Proceedings of the Chicago Bar in memory of the Hon. Sidney Breese, judge of the Supreme Court of the state of Illinois
Chicago Bar Association
C 8 f€ fc- » *. , r, <-'«"■ 0„ /c //V ■; A^B tM Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant http://www.archive.org/details/proceedingsofchiOOchic -I — o^ PROCEEDING- the ithicago Bar >H-I.N + PEJfIORY-> -NtcjW- SIDNEY BREE$E,3{^ JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT -M^T7I'FE + 0F-HEEI]W£.*^ CHICAGO : PRESS OF BEACH. BARNARD & CO.. LEGAL PRINTERS, NO. 104 RANDOLPH STREET. . X 3n Jflemoriam. A meeting of the members of the Chicago bar was held at the rooms of the law institute and library on Saturday, the 29th day of June, 1878, pursuant to a call published, upon the sad and startling telegraphic announcement that the venerable jurist, alike eminent as a statesman and judge — the Honorable Sidney Breese — was dead ! He had been suddenly taken ill, and died at Pinkneyville, where he had stopped over, upon a visit to his son, residing at that place. He was on his way homeward to Carlysle, from attendance upon the June term of the supreme court at Mount Vernon, at which latter place he had remained, after the departure of his judi- cial colleagues for their homes, for a few days, to finish up some important work which had been assigned him at the term of court then recently closed. Although the notice had only a limited circulation, the meeting was attended by a large number of the leading judges and lawyers of Chicago. The proceedings of the Chicago bar at this meeting, and also at one subsequent to the funeral of Judge Breese, are given in the following pages. L 4- t "1 -6- f Hon. Sidney Breese. INFORMATION that Hon. Sidney Breese had departed this life on the night of Thursday, June 27th, 1878, having been, up to the afternoon of that day, in the apparent possession of his usual good health, reached the city of Chicago late on the afternoon of Tuesday the 28th, and on Sat- urday, June 29th, the members of the Chicago bar assembled at the rooms of the law institute, to take action in reference to the sad event. Hon. Thomas Hoyne was elected chairman, and upon taking his seat, opened the meeting in a few ap- propriate remarks. On motion of Mr. Elliott Anthony, M. F. Tuley, Esq., was chosen secretary. -c^- Remarks of %. Lyle Dickey. Mr. Justice Dickey, of the supreme court, addressed the meeting as follows : Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : It has been my privilege to know Judge Breese since f 1 4 IN MEMORIAM. the winter of 1836-7. I first met him at Vandalia, the then capital of the state. At that early day he occu- pied the position of a leading man in the state. His was one of the controlling- minds then leading and car- rying forward the young state. He has been in the public service during all that long period. He leaves a public record of about sixty years, and it has no blot upon it. His force of character, breadth, depth and vigor of intellect made their mark upon the events of this country from the very organization of the state. It is unnecessary for me to rehearse what is familiar to you all — the statistics, as it were, of his life. The writer of his biography must write the history of Illinois. For over two years it has been my privilege to be one of his associates on the bench, and in the confer- ence room, and I must say he was a most wonderful man. At his advanced age his physique seemed unim- paired, and his mind as bright as in its early prime. In the conference room he mastered with the utmost readiness a mass of complicated facts embodied in a voluminous record. Disregarding immaterial matter, by prompt analysis he readily grouped and classified the governing facts, and as readily perceived the prin- ciples of law applicable to the facts, and governing the case. Up to the evening of the 20th of this month, we were in conference together, and had been working some ten hours a day for sixteen consecutive days — in which time we considered and passed upon over three hundred opinions ; and yet he was able to take his share of the labor — showing no sign of the least im- ■J 4 4- SIDNEY BREESE. 5 pairment of his faculties. When I parted with him a week ago, he seemed in as good health as he had been for years. The news of his death, announced to me last night by telegraph, came upon me " like a clap of thunder in a clear sky." Though well advanced in years, his end was not looked for yet. He lived a life of distinction and usefulness. Without impairment or decay, he has been removed from the scenes and labors of this world. He has left a memory to be beloved, respected and revered. Remarks of Eouuarb Roby. Mr. Chairman : In view of my position as a con- nection of the deceased, it is perhaps proper for me to state the objects of the present meeting, and in do- ing so, to speak to the bar, and especially to the young members of the bar, of the identity of the deceased with them ; the reason why lawyers of all ages unite in tribute to the memory of the dead. The tie that bound his family with mine was dissolved before I was born. He entered upon the bench before I was born, and my connection was never made known till after another alliance with his stock, and within two years our relations became more intimate, familiar and con- fidential. Then he spoke of his coming here before this was a state, becoming identified with the bar of the state from its earliest existence, preserving