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388 Green; for Lawrence was also a spiritualist, and had a sacrilegious way of talking on religious topics. In spite of his gruff demeanor, he was a kindly man, and was well liked even by those who did not agree with his frankly expressed and positive notions.



This brings us to the present regime. The four judges first elected to the independent bench were George Martin, Randolph Manning, Isaac P. Christiancy, and James V. Campbell. Manning died in office, and Thomas M. Cooley, then reporter, was appointed to his place. Martin was followed in 1868 by Graves. Christiancy resigned in 1875, and was succeeded by Isaac Marston, who in turn resigned in 1883 and was followed by Thomas R. Sherwood. In 1889 Col. C. B. Grant was elected in Sherwood's place. Graves refused a renomination in 1883, and was followed by John W. Champlin, the present Chief-Justice. Cooley was defeated in 1885 by Major A. B. Morse, and Major C. D. Long was chosen as a fifth judge in 1887. Judge Campbell died in office in March, 1890, and Governor Luce appointed Captain Cahill to succeed him.

Martin, who had been a member of the court under both preceding dispensations, was the son of a tavern-keeper at Middlebury, Vt., where he was born in 1815 and graduated in 1833, coming to Michigan in 1836 and settling at Grand Rapids. He was prosecuting attorney for a time, but held no other important office until in 1851, at the age of thirty-six, he was made a judge of the Supreme Court to succeed Mundy, and continued for more than sixteen years to hold that post under the two following judicial systems. When the independent court was organized, he drew the chief-justiceship by lot, and afterwards was chosen to that post by his associates, and held it until his death, which took place Dec. 15, 1867, sixteen days before the close of his term. He had extra ordinary gifts, and with them the vices that were common to many of his predecessors and contemporaries, — intemperance and unthrift. The late Judge Campbell said of him not long before his own death, that he thought he had never known a man more naturally a lawyer than Judge Martin; that his mind was specially adapted to appreciate and apply legal distinctions, and that in elegance and clearness his opinions would compare with any that had ever been written. It is not inconsistent with this that he was indolent, and keen to detect in a record some technical defect that would enable him to get rid of the case without taking the trouble to study it. But he was wonderfully clear, and he was some times epigrammatic, as when he said, in Twitchell v. Blodgett, that he could not allow to judicial doubts more potency than to legislative certainty. For three years before his death he was so unfit to work that he filed but few opinions. Among them the most elaborate were those in which he