Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/70

44 letter. "Regarding the due administration of justice as the strongest cement of good government, I have considered the first organization of the Judicial Department as essential to the happiness of our citizens and to the stability of our political system. Under this impression, it has been an invariable object of anxious solicitude with me to select the fittest characters to expound the laws and dispense justice. This sentiment, sir, has overruled in my mind the opinion of some of your friends, when they suggested that you might not accept an appointment on the Supreme Bench of the United States. The hesitation which those opinions produced was but momentary, when I reflected on the confidence which your former services had established in the public mind and when I exercised my own belief of your dispositions still further to sacrifice to the good of your country. In any event, I concluded that I should discharge the duty which I owe to the public by nominating to this important office a person whom I judged best qualified to execute its functions, and you will allow me to repeat the wish that I may have the pleasure to hear of your acceptance of the appointment." Because of the insistence of this letter, Rutledge consented to accept, although both he and his friends still retained the view that he ought to have been offered the Chief Justiceship.

All of these six members of the new Court were men in the prime of life, the oldest being fifty-seven and the youngest thirty-eight; all but two had previous judicial experience; and of the general acceptability of these appointments, there was much evidence in contemporary letters. Ralph Izard of Charleston wrote to Edward Rutledge, stating that he had just