THE LAWYER IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS career, the partisan opinions, or the un fairness of the judge on the bench. The effect may still further be seen, even in legislative bodies, when impeachment or other political or semi-political questions have been raised, and where, in order to decide them, those bodies had to assume for the time a judicial relation. In few instances, indeed, have partisan passion or public clamor been permitted, even in the remotest way, to influence such action with obvious unfairness. This has been true in hundreds of cases where the man who was sitting in judgment was partisan before he had been judge and remained partisan after he had retired from the Bench or from the exercise of a judicial function. In my own somewhat extended judicial experience I have naturally come into close relations with a large number of judges of courts, of both original and appellate juris diction, and into personal contact with many more, but after all these years I can say that, in no case, have I ever known a single judge who, writing or concurring in a majority opinion, or, either by himself or in connection with his associates, dissenting in a minority opinion, has been moved by personal reasons, or by attachment to a political party. These considerations ought to give us pause before we consent to think that our life, society, and system of government are growing worse, or before we permit any revolutionary theories to drive us to the conclusion that old customs, manners, or methods should be abandoned simply be cause they are old or because other govern ments, or forms, or systems, have not adopted our simple and effective way of dealing with great and difficult human problems. The application of this non-partisan in terpretation to judicial questions has ex ercised a profound influence upon our for eign service. This is illustrated by the names of the ambassadors and consuls, many of them without legal training, who,
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before their departure from our shores, had been appointed and had gone forth as severe and unbending partisans, in spite of which they have become at once represen tative of their country. Among men of this type, we, of the American Bar, can confi dently pride ourselves upon the exampleset by our profession in all the capitals of the world. Nothing could better illustrate this than the fact that, within less than forty years, the government of the United States has sent to the one great diplomatic post, which so greatly affects the interests and the affections of our people and the peace of the world, four men, all of them trained as partisans, and not one of whom had had a judicial career. Yet each one illustrated at its highest point the nonpartisan influence which I have claimed as governing the judges of our land. It is. scarcely necessary for me to say that Г refer to Reverdy Johnson, Edward J. Phelps, Thomas F. Bayard, and Joseph H, Choate, all of whom have, within the period mentioned, represented the United States at the Court of St. James. Even the disputed Presidential electoral contest of 1877, unfortunate though it must have been in many of its legal aspects, car ried with it, after all, in its results, direct or remote, the highest possible tribute that could be paid both to the American judi ciary and to the American people. If the same result, or perhaps any other, had been reached solely by legislative and executive action, that is, if it had been wholly political in its ending as it was in its beginnings — it is impossible to predict what the effect might have been. The extra judicial, superlegal if not illegal, forced intervention of the Supreme Court, as an element in the settle ment, certainly induced final acceptance of the result by the whole country. So strong was and is the respect shown by the people for even the quasi-judicial determination of a dispute which held in solution a great peril. The two powers or functions of govern
