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ican Republic of this day honors the demagogue oftener than the statesman.

Yet there is nothing in the proper business of the politician to prevent the purest and the best from entering upon its duties. Taken in its largest sense-the Aristotelian TOATEίa-politics affords, in theory, the noblest study, next to theology, to which the mind of man can turn itself; and it furnishes, in practice, one of the grandest and worthiest occupations of human life. To study the laws of social order, which are the laws of God, and to apply them in the government of the state, is a function for which the most comprehensive talents and the loftiest virtue are only too inadequate. It is a sad omen for the state that these great truths are lost sight of; and that the administration of the government of this nation, and of the several states that compose it, instead of being in the hands of the best men, is too often handed over to the worst. On the other hand, the history of the republic affords bright examples of virtue in high places, in sufficient number to vindicate our doctrine that the Christian life may be maintained even by American politicians. Among the noblest of these examples is that afforded by the life and character of the subject of this sketch.

JOHN M'LEAN was born in Morris County, New Jersey, on the eleventh of March, 1785. In 1789 his father determined to remove to the Western country, and, after short residences in Virginia and Kentucky, he finally settled in that part of the Northwestern Territory now constituting the State of Ohio. The son still occupies the farm first taken up by his father.

In that new country the means of education were limited, nor was Mr. M'Lean, who was rich in children, able to send them from home to be taught. The young John aided his father in the duties of the farm, and to these years of active labor he owes, in great part, the stalwart frame and robust health which make him now, at seventy-two, a model of manly vigor in old age. But his mind was too active, even in boyhood, to allow him to go uncultivated. His was one of those energetic natures which are not only prompt to take opportunities, but to make them. It is, perhaps, not surprising, that many of the men who have reached the highest eminence in this country have conquered

obstacles in the beginning of life. In the West, especially, life is a battle with nature and with circumstances. The careful culture of European civilization would unfit men for this fierce strife. The plant, nurtured in the green-house by the careful tending of the gardener, having its roots constantly watered, and its growth watched by the eye of anxious expectation, may reach an earlier maturity, and gain a more delicate beauty; but the sapling which knows no other tending than the soil of nature, no other nursing than that of the careless winds, and the free showers, and the warm sunshine from heaven, will strike a firmer root, and put forth a stronger and more enduring life. By eighteen years of age young M'Lean, in spite of all difficulties, had gained a substantial English education, and a tolerable acquaintance with the ancient languages. Having determined to prepare himself for the law, he obtained a situation as writer in the county clerk's office at Cincinnati. By working at this clerkship part of each day he earned a support, and pursued his legal studies in the remaining hours, under the direction of Arthur St. Clair, Esq., an eminent counselor of Cincinnati.

In 1807 he was admitted to the bar, and entered upon the practice of the law at Lebanon, Ohio. In the same year he was married to Miss Rebecca Edwards, of South Carolina, a lady whose excellent qualities both of heart and head secured her the esteem of all who knew her, and who guided the affairs of Mr. M'Lean's household with discretion and wisdom for thirty-three years. She died in 1840. Mr M'Lean's talents and industry soon gained him a lucrative practice; and had he been content to remain in private life he would doubtless have amassed great wealth in the regular pursuit of his profession. His character for integrity was well established, even before his conversion; and although he was inclined, for a few years after entering the bar, to skeptical views with regard to religion, he maintained an unstained reputation in the community. A new law, however, was given to his life by the grace of God, under the ministry of the venerable John Collins, whose memory is fragrant throughout the West as one of the most eloquent and faithful of the pioneer preachers of Methodism. The following account of his conversion is from the "Recol

lections of the Rev. G. W. Walker. Mr. Collins made an appointment to preach in a private house in Lebanon. At the time fixed the rooms were crowded, and many persons had to stand about the doors. Among these was young M'Lean, who stood where he could hear distinctly, though, as he thought, unobserved by the minister. During the discourse, however, he fell under the notice of Mr. Collins's keen eye; and his prepossessing and intelligent appearance attracted, at the first glance, the notice of the preacher.

He paused a moment, and offered up a short prayer, mentally, for the immediate conversion of the young man. After Mr. Collins resumed, the first word he uttered was "eternity." That word was spoken with a voice so solemn and impressive that its full import was felt by Mr. M'Lean. All things besides seemed to be nothing in comparison to it. He sought an acquaintance with Mr. Collins, and a short time after this accompanied him to one of his appointments in the country, and, at the close of the sermon, he remained in class to inquire "what he must do to be saved." On their return home, Mr. Collins told his young friend that he had a request to make of him, which was reasonable, and he hoped would not be rejected. The request was, that he would read the New Testament at least fifteen minutes every day till his next visit. The promise was made and strictly performed. At first, the young man laid his watch on the table so as to be exact as to the time, but the interest in the Scriptures increased so that the time of reading was increased dayly. After this a covenant was made by the parties to meet each other at the throne of grace at the setting of the sun. It was not long before Mr. M'Lean was happily converted to God and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church.

