timents of the Bar of New York in reference to the occasion which has led to this meeting.

There are present, Mr. Chairman, eminent members of our Bar who were associates of Judge JOHNSON during his career as a lawyer, and others who were his associates upon the Bench of the highest Court of our State; and from these gentlemen we shall no doubt hear, in fitting terms, in reference to the character, the attainments and the public service of Judge JOHNSON, which, necessarily, are only briefly alluded to in the Resolutions which I shall have the honor to present.

If I am permitted a single word of preface, I will take leave to say that a gathering like this seems to me to afford a very striking illustration of the community of interest-I might say the identity of interest-between the members of the Bench and of the Bar, as co-workers in the same sphere of duty.

It is more than a quarter of a century since Judge JOHNSON left the active practice of the profession here in New York, to take his place as one of the Judges of the Court of Appeals, as then constituted. And yet, during all the interval of time since he left us, until now that we meet to pay this tribute to his memory and to his public services, we have always claimed him as a member of this Bar. We have seemed to be identified with him in the many occasions when it was our duty and his to act together in reference to great and important questions relating to commercial law, and to all the other interests which are so frequently involved in the discussions of the profession and in the decis ions of the Courts; so that we have been still his associates. We have been before him as advocates, and have had the opportunity of witnessing the impartiality, the candor, the learning, the integrity which he brought to the discharge of his official duties; and we have also felt that there never was any interruption of that kindly feeling which to so large a degree existed towards him on the part of all the members of the profession who were brought into contact with him when he was one of us, and which was continued on his part during his long judicial service.

When we last saw him presiding in the Circuit Court a few weeks since, it was painfully apparent that he was yielding to the burden unwisely devolved upon a single Judge, which he had only too willingly assumed, and under which he struggled to the utmost of his ability, in a manner which entitles us to say that his effort to sustain it was heroic. In the circumstances of his death we find abundant occasion for regret; but he has left us an example of untiring devotion to duty; and as we now, standing beside his bier, look back over this honorable and finished career, I think we may all take from it a high incentive to that continuance in patient, thorough and effective service which, alike for the humblest as the highest toiler in our ranks, is its own satisfaction and reward. By your leave, Mr. Chairman, I will now offer the following Resolu

tions:

"The Members of the Bar of the City of New York, convened to take action in reference to the death of the Honorable ALEXANDER S. JOHNSON, late Circuit Judge of the United States, for the Second Judicial Circuit, hereby resolve as follows:

Resolved, That we have learned with profound regret of the death of Judge JOHNSON, which deprives the Bar of this City and State, and of the Circuit of

which he was the honored judicial head, of a wise and able Judge and an upright man, eminent in the public service, and justly held in the highest esteem in all the relations of life.

Resolved, That in the professional career of Judge JoпNSON, and in the various public positions filled by him—as a Judge of the Court of Appeals, to which he was elected in 1851 for the full term of eight years; as a Commissioner under the Treaty of July 1st, 1863, with Great Britain; as a Member of the Commission of Appeals, to which he was appointed in January, 1873; as a Judge of the present Court of Appeals, from December, 1873, to January 1, 1875; and in the Federal Judiciary, as Circuit Judge of the Second Judicial Circuit, from October, 1875, to the date of his death-the discharge of his high functions was marked by a constant and undeviating devotion to duty, by high intellectual ability and by absolute rectitude of purpose.

In the retrospect of his public life we recall these conspicuous traits of his character, and of his judicial action, alike in justice to his memory, and in grateful recollection of his services to his State and country. Thoroughly grounded and versed in the science of the law, and with a large experience in its practice, it was his endeavor, as a jurist, to apply those well established principles, which are the basis of the due administration of justice, so as to reach in each particular case a conclusion resting upon their sure foundations. This characteristic of his mind eminently fitted him for the duties of the Bench of an Appellate Court, and is amply illustrated in his reported opinions, which are distinguished for clear and lucid expositions of legal principles, and their close and discriminating application to the most intricate and important questions of law and fact.

While the reports of our highest State Court abundantly attest the fulness of his learning, the breadth of his intellect and his ceaseless industry, the rare personal qualities which gave a peculiar charm to his character, evinced in the unvarying urbanity and patience, the genial courtesy and self-control, the cordial sympathy, without bias and interest, without partiality, which with him were inseparable from the discharge of duty, will be specially cherished by his associates and contemporaries, and should be perpetuated in this testimonial to his worth.

