letter of February I, 1790, his dis tinguished brother-in-law, Samuel Johnston, then a member of the lower house of Con gress, tells him : " I have just returned from dining at the President's with a very respect able company. . . . The President enquired particularly after you, and spoke of you in a manner that gave me great pleasure." His commission was dated February 10, 1790,
