His moral qualities were of the highest order. It has been said, that the panegyrists of great men can rarely direct the eye with safety to their early years, for fear of lighting upon the traces of some irregular passion. But to the subject of this dis course may with justice be applied the praise of the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, that he was never known to take a single step out of the narrow path of wis dom, and that although it was sometimes remarked he had been young, it was for the purpose not of palliating a defect, but of doing greater honour to his virtues. Of his early life, few of his cotem poraries remain to speak; but those few attest what the harmony of his whole character in later years would infer, that his youth gave presage, by its so briety and exemplary rectitude, of all that we wit nessed and admired in the maturity of his charac ter. It is great praise to say of so excellent a judge, that there was no contrariety between his judgments and his life,—that there was a perfect consent be tween his public and his private manners,—that he was an engaging example of all he taught,—and that no reproach which, in his multifarious employ ment, he was compelled to utter against all the forms of injustice, public and private, social and domestic,—against all violations of law, from crime down to those irregularities at which, from general infirmity, there is a general connivance,—in no in stance, did the sting of his reproach wound his own bosom. Yet it was in his life only, and not in his pretensions, that you discerned this his fortunate superiority to others. In his private walks, he was the most unpretending of men. He bore constantly about him those characteristics of true greatness, simplicity and modesty. Shall I add, that the me mory of all his acquaintance may be challenged to repeat from his most unrestrained conversation, one word or allusion that might not have fallen with propriety upon the ear of the most fastidious delicacy.
The kindness of his nature appeared in the inter course that he maintained with his fellow citizens, notwithstanding the claims of his station. He pro bably entertained Mr. Burke's opinion, that as it is public justice that holds the community together, the judges ought to be of a reserved and retired cluz racier, and wholly unconnected with the political world. He certainly acted up to all that the senti ment asserts; and he found the benefit of it, the community did also, in a ready submission to those judgments, more than one, in which a suspected infusion of party would have been a disturbing in gredient. No one who knew him in private life, had however any reason to doubt his opinions, when the occasion fitly called for their expression. Not deeming it discreet to meet his fellow citizens in those assemblies where either politics or their kindred subjects were to be discussed, he seized with the more avidity such occasions of intercourse as were presented by meetings for public improve ment, for philosophical inquiry, or the cultivation of literature; and in particular he attended with great interest to the concerns of the American Philosophical Society, of which he was chosen pre sident, on the death of Dr. Patterson, in the year
1824, and to those also of the Athenxum, of which he was the first, and, during his life, the only pre sident:—the trustees of the University of Pennsyl vania rarely missed him from his seat, or the Uni ted Episcopal Churches, of this city, from their vestry, as the warden of his venerable friend and pastor Bishop White. It was in this way that he diminished the distance to which his office removed him from society; keeping, however, a constant eye upon that office, even when he moved out of its or bit, and taking scrupulous care, that no external contact should be of a nature to disturb his move ments when he returned to it.
The temper of the chief justice was singularly placable and benevolent. It was not in his power to remember an injury. A few days before his death, he said to two or his friends, attendant upon that scene, " 1 am at peace with all the world. I bear no to any human being; and there is no per son in existence to whom I would not do good, and render a service, if it were in my power. No man can be happy who does not forgive injuries which he may have received from his fellow creatures." How suitable was this noble conclusion to his ex emplary life! What a grace did this spirit impart to his own supplications! This was not a counter feit virtue, assumed when the power to retaliate was wasted by disease. It was not the mere over flow of a kindly nature, unschooled by that divine science which teaches benevolence as a duty. It was the virtue of one, who, in his eulogium upon his eminent friend Dr. Wistar, who had filled the chair of the Philosophical Society, thus made known the foundation on which his benevolence was built. " Vain is the splendour of genius without the vir tues of the heart. No'man who is not good, deserves the name of wise. In the language of Scripture, folly and wickedness are, the same; not only because vicious habits do really corrupt and darken the un derstanding, but because it is no small degree of folly to be ignorant, that the chief good of man is to know the will of his Creator, and to do it." It was under the influence of this sentiment that his fortune became a refuge to the unfortunate, far more extensively than his unostentatious manners imported. Notwithstanding the panoply which protected him from the assaults of this world, he was like the feeblest of his race, naked and defence less against the dispensations of Heaven. His bo som suffered many and deep lacerations; but they had the propitious effect of opening his heart to mankind, instead of withering and drying up its affections. He was gentle, compassionate, charita ble in many of the senses that make charity the first of virtues; and long after his leaves and branches were all torn away, there was more than one that reposed in the shade of his venerable trunk. His closing years finely illustrated the remark, that the heart of a good man is like a good soil, which is made more fertile by the ploughshare that tears it and lays it open,—or like those plants which give out their best odours when they are broken and crushed.