notes 3JS 4 IN MEMORIAM. of the decisions of its supreme court, and with pride and diffidence singularly blended, speaking of Breese's Reports — his reports — the first book printed in the state. Since he has been upon the bench, judges of the supreme court of the United States, persons of prominence in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and the interior of Pennsylvania have written inquiring of the position of young men here, and he has searched out their briefs and sent them with fitting comment and commendation, and I think a number here owe some of their success to his kindness and paternal interest in them as strangers in person, but fostered among those he called " my bar." Gratified in the growth of the state, its opening through the Illinois Central, of which he was the author, and in the consummation of his scheme for spanning the continent ; deeply inter- ested in the history of the state which he had written, and hoped this winter to revise and complete for pub- lication, it was still evident that his great pleasure and especial interest and pride was in his connection with the bar and jurisprudence of this state. In that con- nection he wished to die knightly and in harness ; to go to sleep suddenly when his work must be laid aside. It is fitting, then, that we, young men, shall join our tribute of respect with our seniors. But it is not alone our interest as members of the bar; we have not a monopoly of the honors, as the great deceased was in fact the author of the Illinois Central railroad and the bounty by which it was secured, opening up the mate- rial prosperity of the great state ; as he was the author of the plan for the Pacific railroad, which in final con- f 4 t- SIDNEY BREESE. 7 summation eirds the nation and unites the Atlantic to the Pacific, his going out is a state and national event. To pay such honors as it can, the Illinois Central cor- poration will, in person of some officer, attend, and has invited representatives of the bar and bench, and friends of the deceased to go from here and attend, while the body is laid in its final resting place. And this meeting has been called that the bar may adopt resolutions of respect, and determine its action in the premises. Mr. B. F. Ayer said : There was no man who had resided in the state for whom the bar had entertained more respect than for Judge Breese, and it seemed to be fitting that a testi- monial indicative of that feeling should be paid by the bar of Chicago being represented at his funeral. The officers of the Illinois Central railroad had placed one or more cars at the disposal of those who wished to attend. He didn't know whether it was desirable to take any formal action, but it struck him it might be proper to appoint a committee to go, to embrace all who are willing to do so. The chairman then appointed as a committee on res- olutions, Messrs. Henry S. Monroe, B. F. Ayer, C. B. Lawrence, T. Lyle Dickey, and Edward Roby. On motion of Mr. Henry S. Monroe, it was ordered that the committee on resolutions report to an ad- journed meeting, to be held at two o'clock in the after- noon of the next Saturday. On Saturday, the 6th day of July, 1878, the 4- -Q — I- S IN MEMORIAM. adjourned meeting of the Chicago bar was held at the rooms of the law institute, Hon. Thomas Hoyne pre- siding. Remarks of Chomas Hoyne. Mr. Hoyne, after calling the meeting to order, said : Gentlemen : Since our meeting on Saturday last the melancholy duty of interring the remains of our late professional brother, the eminent jurist, Judge Breese, has been performed. A delegation of members of the bar, some twenty- five in number, under the resolution of the last meet- ing, and under the very kind escort of the Illinois Central railroad, attended the funeral of Judge Breese at Carlyle, on Monday last. They found the obsequies honored by the presence of the governor of the state, the state officers, judges of the supreme and circuit courts, members of congress, and distinguished strangers from other states; also del- egates from the Springfield bar, and from other places in the state, and a lame concourse of his neiehbors. The remains were attended to the village cemetery in procession, the legal profession accompanying the remains on foot, and they saw the judge's remains in- terred among the graves of others of his family and kindred, who had preceded him to that final resting place. It was a gratifying circumstance, that, notwithstand- f t ing the intense heat of the weather prevailing at the time, and for a week preceding the event, the remains of Judge Breese had not been perceptibly changed by decomposition ; but had preserved the same natural dignity of countenance and clearness of expression which had so distinguished him in life, and always so deeply impressed his friends and acquaintances. Looking at him as he lay, one would have been in- clined to say, in the language of one of his own favor- ite poets lately departed, that he had " wrapped the drap'ry of his couch About him, and lain down to pleasant dreams." The delegation returned, as they had left the city, last Tuesday, under the charge of the officers of the Illinois Central railroad (Mr. President Akerman and Mr. Solicitor Ayer) to whose appropriate and grateful courtesies, freely tendered, the bar of this city are greatly indebted, and for which the delegation returned their warmest acknowledgments upon their return. The biographer who