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appointment was one of the quickest on record. Both the Illinois Senators and a majority of the members of the House from Illinois recommended another man, but President Taylor appointed Drummond, as it is said, solely upon the recommendation of Col. E. D. Baker. After five years the State was divided into two districts. Drummond was assigned to the Northern District and Samuel H. Treat was appointed by President Pierce to the Southern. Treat had been two years on the Circuit bench and fourteen years a judge of the Supreme Court. These two men worked together, occupying the Federal bench in the two districts of Illinois for a full generation, Drummond from 1850 to 1884 and Treat from 1855 to 1887. It was the period when the commerce of the country was making its greatest expansion, when the railroads and other vast interests were developing. These two judges had perhaps as much to do as any other men in the nation with settling the great principles of the law, governing corporate rights. It was at this time that the duties of a Federal Judge became largely administrative as well as judicial.

To the most of you these two judges were familiar acquaintances. They wore the judicial ermine without a stain. Judge Treat filled more nearly than any man I ever knew Choate's description of the ideal judge:

"He shall know nothing about the parties; everything about the case; he shall do everything for justice; nothing for himself; nothing for his patrons; nothing for his sovereign; if on one side is the executive power and the legislature and the people,-the source of his honors, the givers of his daily bread—and on the other side an individual nameless and odious, his eye is to see neither great nor small, attending only to the trepidations of the balance-give to the community such a judge and I care little who makes the Constitution or what party administers it--it will be a free government." (Applause.)

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In social life, Treat was the direct opposite of the character which has been given to Pope. Pope was the central light of every social circle. Treat shunned society. He had no friendships which were discernible.

He would speak to

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no man on the street if he could avoid it, nor in the Court room, except in his line of official duty. He was absolutely destitute of humor. The subtlety of an American joke was a puzzle to him. The proverbial Englishman was quick to catch the humor of a joke compared with Judge Treat. one occasion Lawrence Weldon and J. C. Robinson were with Judge Treat in the Federal building. I was a student in Robinson's office and in that way happened to be present. Weldon had told a story which he had acquired in Washing ton illustrating the fact that certain public men by drinking a very little acquire the reputation of being drunkards, while others who drink a great deal never get that reputation. The story as I remember Weldon told it was, that Senator McDougal and Secretary of State Seward represented the two characters I have named; that one night while McDougal was overtaken by drink he had fallen into an open sewer and was rescued by a policeman, who asked who he was and where he belonged. McDougal replied, "When I am sober, I am Senator McDougal, of California, but tonight I am sewered (Seward)." Robinson had been at Washington for sixteen years, was acquainted with both men, enjoyed the joke hugely and we all laughed vociferously. Judge Treat laughed with the rest and there was no suggestion that he had not seen the point. A little later General Palmer came into the room and Treat suggested that Weldon should repeat the story for Palmer's benefit. Weldon demurred and Treat started in to tell it himself. He got along with it fairly well, describing the two men, how that McDougal would drink a little and be drunk and Seward would drink a great deal and be sober and how that McDougal was found in his drunken condition by the police

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man and when asked who he was, replied: "When I am sober I am Senator McDougal, of California, but tonight I am in the sewer." (Laughter.)

Another member of the Federal Judiciary who has added luster to the State of Illinois is David Davis, and I need only mention his name to a party of Illinois lawyers. That he was a great man, a great lawyer and a great judge, there is abundance of proof. He was a great manager of men as well as a great master of the law. Mr. Lincoln made no mistake when he selected Judge Davis to manage his campaign at the Chicago convention of 1860, and when he was appointed by the President as a member of the greatest judicial tribunal in the world, the appointment was received by the country as one in every way proper and fitting to be made. He has written many decisions on great constitutional questions, perhaps the leading ones being In Re Milligan and Hepburn vs. Griswold. In the latter case which was the first of the legal tender cases, he wrote a dissenting opinion. Years later when the other cases on the same subject came up the Court swung around to Judge Davis' view. I can not go into these questions, you will not expect me to. He is chiefly known to Illinois lawyers in his capacity and great work as a nisi prius judge. He did things with such a masterly hand and with such absolute evidences of power that he often acquired particularly among the uninitiated, the character of being arbitrary in his methods. He was known far beyond the limits of his circuit for the care which he invariably took of trust estates. Many good stories are told about this. On one occasion a bill was presented to him in the McLean Circuit Court for a sale of land by a guardian for reinvestment, some of you gentlemen know who presented that bill. Judge Davis listened to it until he caught the substance of it and he said, "You can not do that, Sam, all the money my father left me was stolen by exactly that kind of a proceeding." Again, over in the

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Vermilion Circuit, a similar bill was presented for sale and reinvestment of a ward's estate, and as I remember the Vermilion case, it was based upon the reason that the improvements on the real estate were deteriorating. He listened to the reading of the bill, and granted a decree ordering the sale, but provided that the money should be brought into Court to await the further order of the Court. As quick as the money did come in, he started to Springfield, went to the land office and invested it himself in public lands at the government rate, and then went back and said to the trustee, There won't be any deterioration of the improvements on these children's land now." (Laughter.)

My immediate predecessor, Judge Allen, came naturally and easily to the duties of the office as the successor to Judge Treat. A member of a distinguished family, he had earned his own distinction as a Circuit Judge and as an active practitioner in more than half the counties of the district. He was the personal friend and associate of every man who had occupied the Federal bench to which he was called. He followed with facility the line of decisions so ably established by Judges Pope, Drummond and Treat and which doctrines he himself had assisted in establishing. He was a man of infinite goodness and kindness of heart and his departure is so recent that we can all but hear the echo of his retiring steps.

Judges Pope, Treat, and Allen served almost their entire term under national administrations differing from themselves in politics. Yet during all this time there was never any conflict either of authority or of expressed opinion. There was no usurpation of power; no disregard of the provisions or even of the compromises of the Constitution; no encroachment upon the reserved rights of the people; no attempt at enlargement of Federal jurisdiction, but in all their long careers there was a conscientious endeavor to administer justice in harmony with the spirit of our mar

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velous judicial system, and so successful were they that to us their successors, it should be as it is the great purpose of our lives to emulate if we may not hope to equal the records they have made. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT HOLDOM: There are many young ladies who attend these banquets who have no mother-in-law, so the committee thought they would get a young man who had no mother-in-law to talk to them, and they selected a bright young lawyer and a good orator, Mr. Quin O'Brien, whose subject is, "What of the Future?" I do not know whether it is your future or his that he is going to discuss. I take pleasure in introducing to you Mr. Quin O'Brien, of the Chicago bar.

MR. O'BRIEN: Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen: In the presence of this galaxy of stars so young a man may be pardoned for being embarrassed. I feel like a mere asteroid who floats around for a moment in the midst of legal luminaries that fill the air with the gladsome light of jurisprudence, and it makes it more embarrassing that the Toastmaster should see fit to give me such a laudatory introduction. I know it is a way he has. One of the very first cases I tried was before him, when I was even a younger man than I am now. I went into Court and found arrayed against me five or six of the ablest lawyers of the west. The judge, seeing my embarrassment, called me up. He said, "Young man, do not be alarmed; they are not half as wise or as formidable as they look; the jury anyhow are going to be with the under dog; just sail right in and show them that little potatoes are hard to peel." (Laughter and applause.)

Now, my friends, I hope you are not expecting anything from me on account of his introduction. I am nothing more than I look, a mere boy. You remember the story of the Englishman who landed in this country and went up to an

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