ciseness-, and close adherence to the points involved. He was overtaken by mortal disease while holding court at Marshall; and his last entry upon his journal, made with an unsteady hand, records that the jury trial then pending was interrupted by his illness.1 He died a few days afterward, and was succeeded by Abner Pratt. Governor Ransom's place had been taken in 1848 by Sanford M. Green; and the same year an additional judgeship had been created, to which Edward Mundy had been appointed. This was made necessary by the establishment of another circuit. The court, after these changes, consisted of Whipple, Wing, Green, Mundy, and Pratt. All of these, except Mundy, held at some time or other the chief-justiceship.
Sanford Moon Green was born in Grafton, N. Y., May 30, 1807. He came to Michigan and settled in Owosso, when he was thirty years old, but he had practised a little at Rochester, N. Y., before that. He is best known to the present generation of lawyers for his work on Michigan practice; he has also produced a treatise on townships. He made the revision of the statutes in 1846, and his arrangement of them has been the basis for the three later compilations by Cooley, Dewey, and Howell. He was a member of the State Senate for four sessions in the middle forties, and after he ceased to be a judge of the Supreme Court he was circuit judge for twenty-four years more.
1 2 Pioneer Collections, p. 201.
His career has been much like that of John Worth Edmonds, of New York, who was also a legislator and a judge of distinguished ability and eminence, but is chiefly remembered for his adhesion in later life to spiritualism. Edmonds was, moreover, a philanthropist in respect to criminals. Judge Green's proclivities in a like direction once brought him into sharp collision with the Supreme Court at the very time when that body was at the height of its reputation. He had tried a man for a detestable crime, and in charging the jury he instructed them that in considering the case of their "brother," they must "look down deep into the soul of humanity" and pay no regard to popular prejudice. The jury convicted the fellow, and on reviewing the case the Supreme Court criticised the charge with severity, and said that however imperfect the prevailing mode of administering justice might be, it gave so ciety greater security than the new principle would that was suggested in the charge. The trial judge retorted by newspaper, and said the Supreme Court had no right to pass upon any question that was not raised by the assignments of error. The criticism, however, was revised out of the opinion before it was officially published. In his old age Judge Green has published, through the Appletons, a speculative treatise upon crime and its treatment on the basis of its being a disease.
Abner Pratt, on the other hand, is said to have been prompt, decisive, and bold, and in
