THE

HE history of the highest court of a State is not the least important part of the history of the Commonwealth. Although the least showy, the judiciary is by far the most efficient instrument in forming and developing the characteristics which distinguish the people of one community from those of another. To write a true and complete history of the Supreme Court of a State would require a minute study and analysis of its decisions affecting private as well as public rights. These decisions become the measure of business morality, and thus powerfully influence and direct the every-day life and habits of the people. The court is the balance-wheel of the political system; its steady wisdom operates as a break upon the hurried action of the people and their legislative representatives while acting under the pressure of public excitement.

I do not propose here to attempt such a minute study of the history of the court, as there is another view from which the subject may be approached which is scarcely less important. The personal element enters largely into the history of jurisprudence. The flow of law must be through a personal medium, and during its passage the law of refraction is liable to influence the result. The legislature may, in the plenitude of its wisdom and power, enact a statute for a certain purpose; but whether in fact such statute will ever become the law of the land may depend upon the mental peculiarities of the members of the court which is called upon to construe and apply it to the multifarious circumstances of life. There are few statutes which a court may not construe into a nullity. So every court has its peculiarities, which are but the reflections of the personal characteristics of the men who con

stitute it. "One judge of high moral perceptions and a tender and instructed conscience will see clearly the requirements of natural right in the case, or the correct application of written law or judicial precedents. Another judge, unscrupulous, passionate, unlearned, or vindictive, may utterly fail either to perceive or apply the right."

The body of the law now in force in this country is the work of the judges. Mansfield, before the days of legislative fecundity, created the commercial law of Great Britain; Marshall created a system of constitutional law very different from that contemplated by the constitutional convention which constructed his text, or the successive congresses which sought to embody their ideas in statutes. It is hardly too much to say that a great judge creates the laws which in theory he declares. In a contest between such a judge and the legislative power, his decisions will percolate through and ultimately undermine any legal structure the legislature may create.

Minnesota is as yet a new State, and its Supreme Court of Judicature is without traditions. No ancient portraits of famous judges. in wig and gown look down upon their successors. Portraits indeed hang upon the walls of the court-room, but they are of men who have recently passed away, or of those whose voices are still heard, before the court. The history of the State is encompassed by the life of a single generation, and the founders of the commonwealth are still with us in the flesh. One member of the territorial court is a leader of the bar to-day, while another is a distinguished Federal judge.

Minnesota has had no judicial monarch, no monarchy of a single mind to interrupt the republic of judges. The average member

ship of the court in character and learning has been high, and to almost every member may truly be applied the eloquent language of Bishop Horne: "When he goeth up to the judgment-seat he putteth on righteousness as a glorious and beautiful robe, to render his tribunal a fit emblem of that eternal throne of which justice and mercy are the habitations."

On the 23d of December, 1846, Morgan L. Martin, the territorial delegate from Wisconsin, introduced into Congress a bill for the creation of the Territory of Minnesota; but it was not until the 3d of March, 1849, the day before the inauguration of President Taylor, that the

bill organizing the new Territory was finally passed and became a law.

Section 9 of the Organic Act provided "that the judicial power of said Territory shall be vested in a supreme court, district courts, probate courts, and in justices of the peace.

The supreme court shall consist of a chiefjustice and two associate justices, any two of whom shall constitute a quorum, and who shall hold a term at the seat of government of said Territory annually. The said Territory shall be divided into three judicial districts, and a district court shall be held in each of said districts, by one of the justices of the supreme court, at such times and places as may be prescribed by law; and the said judges shall, after their appointment, respectively reside in the district which shall be assigned to them."

Ohio, Secretary; Aaron Goodrich of Tennessee, Chief-Justice; David Cooper of Pennsylvania and B. B. Meeker Meeker of Kentucky, Associate Justices; J. L. Taylor, Marshal; and H. L. Moss, United States Attorney. On the 11th day of the same month the Governor issued a second proclamation, dividing the Territory into judicial districts in accordance with the requirements of the Organic Act.