From that day to this Mr. M'Lean's life and conversation have "adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour." His growth in the Christian graces has apparently kept pace with his political advancement. Amid the temptations of nearly half a century of public life he has never stained his garments; not one word has ever been breathed, even in the sternest strife of political warfare, against his moral or religious character.

The years from 1807 to 1812 were

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years of great public agitation. The elements were gathering for the storm of war which burst forth in 1812; and the great questions of the time penetrated the remotest nooks and corners of the country. Every man had to take sides upon the issue of "war with England," for or against. Mr. M'Lean identified himself, in the flush of his youth, with the Democratic party, and was an ardent supporter of Mr. Madison's war policy.

In 1812 he was called upon to stand as the Democratic candidate for the representation of his district in the Congress of the United States, and was elected by a very large majority. An extra session was summoned after the declaration of war, and Mr. M'Lean then made his first appearance in Congress. Before the session was over he had made his mark. His first motion was for a bill to indemnify individuals for property lost or taken for the public service during the war, and the bill afterward became a law. In the next session he introduced a pension law for the benefit of the widows and orphans of soldiers falling in the service during the pending war. These measures of justice and benevolence were characteristic of the man, and the vigor with which he pursued them added largely to his reputation; as did a speech in defense of the conduct of the war, delivered at the same session. Young as he was, he served on the two chief committees of Congress, Foreign Affairs and the Public Lands. In 1814 he was re-elected to Congress by a unanimous vote, a thing then, as now, of rare occurrence. In 1815 he was solicited to stand for the United States Senatorship from Ohio, but declined. In 1816 he was unanimously elected, by the Legislature of Ohio, to the post of Justice of the Supreme Court of that state. He brought to the discharge of the judicial duty the very highest and aptest qualities, incorruptible integrity, a gentle and patient temper, and large professional attainments. During the six years in which he held the office his reputation for virtue and talent was not only spread throughout every part of his own state, but very widely beyond it. At the end of that time he was called into the wider sphere of national service, in which, in one capacity or another, he has been ever since employed.

In 1822 he was appointed Commissioner

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of the General Land Office at Washington by President Monroe; and in 1823 he was made Postmaster General. There is no more arduous or thankless post in the government service than this; and before M'Lean's time the incumbents of the office, almost without exception, had failed to secure the confidence of the public. On these grounds his friends dissuaded him from accepting it; but, after due consideration, he decided to undertake the work, and, in accordance with the habit of his life," do his best in it." The result showed that he had not miscalculated his powers for administrative duty. erything in the office was out of order; the contracts were, to a large extent, in inefficient and incompetent hands; the mail service was so irregular that no one could trust it; in fact, the whole system was in a state of disorganization. Judge M'Lean soon changed all this; incompetent functionaries were discharged; the punctual fulfillment of contracts was demanded and enforced; the service of the mails became, as far as the circumstances of the country would allow, regular and trustworthy. The Postmaster General was himself the soul of the organization; and his habits of punctuality, order, and promptitude were soon infused into the subordinate functionaries. It is too long ago for the younger men of the present generation to remember all this; but the sexagenarians will tell you, to this day, that the post-office, under M'Lean's guidance, was, for the times, all that could be demanded, even by an exacting public opinion. So strong was M'Lean's position that President Adams, on his accession in 1825, did not dream of removing him; and, during the four years of that president's tenure, the Postmaster General, though of opposite politics, commanded his entire confidence and esteem. The strongest possible proof of the reputation of the judge at the time was afforded by the debates in Congress on a proposition, made in 1827, to increase the salary of the Postmaster General from four thousand to six thousand dollars. The bill passed both houses almost unanimously; and in the Senate the eccentric Randolph, of Roanoke, declared "that the salary was intended for the officer, and not for the office;" and that he would "vote for the bill if the salary was limited to M'Lean's tenure."

