John K. Porter.

tion of 1844, which nominated Henry Clay, which in the newspapers of the time is spoken of as an extraordinary effort for so young a man, and is said to have attracted great attention. Doubtless the political field was open to him at all times. His family and social connections would have made him a desirable candidate, and his educa tion, ardor, and eloquence would doubtless have given him considerable party standing. But except the election to the Constitutional convention, and subsequent appointment and election to the Bench of the Court of Ap peals, and one other occasion during the war, when for patriotic reasons he prose cuted and almost won a hopeless Congres sional canvass, he never permitted himself to be a candidate for office. Indeed, nothing had much interest for him which lay very far away from the prosecution and administra tion of the law as a part of the progressive drama of human life. This he loved; other subjects sometimes interested him a little, but not much. In literature, his taste was for the classics. Of fiction, I doubt if he permitted himself to read anything this side of Sir Walter Scott. I often tried to speak with him upon a variety of subjects which interested my mind; but although he lis tened politely and with apparent respect, I soon discovered that a repetition was more likely to accumulate evidence of my lightmindedness, according to his view, than to produce any other effect. In the daily rou tine of law practice it was his maxim to win as you go. It was therefore idle as a general thing to talk to him of present tac tics arrranged to accomplish a secondary or indirect effect by and by. He considered this as an effort to be wiser than events, which, ordinarily, he did not believe was practicable. In politics also he was for se curing now, in an honest and fair way, what was needed. He did not listen with patience to theories of government which postponed present advantage or security to real or sup posed theoretical necessities. In closing his argument in the Legal Tender Case in the

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Court of Appeals, on the 27th of June, 1863, he said : — "It happens, by a singular coincidence, that the appeal to your Honors to declare the Government impotent for its own defence, is made at a time when the heels of the rebel soldiery are polluting the soil of a free State, between the capitol of New York in which we hold our deliberations, and the capitol of the nation where final judg ment is to be pronounced. "On the theory we maintain, the Constitution was designed as a citadel to secure public liberty and repose. On the theory of our adversaries, it was to serve as a grave, in which sovereignty should be buried alive, to linger only until life should be extinguished by suffocation. "' E pluribus unutn ' is not a mere rhetorical phrase, but the terse record of the philosophy of our system of government, — a stumbling-block only to those who reject even the mathematical postulate that the whole is greater than either of its parts. The effect of yielding to the views of these tenacious friends of the Constitution would be to relieve them and us from its burdens and its protection. It would be to deliver over the Govern ment to its enemies, ' monstrum ingens cut lumen ademptum ' — nay more, with its inherent force and its constitutional power of self-defence, bound to helplessness with cords spun from its own fibre." Upon the breaking up of the Whig party Judge Porter became a Republican, and re mained ardently attached to that party, but with an independent bias which several times took him away from the support of the regular nominations. I am sure that he voted for Grover Cleveland for Governor of the State of New York, and I am inclined to think that on later occasions also he would have been found, had he chosen to avow his position, among those who call themselves independents. His contempt for some of the leading members of his party was openly expressed. He heard me regretting the degradation of high office which happened when a person (whose only apparent recommendation was that he was a very rich man) was elected Senator of the United States from this State, and said with some asperity : " Why