This company was called the Northern Securities Company.

Not long after I became President, on the advice of the Attorney-General, Mr.Knox, and through him, I ordered proceedings to be instituted for the dissolution of the company.

As far as could be told by their utterances at the time, among all the great lawyers in the United States Mr.Knox was the only one who believed that this action could be sustained.

The defense was based expressly on the ground that the Supreme Court in the Knight case had explicitly sanctioned the formation of such a company as the Northern Securities Company.

The representatives of privilege intimated, and sometimes asserted outright, that in directing the action to be brought I had shown a lack of respect for the Supreme Court, which had already decided the question at issue by a vote of eight to one.