The first district was composed of the county of St. Croix alone, and to this was assigned the ChiefJustice. The second

district comprised the region north and west of the Mississippi River, and north of the Minnesota River, and of a line running due west from the head-waters of the Minnesota River to the Missouri. To this district Judge Meeker was assigned. The third district, to which Judge Cooper was signed, comprised the country west of the Mississippi River and south of the Minnesota River. The same proclamation provided that terms of court should be held, to continue one week, in the first district at the village of Stillwater on the second Monday,

in the second district at St. Anthony Falls on the third Monday, and in the third district at Mankato on the fourth Monday, of August, 1849. Thus was the wilderness organized, and the machinery for its government provided. It was an illustration of the modern practice of transplanting the entire machinery of government in advance of the governed. The land was little more than a wilderness. The entire population, exclusive of Indians, could not have exceeded one thousand. The census taken four months after the passage of the law organizing the Territory, and after the rush of emigrants had set in, showed four thousand six hundred and eighty souls, of which three hundred and seventeen were connected with the army. West of the great river the Indians held undisputed sway, from the southern line of the State north to the embryonic city of St. Paul. The banks of the Mississippi could show but two or three habitations of white

and it was issued under somewhat discouraging as well as unusual circumstances.

Some of the conditions ordinarily supposed to be necessary to journalistic success were wanting, as the editor informs us that he "had no subscribers. The people did not want politics, and we had none to give them. We advocated Minnesota, morality, and religion from the beginning. We are also informed that the first number of the paper was printed in a building through which "all out-doors is visible through more than

men. St. Paul contained one hundred and fifty inhabitants and thirty buildings. But these few pioneers were buoyant and hopeful of the future. "The elements of empire were plastic yet and warm, awaiting but the moulding hand of the thousands soon to come." On the 28th of April, before the arrival of the territorial officers, "with but handful of people in the whole Territory, and a majority of these Canadians and halfbreeds," the first issue of the first newspaper ever published in Minnesota saw the light. It could not be called a metropolitan sheet,

tures; and as for type

it is not safe from being pied on the galleys by the wind." About the time the new judges reached the field of their future labors, this paper was urgently advising settlers then swarming into the Territory to bring with them tents and bedding.

It was to this crude and unformed community, planted in the depth of the wilderness, near the roaring falls of St. Anthony

of Padua, that Chief-Justice Goodrich and Justices Meeker and Cooper came early in 1849, bearing with them the commissions of President Taylor enjoining them to administer justice to the inhabitants thereof, and charged with the duty of laying the foundation of the jurisprudence of the great State of the near future.

The first Chief-Justice was born in Cayuga County, New York, on the 16th day of July, 1807. In 1815 his father moved to western New York, where the son spent his minority upon a farm, receiving such

of Michigan in 1850, and two other brothers were members of the Senate of that State.

Bradley B. Meeker was born at Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1813. Although descended from Robert Meeker who established the town in 1650, the father of Bradley was in poor circumstances, and unable to give his children an education. After many struggles with adverse circumstances, the youth came under the notice of Governor Thomlinson, under whose patronage he was sent to Weston Academy and subsequently to Yale College. After leaving college he settled at Richmond, Madison County, Kentucky, where he commenced the study of law while engaged in teaching as a means of support.

After admission to the bar in 1838, he practised his profession at Richmond until 1845, when he removed to Flemingsburg in the same State. Here he soon became a leader in the movement for a constitutional convention for

ent success, although he finally accumulated a competence. He was active in the life of the new community, was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and seems to have been in demand as a public speaker.

He was a member of the Democratic wing of the Constitutional Convention of 1857, and there advocated an appointive judiciary. During the year 1857 the people of the

the revisión of the State Constitution. Through the influence of John Bell, President Taylor appointed Mr. Meeker one of the Associate Justices of the Territory of Minnesota. This position he held, performing the duties with credit, until the commencement of the Pierce administration in 1853, when he was succeeded by Moses Sherburne. Judge Meeker wrote but seven decisions, all of which appear in the first volume of the Reports. After leaving the bench he never engaged in active practice, but devoted himself to real-estate transactions, with indiffer

Territory were suffering from "hard times;" and Judge Meeker advocated a plan which he thought would relieve debtors and at the same time make Minnesota a haven of rest for the financially troubled of other lands. In November of that year he wrote to a member of the Legislature a letter from which I quote the following:

"You are now in a position to do Minnesota good service, and I know you well enough to know that you will do all in your power to promote her best interests. Now, something must be done, or northern Minnesota will be a pauper I have thought much at last fallen upon the In the first place, I

country within two years. about the matter, and have following relief measures. want you to pass a law prohibiting all our courts of justice from rendering any judgments for debts due by contract or judgment contracted or rendered out of Minnesota for the term of five years from the passage of such law. Now, the effect of such a legislative act would be this: all the embarrassed men of business, whether manufacturers, merchants, or mechanics, would wend their way

with their families and friends to Minnesota in the spring, where they could enjoy legal repose from the demands of their creditors, and establish them