Caleb Cushing

orders to go to your great city of Pekin, and there to deliver this letter. He will have with him secretaries and interpreters. . . . Our minister, Caleb dishing, is authorized to make a treaty to regulate trade. Let it be just. Let there be no unfair advantage on eitherside.

This letter was characterized by the late Judge Joseph P. Bradley, as "finely conceived" and "a most admirable diplo matic paper." The vessel carrying dishing was burnt off Gibraltar, but he fortunately escaped, saved his papers, and, without waiting for further instructions from home, made his way to China by way of Egypt and India. Prior to Cushtng's mission to China, no ambassador had ever treated directly with the Chinese Emperor. Cushing not only delivered this letter to the Emperor in person, but negotiated on equal terms with him. Cushing succeeded in his mission and negotiated a treaty which was signed July 3d, 1844, by the terms of which objects of contraband and monopoly lx?came a matter of stipulation between the two governments and were not left to the Emperor alone; new provision was made for trade from port to port; the personal dignity of consuls was protected; citizens of the United States were allowed to erect houses, magazines, churches, cemeteries and hospitals in each of the five ports; provision was made for the employment of natives to teach the language of the Empire; and the purchase of books was legalized; the vessels of the United States were allowed to come and go between the ports of China; and for the first time in her history direct communication with the court of China was provided for. Cushing's mission was one of extreme difficulty. China then, if not now, was a land of mystery, her language was incomprehensible, and she neither de

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sired nor welcomed the presence of foreigners. If Cushing had rendered no other ser vices to his country than the negotiation of this treaty, he should be held in grate ful remembrance. SERVICES AS ATTORNEY-GENERAL THE UNITED STATES

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In 1853 Cushing resigned from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to become attorney-general under Pres ident Pierce, a position which he held for four years. On assuming this im portant office, Cushing discontinued the practice followed by his predecessors of arguing private cases before the Supreme Court at Washington. Cush ing's opinions as attorney-general are found in volumes six, seven and eight of the Opinions of the Attorney-General, are frequently cited in textbooks and judicial decisions, and include a wide range of subjects. When Cushing argued the cause of the United States at the Geneva Arbitration, he had but to refer to his opinions given as attorney-general for the law upon which he relied before the tribunal of arbitration. The opinion of perhaps the greatest interest to the layman was the one on the validity of the so-called Morton Anaesthetic Patent, issued to Doctors William G. Morton and Charles T. Jackson. Rufus Choate had made an elaborate argument before Cushing in support of the claims of the patentees, but Cushing decided that the patent was invalid, holding that the natural functions either of animate or inanimate matters were not patentable and that the employment of anaesthetic agents was not a recent discovery, but a uni versal fact coeval with historic know ledge, citing in support of this conclusion Pliny, Dioscorides and other ancient writers. The reader wonders at the