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18 longer emulate the example of those brave spirits, broad in comprehension and rich in virtue, who have had the courage to extirpate the seeds by which the growth of slavery customs was propagated. They respectfully submit, that the earlier civil-rights decisions bade fair to extend the blessings of the great liberty to their full limit, but the brighter effulgence which the gleams of the dawn seemed to promise has not yet shone upon the children of silence and sorrow; that the earlier civil-rights decisions were in full accord with the magnanimity of those heroes who, bold in strife, were patterns of humility in peace, and who were bright exemplars of justice, integrity, disinterested patriotism, and humanity. These addressers fully realize that the first and noblest of human sciences, which in its practical application requires a greater knowledge of mankind and a far more extensive comprehension of popular government than all others, "combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns," is the sole instrumentality by which American liberties can be preserved. They exhort these administrators of justice, who by a long course of study have attained a wisdom greater than that of the majority of men, to emulate those venerable sages of the law whose careers afford brilliant examples of exact and profound justice. They humbly exhort them to remember that in the whole compass of human affairs there appears no nobler spectacle than that of jurisprudence engaged in extending the domain of justice, and contracting within the narrowest possible limits the dominions of brute force and arbitrary will.

It is not needful to remind American judges that the august image of their exalted wisdom in the administration of jurisprudence is a miniature of that eternal justice which presides in the dispensations of the Almighty; that the wise men of the bench should not necessarily agree with the opinion of the mass of people; that popular notions and circumstances which sway unofficial judgments are neither the standards of rectitude nor masters of the juristic conscience; that jurists of substantial greatness must often look down with contempt upon the applause or censure of the multitude.

Finally, with confident assurance in its advocacy of the