own had contributed
in the least to lead to such a result, I should deem it the crowning
mercy of my professional life.

[Footnote 1: Foster's Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, Section
IV.]

[Footnote 2: The effect of this remark was almost electric, and some one
in the court-room broke out in applause.]

[Footnote 3: 2 Pickering, p. 433.]

[Footnote 4: 11 Sergeant & Rawle, p. 394.]

MR. JUSTICE STORY.[1]

[At a meeting of the Suffolk Bar, held in the Circuit Court Room,
Boston, on the morning of the 12th of September, the day of the funeral
of Mr. Justice Story, Chief Justice Shaw having taken the chair and
announced the object of the meeting, Mr. Webster rose and spoke
substantially as follows.]

Your solemn announcement, Mr. Chief Justice, has confirmed the sad
intelligence which had already reached us, through the public channels
of information, and deeply afflicted us all.

JOSEPH STORY, one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the
United States, and for many years the presiding judge of this Circuit,
died on Wednesday evening last, at his house in Cambridge, wanting only
a few days for the completion of the sixty-sixth year of his age.

This most mournful and lamentable event has called together the whole
Bar of Suffolk, and all connected with the courts of law or the
profession. It has brought you, Mr. Chief Justice, and your associates
of the Bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, into the midst of
us; and you have done us the honor, out of respect to the occasion, to
consent to preside over us, while we deliberate on what is due, as well
to our own afflicted and smitten feelings, as to the exalted character
and eminent distinction of the deceased judge. The occasion has drawn
from his retirement, also, that venerable man, whom we all so much
respect and honor, (Judge Davis,) who was, for thirty years, the
associate of the deceased upon the same Bench. It has called hither
another judicial personage, now in retirement, (Judge Putnam,) but long
an ornament of that Bench of which you are now the head, and whose
marked good fortune it is to have been the professional teacher of Mr.
Justice Story, and the director of his early studies. He also is present
to whom this blow comes near; I mean, the learned judge (Judge Sprague)
from whose side it has struck away a friend and a highly venerated
official associate. The members of the Law School at Cambridge, to which
the d