Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/564

 William Augustus Beach. This was his peroration : — "Mr. President, I commit this respondent to the conscience of this court, persuaded that your judgment will exert a mightier influence upon the future than upon him. Whatever may come, he is thankful for this investigation. It makes him a better man and a purer judge than you supposed him to be. It will dissipate the cloud of obloquy which has enveloped him for years. It will lift him higher in the judgment of this community than he ever stood before, and it teaches us, Mr. President, how poor a reliance is that press which affects to educate and to civ ilize the world. But, sir, your judgment will de fine the jurisdiction of this court. It will signify to the judges of this State how far they are subject to the tyranny of party managers. It will determine whether the ancient independence of the bench is to be preserved, or whether it is to become the crawling sycophant of political cau cuses. It will present to the people of this State the spectacle of a judge sacrificed to party policy, or of a court rising above prejudice and expe diency, and firmly administering the law in the spirit of justice and truth. In these aspects this occasion is most impressive and solemn. Its personal relations are comparatively transitory and unimportant, however humiliating and cruel to this respondent it may be to debar him from that arena where honor is won. that noble heri tage the good man leaves to those he loves. Sir, despite the influences encompassing us, I have unfaltering faith in your action. Misgivings have beset me, but I have seen prepossessions and prejudices fade away before the demonstra tions of this trial. I have seen this respondent shaking himself free from the scurrilous libels of his accusers, and gradually but surely winning your convictions. However indiscreet you may think him, you will not, from this evidence, pro nounce him a corrupt judge. I respectfully but boldly, Mr. President, demand his free deliver ance from this gossiping prosecution. In the name of the law you are bound to administer, by the oaths you dare not break, pleading only for that justice which you hope, I pray you to return him to society a sobered and wiser man, not branded as an outcast by your judgment, but rightfully claiming the sacred privileges of American citizenship." 1 1 Official Report, p. 1920. 68

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In January, 1873, associated with ex-Judge William Fullerton, he conducted the case for the people against Edward S. Stokes, for the murder of James Fisk, Jr. The defendant was convicted on this trial of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be hanged; but the verdict was afterwards "set aside and a new trial ordered by the Court of Appeals for an error of the judge in his charge to the jury (53 N. Y. 164). On the third trial, conducted by the District Attorney and his assistant, the jury found a verdict of man slaughter in the third degree, and Stokes was sentenced to a term of four years in State's prison, which he served. Mr. Beach was the leading counsel for the plaintiff in the celebrated Tilton-Beecher trial. Associated with him were ex-Judge Wil liam Fullerton, Gen. Roger A. Pryor, Samuel D. Morris, and Thomas S. Pearsall. For the defendant appeared William M. Evarts, John K. Porter, Benjamin F. Tracy (now Secretary of the Navy), Thomas G. Shear man, and Austin Abbott. To Judge Ful lerton was assigned the examination and cross-examination of witnesses, — a task for which he was without a peer at the American bar. To Mr. Beach was assigned the argu ment of such questions as arose during the trial, and the summing-up for the plaintiff. The publishing firm which undertook to publish a full report of this most famous trial in the annals of American jurisprudence, failed before publishing the final volume which should contain the closing arguments. The following extracts are taken from the argument of Mr. Beach, in reply to Mr. Evarts, on the question whether Theodore Tilton, the plaintiff, was a competent witness : "Sir, in answer to the illustrations of my learned friend, and to meet the practical issues presented by his argument, permit me to follow him in an illustration. I imagine, sir, a happy, an honored, and a cultured home, — the wife a frail, feeble, and delicate woman, eminently de votional and pious in all her impulses, and, as has been shown in this case, and will be shown hereafter, devoted to the husband of her early