undertakes to write a life of Judge Breese, will find much that is romantic and orig- inal in his entire career. In the heroic ages of man- kind his name would have found a conspicuous place among those deities who illustrated their peculiar systems of worship ; he was by turns a scholar, a writer, a soldier, a judge, and a statesman, but in all things, and above all, " he was a great man." His love of enterprise, and his aspirations after rapid movement and progress ; his native enthusiasm of character, brought him to this state just after it had emereed from its territorial condition, and been admit- lp 4 IO IN MEMORIAM. ted as a state into the Union. He had also himself just graduated from his own condition of pupilage as a boy, to assume the responsibility and bearing of man- hood. He started out in life as soon as he could escape from his studies, and as soon as he had passed the threshold of the college and law school, to make his way " westward." Thus, six years before the great Erie canal, then constructing, was opened to travelers, young Breese made his way from Oneida county, his place of birth, to Buffalo, an outlying distant hamlet in the uncleared woods of Erie, that then so thickly bordered the east- ern and southern shores of that lake in the state of New York. From thence, taking passage upon the only steamer navigating the lakes, he reached San- dusky, in the state of Ohio. Then he again started out by stage-coach, and arrived at Marietta, on the Ohio river, which, in that day, was associated with the traditions of the Burr conspiracy, and the dreary for- tunes of Blennerhassett, evoked from the poetic imag- ination of the celebrated orator, William Wirt. Taking: boat down the Ohio, he at length arrived at Shawneetown, the southern extremity of this State, in October, 1819. He soon found his way to Kaskaskia, the then capital of the new state, where he at length rested. But he rested only to enter upon a career of active professional, judicial, and political employment, such as has seldom fallen to the lot of man ! He would have been a seer who could have predicted that it was to continue through sixty years of time and two gener- ations of his race ! i * -$ I SIDNEY BREESE. 1 I Of no other man who has lived or died in this state can such a history be written. To no other man in this state has fallen such a lot as this. Nor can the instance be found, in any state, where the history of a single individual is so clearly and so closely identified with the origin, development, and progress of a com- monwealth, through a continuous period of sixty years ! Judge Breese has been acting so conspicuous a part in all that period that to write a history of either the state or the individual, the writer must use the same materials, and be intimate with the history of both. But, alas ! that it must be said that " Man is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth as a flower to be cut down " ; but the state is immortal ! It is consoling, however, to reflect, that like an ancient pa- triarch, full of years and .of honors, our beloved chief fell at his post. Retaining to the last the nearly perfect use of his faculties, an unclouded mind, and the most buoyant of tempers, he was only called from his labors here be- cause the owner of the vineyard in which he labored, desired his presence elsewhere. According to the great law, he had lived his " three- score years and ten," which by reason of his greater strength, was prolonged to " fourscore years," but he escaped the " labor and sorrow " of ordinary mortals in being allowed to accomplish his work. We find him, as we knew him to have always wished, in all the viofor of manhood, " his armor on," and falling in the battle of life on the way between Mount Vernon and that home, where warm hearts anxiously waited to re- t V> — i : 1 — A^ I 2 IN MEMORIAM lieve him of the shield which he had always, like the Spartan, so honorably borne away from the field. The time will not allow me to do more than touch some two or three remarkable incidents in his extraor- dinary life. If there were no history of this state to be written, Judge Breese has left of himself two works that will carry his name down through the ages, and make his own reputation with our posterity ! " Breese's Report" is the first work of this kind ever published in Illinois, and the first book ever printed in this state. The typographical execution of the work itself is due to his indomitable energy and will. He first encouraged and then aided, personally, the printer, Robert Fleming, at Kaskaskia, in setting up the type. It contained a dedication to Hon. Elias K. Kane, his early instructor and friend, and commends in him a lawyer " against whose integrity as a man and a lawyer no imputation was ever made." In his preface, addressed to the profession, he says that " it is an unpretending volume, the author of it being — though at a great distance only — an humble follower of the distinguished lawyers in Europe and America who have employed their time and talents on works of a similar kind, and from a similar motive, a desire to discharge, in some degree, that duty which one of the sages of the law has said, ' every man owed his profession.' " It is unnecessary for me to say that this modest an- nouncement covered the decisions of the supreme court for the first eleven years of its existence, from its organization in 1819, down to 1830, and less than T -1 — o*- 4 -&- SIDNEY BREESE. 