To pacify the public, which would
certainly resent this surrender, he was prepared to punish two hated
corporations, while he strove to preserve, so far as he could, the
respect of the legal profession and of the public, for the court over
which he presided, by maintaining a semblance of consistency.
To accomplish these contradictory results, the Chief Justice began,
rather after the manner of Marshall in Marbury _v_. Madison, by an
extra-judicial disquisition. The object of this disquisition was to
justify his admission of the evidence of reasonableness as a defence,
although it was not needful to decide that such evidence must be
admitted in order to dispose of that particular cause. For the Chief
Justice very readily agreed that the Standard Oil Company was, in fact,
an unreasonable restraint of trade, and must be dissolved, no matter
whether it were allowed to prove its reasonable methods or not.
Accordingly, he might have contented himself with stating that,
admitting for the sake of argument but without approving, all the
defendant advanced, he should sustain the government; but to have so
disposed of the case would not have suited his purpose.
Pages:
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129