During the whole of President Adams's administration, Judge M'Lean was well known to be in favor of General Jackson, for whom, indeed, he had labored in 1824. The contest for the presidency in 1828 was one of great bitterness and violence of feeling; and then, for the first time, was the doctrine openly avowed, that “ to the victors belong the spoils," and that men should be appointed to public office on purely political grounds. Mr. M'Lean had always made the subordinate appointments in the post-office in view of the capacity and integrity of the candidates ; and, indeed, it was not then even formally a recommendation for such posts that a man had distinguished himself as a violent partisan; the only qualification which now-a-days seems potent in securing place and power. On General Jackson's accession in 1829 he requested Judge M'Lean to retain the office which he had filled with so much honor to himself and to the government. But it was clear that a new view of political duty was to be the prevalent one, and that he could not longer retain the independence of character and action that, from long habit, as well as from his moral constitution, had become part of his nature. Mr. M'Lean had been, and continued to be, a Democrat; but he had never sacrificed his principles to his party. Here is the great danger of party spirit in this country; not in the combination of men together, for that is essential to the accomplishment of great ends in a free government; but in the despotic use of the power which combination gives, to control the very members of the party itself, and that, too, in matters beyond the proper sphere of party activity. No man of self-respect and of religious character can submit to such a despotism as this. A true man will not swear obedience to the words or to the thoughts of any master or of any party; he knows that he is bound, by every obligation of the law of God, by every noble attribute of his own moral nature, to exercise for himself the high powers of thought, decision, and selfdetermination with which God has invested him. No man capable of reflection at all can, without peril to his own moral nature, evade the obligation to think for himself; our individual responsibility cannot be shifted upon other men's shoulders upon any plea of ecclesiastical or political necessity whatsoever. We may,

and must, act with parties, both in Church and state; but every party that deserves to exist must have a clear and well-defined sphere of activity, and definite principles of action within that sphere. If these principles are ours, we forfeit nothing of manliness or virtue in acting with the party; if they are not, to serve the party is to serve the devil.

As Judge M'Lean had long abandoned the devil's service, he determined, in 1828, to accept no public post that would make a sacrifice of his personal independence in any way probable. After he had refused to retain the Post-office, General Jackson pressed him to accept first the War Department, and then the Navy; but M'Lean was inflexible. It is said that the old hero declared to one of his friends, after three repeated refusals from M'Lean, that it was strange "the most honest man in the Democratic party should be the one least willing to serve him." If the story is not true, it is at least well invented. But it was not the intention of Divine Providence that the services of this “honest man” should be lost to the American government and people. The very place for which he was best fitted, and in which his peculiar virtues and talents could find the most conspicuous field, happened then to be open. There was a vacancy on the Supreme Bench, and Judge M'Lean was nominated to fill it by General Jackson three days after his inauguration in 1829. The nomination was confirmed by the Senate, we believe, unanimously.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial tribunal in the land; and its powers are, perhaps, more extensive than those of any other court in the world. Besides the ordinary questions of law, whether commercial, marine, or international, that occupy the attention of the highest courts in other lands, this tribunal has the great and perilous function of deciding upon the constitutionality of the laws of the several states of the Union and of Congress itself, in any case of conflict between such enactments and the Federal Constitution. At the time of Judge M'Lean's elevation to the Supreme Bench, the court was composed of Chief Justice Marshall and of Justices Story, Washington, Johnson, and Duval; and of all these he alone survives. In point of experience, therefore,

and of nearer acquaintance with the spirit and views of the framers of the Constitution, there is no man upon the present bench to be compared with M'Lean. He is the sage of the Supreme Court.

Of his decisions on mere law questions we are not competent to speak; but so far as we have learned the opinions of the legal fraternity, the reports contain no decisions, especially in commercial law, that are regarded as superior to his in point of clearness, method, and thorough knowledge of the principles of law. On questions involving political relations, especially those in which slavery is concerned, his opinions have commanded the public confidence, so far as their harmony with the Constitution and laws of the country are concerned, even when the public mind has been unsettled and agitated upon the questions themselves. Judge M'Lean has always been known as an anti-slavery man; but his private views have never interfered with his sense of constitutional obligation in any case where the legal rights of slaveholders were involved. In several cases occurring under the Fugitive Slave Law his course upon the bench has been very unsatisfactory to the stronger class of abolitionists in the Northern States; but we have never heard, even from that quarter, the slightest hint or charge against the uprightness and integrity of the judge himself. It is not too much to say that he has contributed, more than any of his present associates on the bench, to preserve in the public mind of the American people that strong sense of respect for the Supreme Court, and of confidence in the justice and purity of its judges, which has been almost universally cherished, throughout the land, up to the recent decision in the Dred Scott case. If the people have lost that reverence and confidence, it is not the fault of John M'Lean.

