Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/175

Rh ality. Hamilton and Lee advocated it at the Bar against Campbell and Ingersoll. Bystanders speak highly of Campbell's argument, as well as of IngersolFs. Lee did not shine, and the great effort of his coadjutor, as I learn, was to raise a fog around the subject, and to inculcate a respect for the Court for preceding sanctions in a doubtful case/' ^ Eleven days after the argument, the Coiui:, on March 8, 1796, rendered its decision interpreting the meaning of the words "direct tax" as used in the Constitution and upholding the validity of the Act of Congress imposing the carriage tax. Since the new Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, had just been sworn into oflSce that day, he took no part in the deci- sion; and therefore this great constitutional case was decided by three of the six Judges — Iredell, Paterson and the new Judge, Samuel Chase (who had taken his seat for the first time, February 4) ; Judge Wilson, having sat in the Court below, gave no opinion; and Judge Cushing had been ill at the argument.

The August Term of 1796 presented to the new Chief Justice a large number of prize and admiralty cases with which he was particularly well fitted to deal, since, twenty years before, he had been a member of the Committee of Appeals of the Continental Congress which was the appellate tribunal in such matters.* In the very first case which came before Ellsworth, United States v. La Vengeance^ 3 Dallas, 297, the Court

^ Ireddl, U, 461, letter of Feb. 26, 1796 ; Madison (1865), II, letter of March 6, 1796. The Columbian CenJtind (Boston) said, March 9, 1796, that Mr. Hamilton '*by his eloquence, candour and law knowledge has drawn applause from many who had been in the habit of reviling him."

Judge Story later said: "I have heard Samuel Dexter, John Marshall, and Chancellor Livingston say that Hamilton's reach of thought was so far beyond theirs that by his side they were schoolboys — rush tapers before the sun at noon day." Life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1914), by Charles R. Williams. I, diary, June 12, 1844.

' Ellsworth's first Federal judicial service was in the Circuit Court in Georgia, his charge to the Grand Jury in which, April 25, 1796, appears in Lives and Times of the Ckiif Justices (1858), by Henry Flanders, II, 189.