sprang to his feet, and with great animation selected : " Known to me to be an honest declared : " Then if we must have a war, or man." The Chancellor's authority, exercised so have a canal, I am in favor of the canal, and I vote for this bill." This vote gave the conservatively, ably, justly, and without fear, majority, and the bill became a law. Kent's naturally excited jealousy and opposition. correspondence, while he sat on the Chan The phrase "throne of equity" was dis cellor's bench, was concerned mostly with liked, and the whole idea of a chancellor his private studies and summer tours. To was associated with that of a kingship. It William Johnson, his reporter, he writes : was said that the officials and practitioners "This moment I have Virgil on my table, of the chancery establishment were exclu and I am determined to amuse myself in sive, and the politicians regarded Kent as reading him forthwith. I have nothing else the representative of all they hated. This to do. I have just finished Ferrier's ' His opposition culminated in the Constitutional tory of the Civil Law,' and I am charmed Convention of 182 1, which Kent and Am with it. My three children are all with me, brose Spencer attended, and with all their and I am of course brimful of happiness"; strength and ability contended against a or again, " I have been amusing myself blind resistance to a just and sensible con with the two volumes of Eden's ' Reports.' servatism. They are excellent; I have also pored When Kent retired from office in 1823, through an immense pile of oriental erudi he had heard and decided every case brought tion and geography in Marsden's edition of before him. " This brilliant career," to ' Marco Polo,' and I am now on Raffle's quote William Allen Butler, " was cut short ' Java,' which promises a great feast." at the age of sixty years by the operation Kent's manner, when presiding, was that of the provision in the Constitution of 182 1, which perpetuated a similar provision in of dignified courtesy, blended with consid erate and lively interest in the subject- the Constitution of 1777, disqualifying the higher judicial officers from the exercise of matter before him. His mind was penetrat ing and alert, and he spoke rapidly. With their duties after attaining sixty years of bores or stupid men, however, he had little age." patience. It is related that Mr. R., a learned . The event was sincerely deplored by the but prosy lawyer, annoyed him by long bar, and on July 28, 1824, the members arguments on trifling points. One day he residing in New York City convened in the had taken an exception to some item in a City Hall, and appointed a committee to transmit an address to the Chancellor at master's report, and was proceeding elabor ately when the Chancellor asked him, " How Albany. much, Mr. R., is in dispute?" "One dollar This address, replete with praise, appre and seventy-five cents, your honor." " I ciation, and couched in terms of endear won't hear it — won't hear it," said the ment, is set forth in 7 Johnson's Chancery Cases, p. 347. Among the committee was Chancellor; "would rather pay it my Thomas Addis Emmet, a notable leader of self." When a valuation was to be made with a the bar, who came to New York from Ire report in a case of magnitude and nicety, land in 1804, and established himself in his he said, " Let it be referred to Mr. Jay; if career just as Hamilton's ended; Richard ever there was an honest man, it is Peter A. Harrison, John Wells, Josiah Ogden Hoff Jay." And on another occasion it is said man, and others. Similar addresses were presented by the he endorsed on his order of appointment these words with reference to the person members of the bar, residing at Albany,
