Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/58

32 ject of my anxious concern." Imbued with such belief in the high destiny of the tribunal, Washington had been considering possible candidates for appointment upon the Court, for some months before the passage of the Judiciary Act ; and the tests which he intended to apply to all appointments he had nobly set forth in a letter to Chancellor Livingston of New York, in the preceding May. "When I accepted of the important trust committed to my charge by my country," he had written, "I plainly foresaw that the part of my duty which obliged me to nominate persons to office would, in many instances, be the most irksome and unpleasing; for, however desirous I might be of giving a proof of my friendship, and whatever might be his expectations, grounded upon the amity which had subsisted between us, I was fully determined to keep myself free from every engagement that could embarrass me in discharging this part of my administration. I have therefore declined giving any decisive answer to the numerous applications which have been made to me; being resolved, whenever I am called upon to nominate persons for those offices which may be created, that I will do it with a sole view to the public good, and shall bring forward those who, upon every consideration and from the best information I can obtain, will in my judgment be most likely to answer that great end.*' And to Nathaniel Gorham, he had written: "The most delicate and in many instances the most unpleasing part of my administration will be the nomination to offices. . . . This consolation, however, will never quit me, that the interest of the American Union shall be the great object in view and that no means in my power shall be left untried to find out and bring forward such persons as have the best claims,