I might
be present at the opening of the Court.

Was it reasonable, nay, was it possible, that I should do otherwise?
It is known to be a rule of the Supreme Court not to postpone an
argument for other engagements of counsel. If neither counsel is
present, the case goes to the foot of the docket, to be reached again
only after two or three years; if one of the counsel only appears, he
makes an oral argument, and a printed brief is submitted on the other
side. In my view, it would have been trifling with the rights of my
clients either to submit their case on a printed brief or to postpone
it for two years. I had no one to send to the Court in my place. To
despatch a letter with an excuse was a liberty I did not feel
justified in taking, and if taken, it might fail of its object, as the
Court, when informed of the circumstances, must have believed that no
member of the delegation would take advantage of my absence if he
could, and that he could not if he would, since the vote had been
already determined in a meeting of the delegation, and that
determination could not be reconsidered or changed without the
desertion to the minority of one of the majority.

But whatever might be the opinion of others, my duty appeared to
myself extremely plain. There was nothing to be done in the Convention
but the merely ministerial duty of declaring what had already been
determined, which duty could certainly be performed by another as
well as myself, while, on the other hand, no one but myself could act
in Court for my clients. It is true that some of my associates
expressed to me their apprehension that the minority might appeal to
the Convention, and that the Convention might arbitrarily overrule the
delegation; but I answered them as I repeat now, that neither the
minority of the delegation nor the Convention itself had any right to
interpose. We were not asking a favor, but exercising a right. Whether
a person not present could vote was not the question. Persons did not
vote except on unimportant questions and by general consent. States
voted; the vote of each State was delivered by its Chairman, who
collected the voices of his delegation and announced the result. There
was nothing in the reason of the thing, nothing in any rule or usage
of the Convention, which required the voices of the delegation to be
collected at the instant of announcing the result. They might be
collected one minute beforehand, or, as in the present instan