well as an individual, and should vote against the proposed rejection of himself and in support of party policy. His own vote beat the Sumner movement by one major ity. But on reflection — and being of a delicate sense of honor — he upon the next day withdrew his vote and returned home to be triumphantly returned in due time by a full majority. The incident added to his popular fame, and by a re-election immedi ately had, he, during six years ensuing be came one of the noted members of a very notable body, where naturally he often ea gerly crossed rhetorical swords in debate with Sumner, because of the latter's curious an tagonism; in courtesy, polish of manner, scholarship, and eloquence, Sumner found an equal opponent in Senator Stockton. When Stockton's term expired, New Jersey had suffered a party revolution and a successor of the opposite party took his seat. He had been the third Federal senator in the Stock ton family from the same State, an incident only parallel with the senatorial incumbency of the Bayard family in Delaware. Senator Stockton in the Democratic Na tional Convention of 1880, supported Bay ard for president, although desiring Samuel J. Tilden as first choice because believing that a strong party cry was a desirable fac tor toward success; and that " cheated by fraud " would be such a potent campaign cry in view of the charges made in 1876 against the one electoral majority that chose Hayes instead of Tilden as president. Thousands of Democrats still believe with Stockton that had Tilden instead of Hancock been their candidate the aforesaid cry would have proved a successful one for him. In 1877 Stockton was appointed attorney general of his native and beloved State. He had already heightened his legal reputation by his volumes of Chancery reports, the head notes in which fully attest his capacity for concise and lucid expression which consti tutes the very acme of the value of a court re
porter. He had also very acceptably served as a commissioner to revise and codify the State Statutes — a labor that on one occasion drew from Vice-Chancellor Robert S. Green the whimsical reference to these as "the Digest and Pandects of New Jersey's Justin ian, Stockton." As previously herein stated he held the office with the exception of only a few years until the spring of 1897, bringing to bear with renown and State profit his great knowledge of the doctrines and procedures applicable to informations, and writs of Quo Warranto, Mandamus, Prohibition and In junction — which so largely demand atten tion from every attorney general of a State. He guarded the varied interests of his State with earnest watchfulness, and was the means of recovering for its treasury a hundred thousand dollars in half forgotten, unpaid and adversely claimed rentals for riparian leases. He engineered (over four years of hot litigation) the integrity of a special State Tax Statute controlling a special board. The supreme court had held the act uncon stitutional, but Attorney General Stockton removed the decision to the court of errors, which reversed in his favor, and paid him the high compliment of embodying portions of his brief in the opinion. He was officially concerned in the cause ctlibre known as the Baltimore and North River Bridge case, involving the question whether Congress could authorize a bridge crossing navigable waters without the co ordinate consent of the States wherein those waters were. Such concurrences he deemed necessary, and so Justice Bradley in the Federal circuit held. The case was about to be removed to the Federal supreme court when it was whispered among the lawyers opposed to Stockton that Justice Bradley had before preparing his circuit decision privately polled that appellate court of which he was a member, and that an appeal would be futile and a waste of time and money. Another great New Jersey cause celcbre of his was on a question whether
