ent and conscience; in short,
the expression or the indication of those safeguards to liberty, the
possession of which enables a people to become and to remain free.

Well may we claim for these documents large influence in forerunning the
organic laws of the several States, and that matchless instrument which
a century ago was framed in this fortunate city, which had been blessed
before as the place where the Declaration put on immortality.

And now in the latter half of the third century, since the bearers of
the underlying principles of Republican rule placed their feet upon that
rock, whose shadow was to become a solace to the weariness of the
perpetual toils and encounters of the land, we may well hope that what
they sought has been achieved, an enduring Government of laws and not of
men; security to freedom and to justice, "justice, that venerable
virtue, without which," as exclaimed New England's eloquent orator,
"freedom, valor and power are but vulgar things."

It is delightful to keep these remembrances alive, and while duly
recognizing the rightful claims of all our brothers to their share in
the foundation of the institutions of a common country, to dwell upon
what the forefathers were, what they accomplished and what they still
accomplish through the works that follow them. And as it is not
unnatural that at the same time we should felicitate ourselves upon
whatever of eminence or good fortune has attended the efforts of their
descendants, the reference, Mr. President, you have made in connection
with this toast to the court over which I have the honor to preside
enables me with propriety to indulge in an allusion to those from New
England who have labored in that field.

On the seventh of April, 1789, a committee was appointed by the Senate
"to bring in a bill for organizing the judiciary of the United States."
Able as were his colleagues, it has been generally conceded that "that
great act was penned" by the chairman of that committee, Oliver
Ellsworth, of Connecticut. On the twenty-fourth of September--the day
upon which the Judiciary Act became a law--President Washington
nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States a chief justice and
five associates, among the latter William Cushing, of Massachusetts,
who, after holding high judicial office under the Crown, but supporting
the cause of his country in the Revolution, becoming the first chief
justice of the State of Massachusetts, passed from