You may rest assured that we have witnessed your retirement as a consequence of the infirmity of your bodily health, while your intellectual powers are entirely unimpaired, with cordial sympathy and unfeigned regret, and that on your return to private life you carry with you our best wishes for your present and future happiness.

After reading the address the Attorney-General proceeded:

I have but to add, Sir, that I deem it a very great privilege and honor to be in a position to deliver into your hands, in the presence of these witnesses, this valuable instrument, which has been executed with singular unanimity by a body of gentlemen who have enjoyed the best opportunity of estimating your merits as a public magistrate, and I am satisfied that this demonstration of their admiration of your public conduct will afford, in your retirement, the most soothing and agreeable conviction that you have descended from a lofty public station, which you adorned with every virtue, into the ranks of private life with not merely an unsullied but a remarkably brilliant reputation.

The following is the reply of Judge Bliss:

Mr. Attorney-General, and Gentlemen:

I thank you most sincerely for your kind and affectionate address. I value it, believe me, very highly.

It was in the presence of the Metropolitan Bar that my official life was chiefly spent; you have thus become familiarly acquainted with its character, and with the manner in which its duties have been discharged. To have obtained then from those so competent to judge and so interested in the matter, such a testimony to my services and conduct, with the generous expression of their regret on my retirement, may well fill me with an honest pride.