Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/152

126 he proposed or had influence to get adopted, and sometimes by the steady opposition he gave to the intrigues raised against yourself; and that if some of his conduct procured him enemies, whatever might have been exceptionable in it was greatly exaggerated at the moment by the zeal of patriotism which makes no allowance for human situations, and afterwards by persons who seem to me to have been always more intent upon removing obstructions to their own advancement than in promoting the public good or doing justice to the merits of competitors. Your experience has long since enabled you to form a just estimate in such cases, and to distinguish between a man's real character and the representation made of it during the fermentation of a party or by those who, approaching your councils, may have a special interest in the continuance of its obscuration. In this respect, the public has done Mr. Chase justice, with the exception of a few men who seem determined to pursue him to old age with a rancour, which, in my eyes, no political quarrel can excuse or honorable ambition justify. In making this allusion, I do not mean, I assure you, Mr. Carroll, whose sentiments of Mr. Chase, I have reason to think, correspond pretty much with my own, as mine does, I am persuaded, with most persons in the State of influence and discernment. It is, Sir, after having weighed all these circumstances since our conversation respecting him, after having reflected upon the good he has done and the good that he may still do; after having debated within myself whether his political or other errors (which exist no longer) have been of such a cast and magnitude as to be a perpetual bar to his holding any office under the United States, after having considered the impressions which an appearance of neglect is apt to produce in minds constructed like his, that I have thought it a duty to mention him as a subject of consideration for present or future attention. . . . I need not tell you that, to his professional knowledge, he subjoins a very valuable stock of political science and information, but it may be proper to observe that he has discharged the office which he fills without the shadow of imputation upon the integrity of his decisions.