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infirmities of age nearly fifty years after ward to relinquish further service. As a circuit judge he was ex officio vicechancellor, and therefore had original juris diction of all suits in equity commenced within his district, consisting of nine counties. The inevitable result of his judicial experi ence in this two-fold capacity was to coun teract the tendency of long and exclusive acquaintance with the technical rules of the common law to the formation of narrow views, and to keep his mind free and open to the reception and toleration of the more liberal and reasonable rules of equity juris prudence. The principles of law and equity thus became partially blended in his mind many years before the more perfect union of the systems, which was accomplished and now obtains under the Constitution of 1846. After serving nearly eight years as circuit judge and vice-chancellor, Judge Nelson was appointed by Governor Throop to suc ceed William L. Marcy as a justice of the Supreme Court. One of his old preceptors, John Savage, was Chief Justice, and they sat together in the court for six years. In 1837 Judge Nelson was appointed, by Gov ernor Marcy, Chief Justice, and he remained at the head of the court for nearly eight years. During this period of fourteen years while sitting in the Supreme Court, he was ex officio a member of the Court for the Correction of Errors, then the court of last resort in the state, with the right to vote in all cases in which appeals were brought from decisions of the Court of Chancery. Judge Nelson had now, after an ex perience of twenty-two years on the bench, reached the culmination of his powers, and had developed a judicial capacity of the highest order. The bar and the public were unanimous in his praise. Nature intended him for a judge. All of his leading mental characteristics were of the judicial type. He inherited the leading traits of his ancestry, — courage, firmness, energy and perseverance. His fund of
"common sense " was inexhaustible; and this natural endowment, quickened by culti vation and strengthened by exercise, guided his mental faculties with so steady a poise that he was able to discern and determine the true relations of things almost to a moral certainty in the most involved and complicated affairs, as well as in the common occurrences of life. His conclusions were not intuitive or rapid, but logical and often labored — the result of calm and cautious deliberation, untinged with bias and un affected by impulse. His opinions are pervaded by a humane and liberal spirit. He never claimed to be wiser than the law, and was reluctant to ignore a precedent or overrule an authority. He preferred to recognize the demands of justice in the particular case by making an exception to or a qualification of the general rule, founded upon the novel nature or unusual collocation of the facts contained in the record and presented for adjudication. And yet it may be doubted whether any judge which this country has produced was more uniformly guided in applying legal principles to concrete cases by the suggestions of natural reason. But the best commendation, perhaps, that can be given to his discharge of the duties of associate justice and Chief Jus tice, is that during all the years of his tenure the Supreme Court of New York main tained the prestige and reputation for learning and ability which it had gained under his illustrious predecessors, James Kent, Smith Thompson, Ambrose Spencer and John Savage; and its decisions con tinued to be cited in the courts of all the states as among those of the highest author ity. His opinions were read and admired for their terseness, directness, lucidity and prac tical comprehension of the cases under consideration, by the members of the bench and bar throughout the country, and his reputation was clearly established as a wise, discreet and able magistrate. Judge Nelson was selected by President
