very forcibly set out in the report of Living ston v. Van Ingen, 9 Johnson, 507. As has been stated above, the court of this State supported the validity of the grant, but the Federal Supreme Court, in Gibbons v. Ogden, reversed those judgments, and very wisely denied the right of any citizen to a monopoly of any peculiar mode of nav igating the public waters. The decision of the New York Court of Errors, in Ogden v. Gibbons, 17 Johnson, 488, was but proforma, to facilitate an appeal, and was based on the former decision in Livingston v. Van Ingen, supra, in which the decree of Chancellor Lansing, denying an injunction, was unani mously reversed. The argument of Thomas Addis Emmett for Livingston is very able and brilliant. He lays stress on two facts, one that these boats do not interfere with the old mode of navigation, and the other that they do not carry merchandise! Ogden Hoffman, arguing on the same side, alluded to " the ridicule and contempt cast upon the appellants as rash and chimerical pro jectors." In the later case, Chief Justice Kent argues that the State grant may not be invalidated by one armed only with a coast ing license; that there must be some une quivocal statute or decision to impeach it. "We must be satisfied," said he, "that'Neptunus muros magnoque emota tridenti fundamenta quatit.'" Neptune, in the person' of Chief Justice Marshall, arose and shook the foundations of the State laws quite to the conviction, if not to the satisfaction, of the great Chief Justice. That was a battle of naval giants — Wirt and Webster on the one side, Emmett and Oakley on the other. Emmett and Wirt quoted and wrested Virgil at each other, and the great argument was conducted ore rotundo, secundem artem, and with due and stately perorations. One of Gibbons' steamboats was significantly named " Bellona." Of all this the reader may get an excellent account in Mr. Snyder's " Great Speeches by Great Lawyers," page 47, and
he forcibly describes the hostile legislation of New Jersey and Connecticut on the subject, and how near to a civil war the three States were brought by Livingston's grant. The result must have entailed a serious pe cuniary loss upon Livingston. One of the earliest New York steamboats was quite naturally named " Chancellor Livingston," and another was quite unnaturally christened "Chief Justice Marshall."1 Livingston's faith in steamboating does not seem to have embraced steam travel on land, for unless my memory is at fault, he once wrote a letter declaring his belief that even if railway trains could be driven by steam at ten miles an hour, they could not be stopped within any reasonable distance! If the first chancellor could revisit this sphere he would be quite satisfied with the increase of speed in mod ern steamships, and he would have no reason to feel ashamed of the despatch of business in his court in comparison with that of the tribunal substituted for it half a cen tury later.2 Livingston, in his " Essay on Sheep," takes credit to himself for first introducing merinos into the State, but it seems that Colonel Humphreys had brought them over to Con necticut in much larger numbers several years earlier (See 47 Albany Law Journal, 178), and Seth Adams to Dorchester, Mass., 1 In 1825 Story and Webster journeyed from Albany to Catskill on the former and returned on the latter. 1 In volume 2 of the " American Medical and Philosoph ical Register," p. 256, was published "An Historical Ac count of the Application of Steam for the Propelling of Boats," signed "A Friend to Science," but prepared by Liv ingston himself, which concluded in the following strain : "The projectors, stimulated by the public patronage and the pride of success, have spared no expense that can con tribute to the care ami safety of travellers. Their boats . . . have attained a degree of perfection which leaves us nothing to wish, but that the public, duly impressed with the advantage they have received from their labors, may cheerfully bestow on them the honor and, profit to which the boldness of their enterprise and the liberal manner in which it has been executed, so justly entitled them." It is evident that the Chancellor was master of the modern art of advertising. Franklin called him " the Cicero of Amer ica." It is evident that he was as proud of the steamboat enterprise as Cicero was of the Catiline business.
