Chief Justice Parsons. He was a great and honest judge. Some judges owe much of their eminence to their subtlety in judicial fence-a species of cuttle-fish logic. They succeed by darkening. It is oftentimes hard to answer, because difficult to understand them. This great attribute, though not a great judicial quality, Richardson lacked. His reasoning and his heart alike were as open and ingenuous as the light of day. He was reverenced by the people of the state as no other judge ever was.

Judge Bell was forty-seven years old. His was a family famous for their talent. He was the father of the late Chief Justice Bell; trustee of Dartmouth college (of which he was a graduate,) from 1808 to 1811; judge from 1816 to 1819; governor from 1819 to 1823, and United States senator from 1823 to 1835. He was a man of immense erudition and great business capacity; a thorough lawyer, and possessed of great moral courage.

Judge Woodbury was twenty-eight years old. He was a graduate of Dartmouth; was judge from 1817 to 1819; governor in 1823; United States senator from 1825 to 1831; secretary of the navy under Jackson from 1831 to 1834; secretary of the treasury from 1834 to 1841, under Jackson and Van Buren, and then declined the office of chief justice of New Hampshire. He was again senator in Congress from 1841 to 1845, when he was appointed by President Polk one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, which office he held until his death in 1851. The probabilities are very strong that he would have been president in the place of General Pierce had his life been spared. Of Judge Woodbury, Webster in his letter to Judge Story of January 4, 1824, said, speaking of two appointments that might be made to that bench, "There is no doubt that Judge Woodbury would be one, and he is as sound a man as I know of." Richardson was a Federalist; Bell and Woodbury were both Anti-Federalists. Mason, a competent judge, if ever any man was, said of these judges, that "three more men so well qualified as the present judges, and who would accept the office, could not be found in the state." Mason, Smith and

Webster argued the cause for the trustees, and Sullivan and Bartlett for the state. These were all members of the Rockingham bar, when it was literally "an arena of giants." Of this bar Judge Story said that it had "vast law learning and prodigious intellectual power." At the circuit court for New Hampshire, October, 1812, Judge Story made the following orders: "Whereas, the court have a full knowledge of the learning, integrity and ability of the Honorable Jeremiah. Smith and the Honorable Jeremiah Mason, and upon the most entire confidence therein, and being willing to express this opinion in the most public manner as well as a testimony to their merits, as also a laudable example to the junior members of the bar; and the court having taken the premises into their mature deliberation, of their own mere motion and pleasure, have ordered and do hereby order, that the honorable degree of serjeant-at-law be and hereby is conferred upon them, the said Jeremiah Smith and Jeremiah Mason, and the court do further order that they be respected as such by all the officers of this court and all others whom the same may concern, and that this order be entered among the records of the court." "The court, on mature deliberation, do order that the degree of barrister-at-law be and hereby is conferred on the following gentlemen, who are counsellors of this court, viz: Oliver Peabody, Daniel Humphreys, George Sullivan, and Daniel Webster, esquires; in testimony of the entire respect the court entertain for their learning, integrity and ability; and the court further order that this order be entered among the records of the court." At the time of the argument, Smith was fifty-eight years old; Mason, fifty; Sullivan, forty-three; Webster, thirty-five, and Bartlett, thirty-one. Mason was from Connecticut, but read law and commenced practice in Vermont. He was six feet and seven inches in height, and proportionately large in other respects. His intellectual exceeded his physical stature. Webster, with a thorough knowledge of the man, deliberately wrote down that as a lawyer, as a jurist, no man in the Union equalled Mason, and but one approached him; and a quarter of a century

later as deliberately reaffirmed his estimate. Mason had two loves, one desire and one passion. He loved his family, resigning his position as United States senator rather than be separated from them; and next to his family, he loved the law devotedly He desired a competence, and his passion was a vitriolic contempt. The gifts and graces of the orator were denied to this great man, but on his feet in the courtroom he was seemingly an inspired Euclid.

Smith had been four terms in Congress, judge of the United States circuit court, chief justice of the superior court for seven years; then governor of the state, and then chief justice of the supreme court for three years. He was of Scotch-Irish stock; possessed of great and accurate learning, and of great natural abilities; but, like Mason, he was no

orator.

