Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/618

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Qualifications. his colossal predecessor; but the observation justifies no important inference, for it would have been true of any man of his generation who might have been chosen for the place. But in the causes whose determination chiefly occupied the attention of the court, in which the body of our jurisprudence has been de veloped and applied, public policies main tained and private rights enforced, and to which public attention is seldom directed, he was the equal of any of the eminent men who have occupied the office of Chief Justice. Transcendent abilities elicit our admiration, but they should not be regarded as indispen sable to our highest respect. The biographer who is to place Judge Taney in his rightful position before the whole people will have an important, but easy, task. He will address

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minds now happily released from the influ ence of those exciting and angry controver sies which made charitable and even just opinions of adversaries impossible. He will exercise the tolerance of opinion which he will claim for his subject. He will invoke the guidance of the truth, and follow where it leads. His materials will be abundant. By their use he will be able to exhibit a long public career of devotion and rectitude, and a private life attractive for its simplicity and philan thropy; and he will aid in establishing the con clusion, consistent with the truth and promo tive of a just national pride, that among the eight who have occupied the exalted station of Chief Justice of the United States since the foundation of the government, there is not a dishonored nor an unworthy name.

QUALIFICATIONS. By Douglas Malloch.

I WOULD like to know nothing just for awhile, And quit all this working and scheming, Just to sit all day with an idiot's smile With naught to employ me but dreaming. I would like to know nothing just for a time, And cease this mad struggle for money; I would like to forget even reason and rhyme And have all my sorrows seem funny. I would With nothing like to know to trouble nothing or just worry, for a day, And Perhaps if all my I could senses sit should on a jury. vanish away