On the relation of slavery, in the states and territories, to the Constitution, Judge M'Lean retains the opinions of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the members generally of the Convention that framed the Constitution. They are embodied in the following extract from his recent opinion in the "Dred Scott" case:

"Now if a slave absconds, he may be reclaimed; but if he accompany his master into a state or territory where slavery is prohibited, such slave cannot be said to have left the serv

ice of his master, where his services were legalized. And if slavery be limited to the range of the territorial laws, how can the slave be coerced to serve in a state or territory, not only without the authority of law, but against its express provisions? What gives the master the power to control the will of his slave? The local law, which exists in some form. But where there is no such law, can the master control the will of the slave by force? Where no slavery exists, the presumption, without regard to color, is in favor of freedom. Under such a jurisdiction may the colored man be levied on as the property of his master by a creditor? On the decease of the master, does the slave descend to his heirs as property? Can the master sell him? Any one or all of these acts may be done to the slave where he is legally held to service. But where the law does not confer this power it cannot be exercised.

"Lord Mansfield held that a slave brought into England was free. Lord Stowell agreed with Lord Mansfield in this respect, and that the slave could not be coerced in England; but on her voluntary return to Antigua, the place of her slave domicil, her former status attached. The law of England did not prohibit slavery, but did not authorize it. The jurisdiction which prohibits slavery is much stronger in behalf of the slave within it than where it only

does not authorize it.

"By virtue of what law is it that a master may take his slave into free territory and exact

from him the duties of a slave? The law of the territory does not sanction it. No authority can be claimed under the Constitution of the United States or any law of Congress. Will it be said that the slave is taken as property the same as other property which the master may own? To this answer, that colored persons are made property by the law of the state, and no such power has been given to Congress. Does the master carry with him the law of the state from which he removes into the territory? and does that enable him to coerce his slave in the territory? Let us test this theory. If this may be done by a master from one slave state, it may be done by a master from every other slave state. This right is supposed to be connected with the person of the master by virtue of the local law. Is it transferable? May it be negotiated as a promissory note or bill of exchange? If it be assigned to a man from a free state, may he coerce the slave by virtue of it? What shall this thing be denominated? Is it personal or real property? Or is it an indefinable fragment of sovereignty which every person carries with him from his late domicil? One thing is certain, that its origin has been very recent, and it is unknown to the laws of any civilized country.

"It is said the territories are common property of the states, and that every man has a right to go there with his property. This is not controverted. But the court says a slave is not property beyond the operation of the local law which makes him such. Never was a truth more authoritatively and justly uttered by man. Suppose a master of a slave in a British island owned a million of property in England, would that authorize him to take his slaves with him to England? The Constitu

tion in express terms recognizes the status of slavery as founded on the municipal law: 'No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall,' etc. Now, unless the fugitive escape from a place where, by the municipal law, he is held to labor, this provision affords no remedy to the master. What can be more conclusive than this? Suppose a slave escape from a territory where slavery is not authorized by law, can he be reclaimed?

"In this case a majority of the court have said that a slave may be taken by his master into a territory of the United States, the same as a horse or any other kind of property. It is true this was said by the court, as also many other things, which are of no authority. Nothing that has been said by them, which has not a direct bearing on the jurisdiction of the court, against which they decided, can be considered as authority. I shall certainly not regard it as such. The question of jurisdiction being before the court, was decided by them, authoritatively, but nothing beyond that question."

These principles are consistent with the whole tenor of the decisions and opinions of the Supreme Court from its foundation up to this year of grace 1857. The new doctrines broached by Judge Taney in the Dred Scott case may well cause alarm, though they are not yet law, even in the sense of judge-made law. Thus the chief justice remarks that "slaves are property according to the Constitution," but his remark is not law; on this point, as on all others except the question of jurisdiction, the pro-slavery statements of the court are mere obiter dicta, and, therefore, as Judge M'Lean expressly says, "of no authority." That the court, under its present inspiration, is likely at some future day to take a step further, and to nationalize slavery entirely, is, perhaps, probable; but the step has not yet been taken. Should it ever be, the Supreme Court may learn, and we trust it will, that there is still a court of appeals beyond its august decisions, the court of the people of the United States. It may be that the conservative portion of the American nation, North, South, East, and West, spurning the party demagogues who have thrust sectional issues upon them, and following the guidance of men, like Judge M'Lean, clear, honest, unpurchasable, and yet conservative, may decide, before many years, that the government shall not be subverted; that the Union shall not be destroyed; that America shall not be made a mockery among the nations, as pretending to freedom, and yet nursing slavery.

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