122 court of appeals of maryland

service of twenty-one years on the court, was made
Chief Judge; but his health had begun to fail, and
he died in 1848. Then, says a contemporary
report:³⁶

The office of Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, was, by
universal consent, assigned to Judge Dorsey, to whom, as the
oldest judge on the bench, the mantle of his late distinguished
and greatly lamented associate descended.

Judge Archer had engaged in public life from his
twenty-third year. He had graduated at Prince-
ton College, served two terms in the Legislature
and four in Congress, and in 1817 had been a
judge of the Mississippi Territory. He was a
large, tall man, affable, one who drew to himself
more than the usual amount of affection of the
people of his world. At the same time he was a
firm man, with a good judicial mind. Judge
Dorsey was also a strong, able judge, but one of
a different tempermanent, a stern disciplinarian,
full of vigor and blunt. "Stern and rigid Judge
Dorsey", Judge Mason termed him.³⁷ He, too,
had served in the state Legislature in his time,
had been United States District Attorney and
Attorney General of the state. And he had been
a member of the Court of Appeals since 1824. He
had a preference for written opinions, and wrote
more than any other of his contemporaries on the
bench. The report of the case of Negro George
v. Corse, 2 Harris & Gill, 1, contains a short
example of the opinions of each of Judge Archer
and Judge Dorsey; and both examples would now
be regarded as of high quality. Both of these

36. 11 Law Reporter (1 new series), 239.

37. Mason, Life of McMahon, 112.