Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/76

 David Dudley Field. on themes of vital public interest, such as the race question at the South, the elec tive franchise, the tariff, the question of female suffrage, the problem of corporate growth, and that of municipal government, with which he busies his old age, — an age to which few attain, and at which, when at tained, most men sit by the fire, regretting the past, lamenting the present, and dread ing the future, hoarding their wealth, abusing their relatives, and calling for the doctor. He once jocosely declared to me that he intended to live to be a hundred years old. I said, "Don't, for then all that history will have to say of you will be that you lived to one hun dred." " Yes," he replied; "something like old Parr. I dare say he was much more of a man than is recorded. Well, I will compro mise for ninety-five." His State owes him much, but he still owes one thing to his State, and that is a volume of his remi niscences. Such a work would be full of charm, and of permanent historical value. "The Legal World, as I have found it, by David Dudley Field," would be a much more popular book than the drivel recently uttered by the idiot-caterer of New York society; and does he not owe society as much? It has been said that Mr. Field is ambi tious; that his great object in life is to go down in history as the author of the laws of his State. He has been sneered at as a wouldbe Lycurgus, Solon, or Justinian. Granting that his aim is so narrowly personal, and giv ing him no credit for patriotism or humanity, it seems to me a not unworthy ambition. If

55

a man endows a college or a hospital, he is not to be derided because he affixes his name to the gift. But what nobler ambition can there be than the desire to be known as the law-giver of one's State? How much loftier and more unselfish than to spend one's years in heaping up wealth, or in running a parti' machine, or in trying to be president, or in cheating the senses of common men by sounding phrases at the bar, or in leading them to death in wicked national quarrels! Mr. Stillwell's fame has been sweet for half a century, because he wrote one humane law for his State. Lord Campbell and other great lawyers have given their names to acts of Parliament. Mr. Field has spent more than half a century in devising better laws for his State and the world. Let him have all honor for what he has effected and what he has devised. One of the meanest acts ever done by his State was to deprive him of his due appellation of Codifier of his State, and substitute the name of one who as a law maker is not worthy to loose the latchet of his shoe. Mr. Field has in a sense lived to an age which " knows not Joseph." But legal his tory will do justice to his potent, useful, and noble career. The Moses of the Western hemisphere, he has led his State and country out of the Egyptian darkness of chancer)' and of common-law pleading and procedure; and although he has not been permitted to enter upon, yet he has been accorded a glimpse of, the fair Canaan of written laws and the prompt, certain, and cheap adminis tration of justice.