Of Webster, the "black giant of the East," it is only necessary to say that he was in full possession of his great powers.

Sullivan was from Irish and Revolutionary stock-a race of soldiers, orators and lawyers. He was attorney-general, (as his father was before him and his son after him) for twenty-one years; a classical scholar, well read in the law; an excellent special pleader; swift to perceive, prompt to act, and full of resources. He relied too little on his preparation, and too much upon his oratory, his power of illustration and argument. But neither the court, the jury nor the people ever grew weary of listening to his silver tones, or his arguments, that fell like music on the ear.

Bartlett was a "little giant," four years younger than Webster, and from the same town. He served three terms in Congress. He was from a family eminent for its physicians, preachers and jurists. He was indefatigable in preparation; eloquent in its highest sense; ready, witty and a popular idol. He was often pitted against Mason and other giants.

The clergymen of the "standing order" with a portion of the old trustees and the faculty, swarmed from their general association into the Exeter court-room. The argument, lasted two days, Mason speaking two, and Smith four hours for the trustees. Sullivan and Bartlett occupied three hours

the next day in reply. Webster occupied less than two hours in closing the case for the trustees. None of these were taken down in short-hand, but, as afterwards written out from the copious minutes and notes of counsel or otherwise, and in some instances revised, were, except Webster's, reported by Judge Farrar. They occupy about one hundred and eighty pages in Farrar's report, of which forty-three pages were assigned to Mason, who was always comparatively brief; fifty-six pages to Smith, thirty-four pages to Sullivan, and forty-six pages to Bartlett.

Probably in consequence of this revision, arguments on one side were sometimes omitted, while the replies were given. They probably show, fairly enough, the general course of the argument. No summary would do them justice, but an outline of them may be useful. Mason's points, as stated by himself, were "That these acts are not obligatory; 1. because they are not within the general scope of legislative power; 2. Because they violate certain provisions of the constitution of this state restraining the legislative power; 3. Because they violate the constitution of the United States." In Farrar's report Mason devotes twenty-three pages to his first point, eight to the second and six to the third.

1. He urged that, "the only division of corporations material to the present enquiry, is that of civil and eleemosynary;" that the trustees constituted an eleemosynary corporation; that towns "were civil corporations of a peculiar kind;" that the legislature cannot "rightfully take from any such corporation its property, and transfer it to another;" that "somewhat similar to these are incorporated cities." "But where there is a special grant of peculiar privileges, the legislative power to new model or control them, if admitted at all, must be with great limitation. The legislature cannot abolish such corporations, or do anything equivalent

As far as the privileges are peculiar, and such as cannot be affected by a general law, it is not easy to see on what principles they can be essentially changed or altered by a special act of the legislature;" that the college "is clearly

an eleemosynary corporation, and of consequence, a private corporation."

He conceded that "the British Parliament can, as it is held, abolish corporations. So it can pass acts of attainder and of pains and penalties. But neither can be done by virtue of the ordinary and legitimate legislative power, which belongs to our legislature. According to the theory of the British government, the Parliament is omnipotent. 'A corporation may be dissolved by act of Parliament, which is boundless in its operations.""

"Will it now be asserted that the British Parliament or king, or both united, were competent to abolish or new model the colonial charters? If it could be done by legislative power alone, they might, for they possessed the whole legislative power over that subject matter." "The Parliament of Great Britain had no rightful power whatever over this corporation. The legislature of this state succeeded to all the power, which the king, who granted the charter, had, and no more.

"In England the creating of corporations appertains to the king, and he has all the legitimate power that exists for dissolving them, except what is vested in the judicial courts."

"But the king cannot abolish a corporation, or give it a new organization, or alter any of its powers or privileges, without its consent."

"As successors to the king then, the legislature have no power to pass the acts in question, and it may be safely asserted that before the change in the form of government, the plaintiffs could not have been rightfully deprived of their property or privileges, without a trial in due course of law."

"It is of no consequence, as it respects the right, whether the privileges granted to the plaintiffs by their charter, are valuable, in a pecuniary point of view, or otherwise." He then relies upon the opinion in Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 383, that "the nature and ends of legislative power will limit the exercise of it."

2. That these acts were prohibited by article 15, the per legem terræ clause, article 23, which prohibits the passage of