Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/90

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The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. was of opinion that " it ought to be wrote upon his tombstone that he was a good purwider for his family." Late in 1805 he re signed from the bench, and within a year he died. At a meeting of the bar, over which Mr. Ingersoll presided, it was unanimously resolved that the gentlemen of the bar at tend the Chief-Justice's funeral, and wear "crape on the left arm for thirty days, as a

testimony of the re spect they bear to his memory. Hor. Binney, Sec'ry." On Feb. 28, 1806, William Tilghman was commissioned ChiefJustice of Pennsyl vania; and it is to be counted the highest piece of good fortune which has fallen to our Supreme Court that such a man should have presided over it. He not only carried on the line of sound and well considered deci sions begun by McKeanand Shippen.but outstripped them both in the lucid perma nence of his legal ut terances. He was un HORACE doubtedly the ideal Chief-Justice. Widely different from McKean's lusty discourtesy is the patient and attentive manner for which Tilghman was conspicuous during arguments. His way was to hear every man to the end, nor to lose a word that either side had to say. And it may be presumed this method of care and just balancing has carried Tilghman's authority into foreign jurisdictions as safely as the learning with which his fine-reasoned opinions are equipped. It is certainly a more dignified tradition for a judge to leave behind him than Gibson's humorous but flippant assertion that he had acquired the

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faculty of looking a man in the eye and appearing to listen without hearing a word he said. Very little need be related of William Tilghman's life; the flower of it — his con tribution to the welfare of mankind — is "the contents of twenty volumes of reports, and upwards of two thousand judgments, most of them elaborate, all of them suffi ciently reasoned, very few upon matters of practice or on points of fugitive interest." This is what Mr. Binney records of the Chief-Justice, of whom he also says, " The force of his intellect resided in his judg-. ment." He was born August 12, 1756; re ceived, like Shippen, a classical schooling; studied his first law un der Benjamin Chew; was a great reader, and during this eatly time educated a younger brother, com ing in 1783 to the Maryland bar. In the case of Hollingsworth et al. v. Vir BINNEY, ginia, 3 Dall. 378, 1798, the first point raised by William Tilghman (with him, Rawle) is singular enough to be noted here. The de cision of the Court in the case of Chisolm, Ex'r, v. Georgia, produced the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States : " The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law and equity, com menced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign State." Lee, Attorney-General, submitted this question to the United States Supreme