13 350 pages of book matter. In startling contrast with this volume, we have now the two or three vol- umes of 600 to 700 pages annually, issued by Free- man, one of which alone would take in two such vol- umes as Breese and its eleven years of judicial labor, while filling a library shelf. His conception of the Illinois Central railroad, at a time long before any successful railroad enterprise had extended as far west as this state, showed his sagacity in anticipating the great need of the state for this kind of access to the development and cultivation of our territory. There is no longer any doubt as to the cor- rectness of his judgment, of the credit due him in being the first to originate some practical mode for the most fertile portion of the state to transport its products to market. The project did not succeed in 1835 and '36, be- cause the state failed to carry out the general scheme of internal improvement, a system which she had adopted through the co-operation and zeal of Judge Breese and others. But the late senator Doug-las, and the congressional delegation of Illinois in 1852, carried the project for- ward to completion, by a grant of public lands, by which, under its application, the present railroad com- pany has opened up the entire state to cultivation, and provided a handsome revenue besides for the state treasury annually. But the great work of his mature years in the United States senate, until recently, seemed to be altogether overlooked. ir_— — ir V> — i —i — <s^ ■T 14 IN MEMORIAM. In 1845, Asa Whitney, a New York merchant, who had been engaged in the tea and Chinese trade, sent a memorial to Congress, asking for a grant of the pub- lic lands, equal to a strip ot twenty miles in width along the line, to construct a Pacific railroad from Lake Mich- igan to the head waters of the Columbia river, where steamboat navigation would complete a connection with the Pacific, and direct trade over this continent would be opened with China. The memorial was re- ferred to the committee on public lands, of which Judge Breese was chairman ; and there it was ex- pected to sleep the sleep which knows no waking. How greatly the senate was awakened from this supposed quiet was afterward manifested, for on the memorable 31st day of July, 1846, Judge Breese sub- mitted a report advocating the project. To use the language of a writer upon the subject, in 1870, in a preface to the report itself, as taken from the original senate documents, and published by E. B. Myers & Co., of this city, will give some idea of its character. It is said : " Whether we consider the subject matter, the incredulity of the public mind as to the practicability of the project ; the mass of facts and statistics contained in it in respect to the populations, the industries and products of China and Japan, or the predictions made as to the changes it would effect at its point of junction with other roads then projected to west of Lake Michigan, it is one of the most extraor- dinary productions of far-seeing statesmanship ever put upon the historical records of a country." The great senator from Missouri, whose memory 4- ■4- SIDNEY BREESE. 15 has been honored in St. Louis, since his death, with a statue by Miss Hosmer, in marble, standing- in the Exchange of that city, and pointing out the road to the Pacific, bitterly opposed the printing of the Breese re- port, and succeeded in suppressing the accompanying map, upon which are drawn the same lines, latitudes and elevations which have been adopted in the con- struction of the Pacific road, since built, and now in operation ! As an illustration of the injustice perpe- trated frequently by contemporary times upon great benefactors of the race, it may be noted [en passant) that when the completion of the present Pacific rail- road was celebrated, some years ago, with bonfires, music, speeches and festivals, there was no timely word uttered, or toast given to the man who first confronted public opposition, in Congress and out of it, and but to be thought a " visionary speculator," while he dis- covered, like Columbus, a new route for the trade and riches of the East to find their way across the conti- nent, and make in Illinois the greatest city of modern times. But more than this ; the writer of the report pre- dicted in a climax prodigies of achievement now be- come verified by results. He says : " That at the grand center, where the junction west of Lake Mich- igan takes place between the projected Pacific road and the web of roads to be completed, then com- menced—and slowly tracing their lines of connection from several Atlantic cities — to the west end of the lake, the whole of our vast country will be brought together in four clays ; and from the Pacific to any of 7 f 4 the great cities named, a connection can be made in eight days, and to China in twenty days ; and cargoes of tea can be landed at Liverpool from China [via Chicago) in forty-five days !" But in following this out, I should be losing sight of Judge Breese, as the great jurist, in, perhaps, the greater statesman. Judge Breese has, at different times, served the state as a judge on circuit or su- preme court duty, altogether a period of thirty years. Six of these years occurred before his election to the United States senate in 1842. In 1855, having served out a full senatorial term, he served a term in the general assembly of the state as speaker of the house. He was then