Jurisprudence and International Law. On January 1, 1896, he was appointed by President Cleveland a member of the Board of Commissioners to investigate the true divisional line between Venezuela and British Guiana, and on the organization of the board Mr. Justice Brewer was elected chairman. In November, 1896, before the commission reported. Great Britain yielded to the demands of the United States Government for arbitration, and in February, 1897, an agreement was reached and a treaty of arbitration was duly signed and Chief Justice Fuller and Associate Justice Brewer were appointed arbitrators on the part of Venezuela; Lord Chief Justice Russell and Sir Henry Henn Collins, acting on the part of Great Britain, and Professor Martens of Russia representing a neutral nation. The boundary commission sat in Paris from June 15, to October 3, 1899, when the agreement of the arbitrators was signed and the award (not entirely satisfactory to either nation) was accepted, and was generally considered a victory for Venezuela as the greater part of the territory claimed was awarded to the South American Republic.
He was editor-in-chief of "The World’s Best Orations," a collection in ten volumes of the leading orations; and also of "The World's Best Essays," a like collection in ten volumes of the leading essays of all time. He was the orator at the Bicentennial Celebration of Yale university.
Justice Brewer received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Iowa college (Grinnell), in 1884; from Washburn college, Topeka, Kansas, in 1888; from Yale university in 1891; from the University of Wisconsin in 1900; from Wesleyan university, Connecticut, 1901, and from the University of Vermont, 1904. He was married October 3, 1861, to Louisa R. Landon, of Burlington, Vermont. Mrs. Brewer died April 3, 1898, leaving three daughters. Justice Brewer was married a second time June 5, 1901, to Emma Minor Mott, of Chateaugay, New York.
Justice Brewer has written and spoken at many important centers with a loyalty to Christian principles and a reverent and well-reasoned respect and love for the Bible which have won for him friends and admirers hardly less numerous than those who honor his attainments as a lawyer and a jurist.
