was graduated in the class of 1825. When he left college his person was unusually slender, and his health was feeble. As soon as he became equal to the labors of a law office, he commenced his legal studies with Governor Vroom, and was admitted to the bar in 1830. the youngest, was yet one of the most eminent who have ever held that distinguished post. After three years of useful and honorable service in that station, he resigned his seat upon the bench and returned to the practice of his profession, where his splendid abilities as an advocate soon placed him in the first rank of the New Jersey Bar. The first seven years of his legal life were passed in Monmouth county, where his irrepressible ardor and industry soon In June, 1842, Mr. Southard, who had gained him local fame and a lucrative prac- held for some time the Presidency of the tice. At the age of thirty he entered po- | Senate, died at Fredericksburg, Virginia, litical life, being elected to the upper and left a vacancy in the Senatorial deleHouse of the New Jersey Legislature from gation of New Jersey. Governor Penningthe strong Democratic county of Mon- ton, the executive of New Jersey, tendered mouth, his whole ticket going in along the place to Judge Dayton, and he took with him, a feat which the Whigs of that his seat on the sixth of July. During the county have never succeeded in perform- following winter, he was elected by the ing before or since that day. Mr. Dayton Legislature for the unexpired term of Mr. was placed at the head of the Committee Southard. In 1845, he was re-elected for on the Judiciary. Here he effected a most a full term of six years; and on both these salutary reform in one of the most impor- occasions he had no competitor among the tant judicial departments of the State. Whigs of his native State. The Court of Common Pleas, as it was then constituted, having no Judges on its bench of professional education, was regarded with distrust by the legal profession and by the community. Various efforts had been made to amend the system by placing as a presiding judge over the Court one who was prepared by a professional training for the responsible office. The influence of Common Plea Judges, scattered through every county of the State, was directly adverse to the change. Under these circumstances, Mr. Dayton brought forward a proposal to add two more Justices to the bench of the Supreme Court, increasing the number of circuits to be holden, and giving to the Circuit Court original jurisdiction in all cases at common law. This plan was generally approved, and a bill embodying substantially his sagacious recommendations passed into a law. The system, thus organized, went into successful operation. Without touching the old Court of Common Pleas, it in effect, for general purposes of business, did it away. It presented to suitors and to counsel a choice of Courts, and the legal business of the State naturally found its way into that court where it was most promptly and intelligently disposed of. At the close of the session of this legislature, Mr. Dayton was raised to the bench of the Supreme Court, and though one of When Judge Dayton entered the highest council-chamber of the nation, he had barely reached the age of thirty-five, and had no junior, we believe, among the eminent men who sat around him. Among those men were many of the most brilliant orators and statesmen of our era. The peerless Clay had, indeed, just retired from the scene of his fiercest conflicts, and his most splendid triumphs. Webster and Calhoun were temporarily withdrawn to the superintendence of executive departments. But they had left behind them a Berrien and a Benton-the eloquent Crittenden, and the strong-minded Wright-the all-accomplished Evans, with his manysided versatility of statesmanship, and the polished Choate, whose persuasive flow of eloquence a Sheridan might have envied. Even amid this distinguished concourse the young Senator from New Jersey was not lost sight of. He never rose without commanding the fixed attention of his compeers; and in the memorable contests on Texas annexation and the Mexican War, his arm has dealt some of the heaviest blows. While Mr. Dayton has not sought the empty reputation of a mere speechmaker, yet he has not permitted any important question of national policy to pass a discussion, without giving a frank utterance to his own sentiments upon it. His commanding manner and graceful oratory have thrown a charm about themes the most abstruse and prosaic, and attracted, to an unwonted degree, the attentive admiration of an audience which it is proverbially difficult to control. which he has taken of this as a matter of bargain. I care not whether New Mexico be near to us or far from us; I care not how isolated plains be barren, though her hills be desolate, may be its position; I care not though her though every drop of water which trickles from her mountains be lost in her sands; not any nor all of these consideratians have controlled my action on this subject." In discussing the future government and destiny of the territory to be ceded by Mexico, as respects the right of Congress to legislate, he plants himself unqualifiedly upon the same ground which the patriot Jefferson assumed in 1787-the ground which the great mass of the Whig party of this era still occupies, and from which no temporary faction shall drive it by their "eleventh hour" clamor about "Free Soil" and "Provisoes." Said he Mr. Dayton's first speech was in vindication of the character and credit of the federal government, from the aspersions which the temporary repudiation of some of the States had brought upon it. In the debates on the Oregon difficulties, the Tariff, the Annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, he took conservative and patriotic ground. When the late Treaty with Mexico was sent into the Senate, Mr. Dayton was the first Senator upon the Whig side of that body who broke ground in favor of its ratification, and was one of the few who voted for it. He did not approve of the Treaty itself, either in principle or in its several details. But, like the it vast majority of the enlightened and reflecting of our land, he was wearied with the unrighteous war that had so long been waged, and hailed the Treaty as by far the lesser evil. "I frankly admit," said he, in his manly and eloquent defence upon that occasion "I frankly admit that the Treaty is bad enough. I admit that it was no choice of mine. I admit that it was the selection of an alternative-one evil in preference only to a greater evil. We have been told here that if we did not distrust ourselves and our power, we might meet the difficulty; that one-third of the Senate can defeat the treaty now and through all time. I grant it. But I say that if that third consist of those gentlemen who have denounced the war from the beginning as unjust and iniquitous-if they, under these circumstances, defeat such a Treaty and continue such a war, they ought to feel as sure of their course as though it was written down for them by the light of a sunbeam. We have been forced from the beginning to deal with alternatives. In the beginning of the war, we granted supplies, although driven to the alternative of admitting under protest that the war commenced by the act of Mexico. In the prosecution of the war, we have continued supplies rather than see our armies defeated; and now, at the end of the war, we are willing to vote for a peace with some territory, rather than take the chance of a continuance of the war, and more territory at its close. It has been with us a choice of alternatives from first to last. I will not defend this Treaty as a mere matter of bargain. I care not whether the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster) be right or wrong in the view with great respect,) that if there ever were any doubts on this question as to the power of Congress to legislate with respect to slavery in the territories, those doubts must be held settled by the past conduct of the government. "It does seem to me, Mr. President, (I say 66 But I will now say again that I trust and hope that, as regards the territory north of thirty-two degrees, which we may acquire from Mexico by virtue of this Treaty, this question may be at rest. I hold it to be an act of wisdom, as well as of patriotism, to agitate it only when its agitation becomes matter of necessity, the North bear it in mind-let it never be forand with a view to practical results. But let gotten, that if the question be not settled now it will probably be presented hereafter in all its terrible reality. The line will probably be pushed, in future, further south; it will go so far south as to incorporate territory which will clearly be slave territory-territory where slaves may be employed, not in agricultural pursuits only, but in the production of the precious metals-the worst, the most fatal of all species of production that can curse the industry or blight the prosperity of nations." We have not the space for further quotations from this able and effective speech, with which many of our readers were made familiar at the time of its delivery; but we cannot resist the temptation to extract its closing passage, prophetic as it is of what Europe has been witnessing, and is yet to witness ere many years have rolled away:— "I know not how recent events in the European world may have affected the minds of other men, but for myself I feel that, at this strange juncture in the world's progress, America, the great moving cause and example, should be at |