elected a circuit judge, and in two years after, about the year 1857, took his place again as an associate justice of the su- preme court of the state. In this judicial position he is best recognized and known to the legal profession and to the people of the state. I am aware that there is always danger in compari- sons, and yet I cannot resist a comparison that forces itself upon my attention between Lord Mansfield, as his character has been drawn by Lord Campbell, and the late Judge Breese. Lord Mansfield, as Campbell says, was the most prominent legal character and the brightest ornament of the profession of the law that appeared in England during the last century. As an advocate he did not display the impassioned eloquence of Erskine ; yet for parliamentary oratory, he was the most formidable opponent that ever appeared of the great Chatham, -% t <>*-- SIDNEY BREESE. '7 the " elder Pitt," in debate, and ranked for many years, as the first man at the bar among powerful competitors. There was a common saying in those days that " Murray's statement is of itself worth the argument of any other man." Like Judge Breese, he aspired at first to fill a great political — perhaps exclusively political — career, but it is as the great judge he is best known. It is said to his praise : " The most timid were encouraged by his courtesy, and the boldest were awed by his authority. From his quickness, repetition and prolixity were in- excusable, and there was no temptation to make bad points, as sophistry was sure to be detected, and sound reasoning was sure to prevail." Who, like the great Erskine, would not join also in saying to our chief as he said to Mansfield, " I feel a protection in the gentleness of your character ; in the love of justice which its own intrinsic excellence forces upon a mind enlightened by science and enlarged by liberal education, and in that dignity of disposition which grows with the growth of an illustrious reputa- tion, and becomes a sort of pledge to the public for security." Who among all the members of the profession in this state, does not feel that in the recent death of Judge Breese he has not lost a friend, the people a benefactor — the state a pledge for security, and jus- tice one. of her greatest magistrates? Under the tone of his conservative, elevated and judicial morality, his wisdom and his experience, the administration of jus- tice was improved according to the safer methods of 4 I- i8 IN MEMORIAM the common law, in the rulings of judges rather than by those startling innovations which the recklessness of modern demagogues has wrought out to the prej- udice of the people in other states ? Illinois maintains her reputation for the character of her judicial reports; they are authority in all states, while in some of the older states like New York, a painful decline has been experienced. The empire over the professional mind which her earlier judges, like Kent, Walworth, Livingston, Yates and Spencer,- had exercised, has given place to the merest local dissertations of no general interest, being mere attempts to reconcile conflicts of legislation un- der the " code," which has been prolific of uncertainty, and brought to the administration of justice in her courts a class of third-rate judges and lawyers. The confidence of the people in our courts has been secured by that inflexible integrity of purpose, which in Justice Breese had distinguished his long sixty years of public life and public rectitude. One of the most significant tributes to the character of the late judge and chief justice is, that though ex- posed for sixty years in the public service of the state in judicial and political life, encountering, as he often did, personal and political hatreds, that slander and calumny should have failed to leave a single blemish upon his great name and reputation. Neither upon the judicial ermine or official robe, is there a spot retained ; there is no painful doubt or cloud over any part of his conduct — all is clear. No ? t -i t SIDNEY BREESE. 19 need of the caution in which the ancient Romans spoke of their dead, " De mortitis dici, nil nisi bonum." It is to be remembered that as the contemporary in public life of such men as Webster, Clay and Cass, Wright, and others in the United States senate, he never modernized himself — to become one of those sentimental statesmen of later times, who, because the Declaration of Independence asserts all men to be born equal and endowed by nature with certain in- alienable rights, therefore tauo-ht that all men had equal privileges ; that nature herself made no dif- ferences in men, between those stronpf in some things and weak in others, the perfect brain and born idiot ; between industry and idleness, energy and indolence, vice and virtue ; the wisdom of those born to achieve greatness, and those of others who have greatness thrust upon them. In a recent letter I had from him, the following pas- sage occurs : " The problem, how large municipalities can be best governed, is not yet solved. Men who have no pe- cuniary interest, and no property, now govern them. Whilst this is so, what can you expect ? When bad men rule, what else but bad results can follow ? " It is said of Lord Mansfield, by his noble biographer, that at one time he suffered annoyance from a charge of Junius, that friendship for a certain professional brother had influenced his judgment. It is also a sin- gular coincidence, perhaps, that