Our sorrow at the termination of his useful and honorable life, heightened by the consciousness that it was hastened by the undue pressure of judicial labors and responsibilities against which he struggled with self-sacrificing toil, finds a solace in the reflection, that, to the last, he was an example of fidelity to duty, and that, as a minister of justice, he died in the service she imposed.

Resolved, That a copy of these Resolutions, attested by the officers of this meeting, be presented to the Circuit Court of the United States in this District, and to the Court of Appeals of this State, in such manner as shall be directed by the chairman, for entry on their minutes, and that a copy be also transmitted to the family of Judge JOHNSON."

Hon. George F. Comstock spoke as follows:

I beg to second the Resolutions which have been read. The attention of the Bar, of the Bench and the Public has been arrested by the sad event which is the occasion of this meeting. We are met together as members of a common

profession, to give expression to the sense of the loss which we feel in the death of ALEXANDER S. JOHNSON. That event was unexpected to us; indeed, the intelligence of it came upon us with a startling suddenness. It is very well known that some two or three months ago his health had been giving way under the accumulated labors imposed upon him by the high judicial position which he so honorably and so usefully filled. It is also known, that, now only a short time ago, he went to the Island of Nassau for the benefit of its mild and genial climate, in the hope and expectation, in which we shared, that his health would be restored, and his usefulness continued. The first news we hear from him is the sudden and sad announcement of his death.

Judge JOHNSON was eminent as a lawyer, a jurist and a citizen. I had the rare good fortune to know him, I think I may say intimately, during nearly the last twenty five years of his life; and it is to me a source of profound satisfaction to believe that I enjoyed his friendship, as I gave him, most unreservedly, my own. The impression made upon me by his talents and learning, by the purity of his life, by his genial nature and the graces of his character, are with me a recollection which will remain as long as memory lasts.

His career at the Bar was comparatively a brief one, and mainly, if not wholly, in the City of New York. I was never a witness of that career, but it must have been one of laborious study and practice, for it made him one of the most accomplished lawyers that I have ever known. At an unusually early age for elevation to the Bench, the display of his learning and powers in the highest Court of the State attracted to him the attention of the profession generally, and their appreciation of his rare qualities was exhibited by his nomination and election to that tribunal. He became a Judge of the Court of Appeals at an earlier age than any other person upon whom that distinguished honor had been conferred; nor has it happened more than once, if at all, since that time. During the succeeding eight years of his life, and while, according to ordinary experience, he had scarcely reached the full maturity of his powers, he served in that capacity, and, as the whole profession witnesses, served eminently and usefully. At the expiration of that period the mutations of politics, the shortness of judicial terms, and the elective system, deprived the State for a considerable number of years of his services in a judicial capacity. Retiring from the Bench, he became a resident again in his native City of Utica. The well earned reputation which he enjoyed for learning, ability, perfect independence and impartiality, marked him for selection as the voluntary judge or arbiter in cases of private submission to him by the parties. I happen to know very well that he became the standing referee of the interior of the State in many cases of unusual importance, submitted to him by the parties with the same confidence in his learning and in his judgment which they would have in the decisions of Courts of the highest authority. The creation of the Commission of Appeals restored him to judicial life. He held a seat in that high tribunal by appointment, but for only about one year, when he was transferred, also by appointment, once more, to the Court of Appeals, to fill a place made vacant by the tragic death of Judge Peckham, who was buried in the ocean by the sinking of the steamer Ville du Havre. At the expiration, or soon after the expiration, of that official term, Judge JOHNSON received, now about three years ago, from the President

and Senate of the United States, an appointment to the distinguished position of Judge of this Circuit, by far the most important of the Circuits into which our Federal Jurisprudence is divided. He held that office to the close of his life, and we believe that he sank beneath the crushing weight of the labors which it imposed upon him. And in this connection I ought to mention the fact (which is contrary, I believe, to a received impression) that, when he ceased from his labors, prior to the October term, he had almost entirely cleared his docket of cases argued.

