John Jay, plenitude of it, they declared with becom ing dignity, 'We, the people of the United States, do ordain and establish this "Con stitution.'" Here we see the people acting as sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the State Governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Consti tution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a State to govern themselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is likewise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact, however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc." (2 Dal. 470.) It is also worthy of note that, in 1794, at the February term of the Supreme Court, that tribunal sat with a special jury to try an issue of fact framed for it, and the Chief Justice delivered the charge. This is the only instance of a jury trial in the annals of that court. (3 Dal. i.) Upon the completion of his second term as governor of New York in 1801, he refused a second appointment as Chief Justice of the United States and retired to his estate in Bedford, where, upon occasion, his advice was sought by his old friends and political associates, and where he spent the remaining twenty-eight years of his life, serene in the happy consciousness of duty well done. To enter into Jay's life more in detail would be to write the history of the nation struggling into consciousness, for of private, personal history there is none. The con sistent and steady career herein briefly out lined is perhaps a better epitome of the char acter of the first Chief Justice of the United States than any attempt at a diagnosis there of could well be. That a man, even in the amorphous times of the Revolution and early days of the government, could almost
constantly hold two offices, which, if not absolutely inconsistent with one another, at least interfered with the proper performance of the duties of one or the other, seems to us of the present day most extraordinary. To be at one time a member of the Continental Congress and also of the Provincial Con vention of New York,—the attendance upon the latter of which precluded him from sign ing the Declaration of Independence; to be at another time chief justice of New York and president of the Confederate Congress; to be both Chief Justice of the United States and envoy extraordinary to Great Britain : to be a candidate for governor of New York while still Chief Justice of the United States; are instances both of the public activities in which Jay was engaged and of the regard in which he was held, at least by the great men of that time. To have been the confi dential counsellor and friend of Washington, and to have had the confidence and love of Hamilton, to have had the utmost regard and affection of John Adams, to have main tained the steady friendship and respect of Franklin in the arduous negotiations which resulted in the Peace of Paris, and to many of which Franklin's judgment was adverse, are facts in Jay's life which show his ability, disinterestedness and earnestness, his equa nimity and his dignity of character. His conduct upon his defeat by a tech nicality for governor of New York in 1792, when it was conceded that he had a majority of votes, showed his perfect poise. That de feat he took with philosophical good nature, and in answer to an address delivered upon his home-coming at that time, he said: "Every consideration of propriety forbids that difference of opinion respecting candi dates should suspend or interrupt the mutual good humor and benevolence which har monize society and soften the asperities of human life." The same characteristic dig nity was shown in his first charge as a Fed eral judge to the Grand Jury, in which he said : "Let it be remembered that civil liberty consists not in a right to every man to do
