Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/166

 128 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

can find no evidence whatever that these earnings were based upon improper or dubious practice. Just as Pro- fessor Butler has succeeded in showing that the stories about the brief sojourn at Yale were purely scandalous, so, I think he has made it clear that Benjamin's con- nection with various financial schemes before the war, while perhaps indiscreet, was in no way dishonest. And certainly his professional standing in Louisiana w^as to- tally different from that of a man like Benjamin F. Butler in Massachusetts.

Moreover, no one can read the universal testimony to his position at the English Bar without believing him to have been a high-minded gentleman. Blaine's contention that the English admired Benjamin because they hated the North must indeed be allowed some weight at the beginning of his career. But no man could have gained increasingly for fifteen years the esteem and personal affection of the first lawyers in London, if he had not de- served it. "The success of Benjamin at the English Bar is without parallel in professional annals," says a good authority, 15 and attributes the fact that it excited no jeal- ousy to *' the simplicity of his manners, his entire freedom from assumption, and his kindness of heart." ^^ Lord Coleridge called him " the common honor of both Bars, of England and of America" ; ^^ and Sir Henry James, speaking at the farewell dinner given Benjamin on his retirement, says : "The honor of the English Bar was as much cherished and represented by him as by any man

�� �