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 The Supreme Court of New Jersey.

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ard, and the first two and part of the third to the right of owners of land on a tide-river to the right of exclusive fishery in front of volumes of Halsted. He was a man of very extensive learning, their property. The lands of New Jersey had been granted especially in the law relating to real estate; of great acumen and power of analysis. He by Charles II. to his brother, the Duke of was not a brilliant genius, nor was his mind York. The grant was accompanied with rapid in its movements; but it was solid, one of sovereignty. The Duke of York in substantial, and he rarely failed in arriving turn conveyed both the right of proprietor at a proper judgment in any case submitted ship and that of government to a body of

to him. He sat fre men called the Lords quently in the nisi Proprietors, whose suc f,rius Courts, or, as cessors exist to this they are called in New day. In 1702 the Lords Jersey, the Circuits of Proprietors' ceded the the Supreme Court. right of sovereignty to In the cases there Queen Anne, but re brought before him tained the fee in the he was necessarily land. Arnold, the obliged frequently to plaintiff, owned land on the bank of the express himself ex Karitan River, a tide temporaneously. In all these utterances he water stream. He was lucid and direct; had planted oysters in jurors had no difficulty front of his land, in a in understanding him, bed between high and and his opinion of the low water mark, and legal principles in claimed the right of an volved in his charges. exclusive fishery. A fleet of skiffs with the When time was given avowed purpose of him for 'thought, and testing this right in he could commit his vaded the oyster-bed, ideas to writing, he and dredged a few was convincingly ELISHA BOUDINOT. bushels of oysters. strong. His mind was A suit was brought logical, and its distin guishing characteristics were those which against the trespassers, and tried before Chief-Justice Kirkpatrick at the Circuit. are peculiarly fitted for the bench. His decision in the case of Arnold vs. When the plaintiff rested his case, a motion Mundy has remained in the jurisprudence of for a non-suit was made and argued, and the State as a model of research, of the Kirkpatrick granted the motion. A rule to most diligent study, of the closest scrutiny, show cause why the non-suit should not be set aside and a new trial granted, was taken and of the strictest examination of the his tory of the legislation of the State and of and argued before the whole bench. The the legal principles involved in the case. most distinguished counsel in the State par The value of the property for which the suit ticipated in that debate, and the most con was brought was very small; but the questions summate skill was manifested in the argu of law presented were of the utmost impor ment on both sides. The questions involved tance. The cause involved the question as required research not only into the law, but S3