During a considerable portion of Judge JOHNSON's judicial career, it happened to me to be associated with him. With him were also associated DENIO and SELDEN, names which are high on the roll of judicial fame. The relation to him to which I refer enables me, I think, to form a just judgment of his rare and excellent qualities as a lawyer and a jurist. I have nothing to say of his mental peculiarities; for he had no peculiarities or eccentricities of mind. His mind was simple, direct and strong. If any quality or sentiment belonging to him as a Judge was in predominance, it was his prevailing and pervading love of justice and of right, as ascertained by sound and beneficent rules of law. I think his purely intellectual faculties had their highest exercise in the quick and ready appreciation of the facts of a case in their true relation to the principles of law. He, more rarely than others, mistook mere resemblance in circumstances for analogy in principle. Few, if any, of his contemporaries had a more varied and extensive knowledge of the law. None had a more discriminative judgment. He had the rare common sense which looked through the false, and took in the true relations of a controversy; but it was a common sense cultivated and adorned by the learning of the books.

The duty of impartiality in a Judge is so plain that it is only feeble praise to say of a Judge that he is impartial. But I think I can truly say of Judge JOHNSON, that his was the most absolutely impartial mind that I ever knew. The parties to a controversy were to him a mere abstraction. He looked always directly at the merits of a controversy without any distracting thought or wish. To me he seemed always to be inaccessible even to the subtlest of those influences which sometimes, it must be confessed, are a disturbing weight in the even balances of justice.

The judicial opinions which he has left will be an enduring record. They will long be read and appreciated as models of neatness, simplicity and precision. Their characteristic and their charm is the utter absence of ambitious ornament and display. They are truly the reflex of that modest and unassuming character which distinguished him in all the relations of life. He was wholly free from vanity or self assertion. If he had pride, it was only the pride which lifted him above all meanness and wrong.

Such as I have most feebly portrayed him, was our deceased friend and brother. We shall see him no more, but his eminent and honorable career in the public service, illumined, as it was, by the radiance of his private virtues, will long be to us a memory to cherish, and an example of inestimable value. Our holy religion tells us to believe that he has exchanged earthly toil for eternal rest.

Hon. E. C. Benedict then said:

Mr. Chairman,-Although I knew Judge JOHNSON during all the time that he was at the Bar in this city, and subsequently on the Bench-I may say that I knew him very well, personally and familiarly, though not intimately-I do not rise to say anything with regard to his professional and judicial career, except that from the heart I shall vote for the Resolutions which have been read, and that I concur in the very excellent remarks which have been made by Judge Comstock and Mr. Butler. I shall say only a word or two with regard to Judge JOHNSON in another aspect of his public and personal life.

I had the honor to be associated with him during all the time that he was one of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, and although the duties of that office are unostentatious, they are highly useful and important to the State. It is not always that gentlemen who follow the law with so much earnestness, so much zeal and so much real love for its principles, find time to step aside into the more graceful pursuits of literature and science. Judge JOHNSON came into the Board of Regents fully sensible of the importance of its duties; and he brought to their exercise not only that wisdom, acuteness and impartiality which characterized him as a lawyer and a judge, but the love of letters, also, and generous learning with which he was deeply imbued. He came into the Board as the successor of the late eminent Rev. Dr. Campbell, of Albany, who decorated the metaphysical theology and earnest and devout faith of one of the straitest sects of our religion with the generous and refining influences of secular learning. Judge JOHNSON was immediately made the successor to Dr. Campbell on the Committees on the State Library and on the State Cabinet of Natural History.

The State Library was at that time, or a little before, put into the hands of the Regents as trustees, to manage and care for it. They found it a library of some ten thousand volumes, with many broken sets and shattered bindings, carelessly kept and carelessly used. They have made it, to-day, one of the best, and best conditioned libraries in the country, containing more than a hundred thousand volumes. On that committee Judge JOHNSON's bibliographical knowledge, exquisite taste and great culture in books were made exceedingly useful in filling the gaps in the library, in adding to its stores, and in making it what it should be-a permanent and useful library in all departments of learning and literature.

His position on the committee on the State Cabinet was no less agreeable to him. Mr. Agassiz once said in my hearing, on a great public occasion, that the first question of a man of science in New York was, "which is the way to Albany?"-the home of that great Cabinet and of Professor Hall, the Geologist and Paleontologist of the most world-wide reputation, who is the curator of the Cabinet. One of merely professional tastes might be long acquainted with Judge JOHNSON without finding out that natural history might have been all in all his study, so quietly did he indulge in the charm of those studies. He knew enough of them all to be even more than merely intelligent in their literature and science. He was himself a careful observer of objects, especially with the microscope, and he was a general reader of the literature of those subjects. He knew not only the theories that are now fresh, but also those that were fresh