From the Raleigh (N. C.) Register.
Resignation of the Chief Justice of the State of North Carolina.
We publish below the letter of Chief Justice Ruffin, of the Supreme Court, resigning his seat on the bench.
This act takes us, and no less will it take the state, by surprise. The public are not prepared for it; and we doubt not there will scarcely be an exception to the deep and general regret which will be felt throughout the state. Judge Ruffin’s great and unsurpassed legal learning, his untiring industry, the ease with which he mastered the details and comprehended the whole of the most complicated cases, were the admiration of the bar; and it has been a common saying of the ablest lawyers of the state, for a long time past, that his place on the bench could be supplied by no other than himself.
He is now, as we learn, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, in full possession of his usual excellent health, unaffected, so far as we can discover, in his natural vigor and strength, and certainly without any symptom of mental decay. Forty-five years ago he commenced the practice of the law. He has been on the bench twenty-eight years, of which time he has been one of the Supreme Court twenty-three years. During this long public career he has, in a pecuniary point of view, sacrificed many thousands; for there has been no time of it in which he might not, with perfect ease, have doubled, by practice, the amount of his salary as judge.
“To the Honorable the General Assembly of North Carolina, now in session.
“Gentlemen: I desire to retire to the walks of private life, and therefore pray your honorable body to accept the resignation of my place on the bench of the Supreme Court. In surrendering this trust, I would wish to express my grateful sense of the confidence and honors so often and so long bestowed on me by the General Assembly. But I have no language to do it suitably. I am very sensible that they were far beyond my deserts, and that I have made an insufficient return of the service. Yet I can truly aver that, to the best of my ability, I have administered the law as I understood it, and to the ends of suppressing crime and wrong, and upholding virtue, truth and right; aiming to give confidence to honest men, and to confirm in all good citizens love for our country, and a pure trust in her law and magistrates.
“In my place I hope I have contributed to these ends; and I firmly believe that our laws will, as heretofore, be executed, and our people happy in the administration of justice, honest and contented, as long as they keep, and only so long as they keep, the independent and sound judiciary now established in the constitution; which, with all other blessings, I earnestly pray may be perpetuated to the people of North Carolina.
“I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your most obliged and obedient servant,
Thomas Ruffin.