at one time Judge Breese suffered a similar annoyance from a suspicion that his lecjal friendships could influence his judicial T *r opinions. Because, in that case, he would be com- pelled to break off some of the closest friendships he had formed. It turned out, however, that in his case, as in that of other judges, it was only a cheap pro- fessional trick ; sometimes practiced by dishonorable and crafty members of the bar to influence business in their own favor, at the cost of the judge's reputa- tion. There are men who would rather have it sup- posed that not " their cause, but themselves had won." For a lawyer to do this, is worse than the open charge that the foul injustice implies — " that the court was gained by corruption or favor." But I must close. The great chief has been taken, but his example and labor remain to us. His great length of days seemed an assurance to himself of that providence, in which he trusted, that his name and memory would long be respected among his profes- sional brethren. "A good name is better than many riches." Take his life and his death, and it may be said that in both he was fortunate ; and now we may say what the great Athenian Solon would not have before said of him, that he is happy as well as blessed, in his labors as well as rewards ; his life as his death. Henry S. Monroe, from the committee appointed at the last meeting, reported the following resolutions of respect and commemoration : Resolved, That we have heard with unfeigned sorrow of the death of the Hon. Sidney Breese, late one of the justices of the supreme T t t SIDNEY BREESE. 21 court. He has been taken from us full of years, indeed, and of honors, but in the midst of his usefulness. For sixty years he had occupied a conspicuous position as a lawyer, statesman and jurist, and, by his eminent services in professional and public life, and the sterling integrity which marked his character, inspired universal confidence and respect. The loss sustained by the death of such a man, may justly be regarded as irreparable. In every position he attained, he was fully equal to its responsibilities. As a practitioner at the bar, and as a public prosecutor, as a representative in the state legislature, and a member of the senate of the United States, as judge of the circuit court, and justice and chief justice of the supreme court, he sustained himself with signal ability and reputation among men who achieved imperishable renown in the service of the state and nation. From the first organization of the state, in 1818, to the time of his death, he was intimately connected with its jurispru- dence, either as a legislator or judge. In the last twenty years of his life, he was one of the most learned and accomplished members of the supreme bench, performing to the end, in his advanced years, his full share of the severe and incessant labors which have borne so oppressively upon the court, and always acquitting himself of his arduous duties with distinguished ability and uprightness, as well as uniform courtesy. Resolved, That the fidelity and untiring devotion to duty dis- played by Judge Breese in the judicial office, no less than his rare culture and the remarkable capacity he possessed for grasping the most abstruse principles of the law, as well as complicated questions of fact, reflect the highest honor upon his character as a judge, and that in common with the members of the legal profession through- out the state, we deplore the loss which the bench and bar have sustained by his death. His memory will be held by us all in affec- tionate and grateful remembrance. Resolved, That the chairman of this meeting be requested to communicate a copy of these resolutions to the family of the de- ceased. t 22 IN MEMORIAM. Remarks of Lyman (Trumbull. Mr. Chairman : It is more than forty years since I first made the acquaintance of Judge Breese. He was then judge of the second judicial circuit, extending from Kaskaskia to Shelbyville, a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, and embracing ten counties. It was then customary for lawyers to go round the circuit, and they and the judge all traveled on horseback. In most of the counties the terms of court, which were held semi-annually in each county, lasted but a single week. Hotel accommodations, in those days, were limited, and, as the assembling- ot the court was a great event, the county seat was sure to be crowded during the term of court. As a consequence, the judge and several lawyers often occupied the same room at the hotel. In this way, and in the long rides they were compelled to take in going from county to county, they became intimately acquainted ; but this familiarity never begat any want of respect to Breese as the judge of the court. In those times when court houses were always crowded, and sometimes by persons disposed to be bois- terous, Judge Breese possessed the happy faculty of commanding respect, and compelling the observance of order, with the least effort of any judge I ever saw pre- siding on the circuit, under like circumstances. It used to be said of him that he looked the very judge. He presided with dignity, was always courteous to mem- bers of the bar, was quick to comprehend an argument and see the points of a case ; was prompt in his decis- T r 4 I SIDNEY BREESE. 23 ions, and ready to give a reason therefor. Taken all in all, he was, in my opinion, the ablest circuit judge before whom it was ever my fortune to practice. In the winter of 1840-41, the judicial system of the state was changed by repealing the circuit judges out of office, by adding five judges to the supreme bench, and re- quiring them to perform circuit duties. The five new judges elected were Thomas Ford, Sidney Breese, Samuel H. Treat, Stephen A. Douglas, and Walter B. Scates. In the winter of 1842, Judge Breese was elected to the United States senate, and resigned his seat upon the supreme bench. Of his career in the Senate, I do not propose particularly to speak further than to say that he maintained an honorable position in a body embracing among its members/at that time, some of the ablest men and brightest intellects which have ever adorned a legislative body in any age or country. After having served a full term in the sen- ate, he resumed the practice of the law in 1849; but he was not particularly successful as a lawyer. He seemed better fitted to expound the law from the bench, than to enorasfe in the trial of causes before judge and jury. In 1855, I think it was, he again went upon the bench as circuit judge ; and on the resigna- tion of Judge Scates, in 1857, he was elected a justice of the supreme court, in which capacity he continued to serve, being several times re-elected, till the day of his death a few days since. His home when I first knew him, was upon a farm near the then small village of Carlyle, in Clinton county. His residence was beautifully situated upon t i 24 IN MEMORIAM. • a mound, or rising piece of ground in the prairie, which overlooked the village of Carlyle and the sur- rounding country. Here, in early times, the lawyers of the circuit, and other of his friends, frequently en- joyed his hospitality. Scarcely a term of the court passed, in Clinton county, that an entertainment was not given to the bar by judge Breese and his accom- plished wife, and for those times, and considering the circumstances ot the country, these entertainments were on a grand and liberal scale. The judge was not what might be called either a popular speaker, "or popular man with the masses of the people. He was a man of culture and extensive information, a ready writer, and his oral opinions de- livered upon the circuit, were concise, clear and con- vincing. As a man, he was never, like Douglas, a people's favorite. I remember once to have heard it said of him by one of his early cotemporaries who did not like him, that however often he might decide against parties through hatred, malice or ill will, he would testify that he never decided tor any one through favor or affection. That very polish and learning which marked him the perfect gentleman, was regarded by many as ostentation and pride on his part. He did not know how to practice the demagogue, had he been so inclined. In politics, from the time I knew him, he was identified with the democratic par- ty, though his political adversaries charged that he started out in life as a whig. Though he served the state and nation creditably in various capacities, it is 4- as a judge that he has left his mark upon the genera- tion in which he lived. For about thirty years he sat to administer justice upon either the circuit or su- preme bench in this state, and during all that long period, he suffered no act of his to stain the judicial ermine he wore. Speaking with the same impartiality with which he administered the law, we may justly say of him, he was an accomplished gentleman, an able and upright judge, and an honest man. Remarks of (t. B. Lawrence. C. B. Lawrence, who was chief justice and judge upon the bench for years with Judge Breese, said : I have been requested by the committee to add my poor tribute to what may be said to-day in mem- ory of the great magistrate, who, full of years and full of honors, has so suddenly gone to the grave. It is a labor of love and duty. I was with him in the su- preme court for nine years, and in the comparatively isolated life which the judges of that court are obliged to lead, I came to know him as we only know those with whom we associate at all hours, under all moods, and in the companionship of a common labor. It is pleasant to me now to remember that, although there were such occasional differences as must necessarily occur in the consultation room of an appellate court, my intercourse with him, during all that period, was one of unvarying friendship. I am glad to have known him, and to have known him so well. ^A. 26 IN MEMORIAM. It is the custom, on occasions of this character, to speak of those we mourn, only in terms of unmingled praise. But he whom we honor to-day, was a man of such mark, that it is proper to refer even to those faul- ty peculiarities which went to make up his striking in- dividuality. His faults, however, were such as are often found in men who are born to rule. He was imperi- ous in temper, and, while demanding what was due to himself, not always sufficiently mindful of what was due to others. But this imperiousness was rarely shown towards his inferiors in social position. To them, and to the younger members of his profession, he was kind, courteous and considerate, and I have often had occasion to observe the affectionate rever- ence in which he was held by the junior members of the bar in that portion of the state where he was best known. Having mentioned that fault which was the only one of sufficient prominence in his character to chal- lenge attention, let me speak in another tone. 