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 The Supreme Court of Georgia.

Iverson L. Harris belongs to the same period, though not to the same party. He was a man of bold, original thought, trenchant in style of ex pression. He believed that the capacity of law for improvement was one of its marked characteristics; and was in full sympathy with all legislation and "judge-made law"

looking to its reform. His mental attitude upon this general subject may be dis covered in his admi rable eulogy of Judge Lumpkin : —

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contests of the bar, with reputation established by previous judicial service, when technical learn ing was cultivated assiduously and technical jus tice rigorously enforced; admired, caressed, and imitated, his opinions received as oracles, — it is questionable whether the change of which we are so sensible would have occurred. Men of the class referred to repose in their early habits and creeds; they do not re-examine the foundations of their early opinions, nor are they patient when these opinions are doubt ed or questioned. So long as this class continue to control or even in fluence the thoughts of others, little that looks to change or advancement can be expected from it. Old lawyers, like old warriors, adhere with tenacity to the routine of the old systems in which they were edu cated, and which have been the occupation of their manhood/'

"He lived to see the wise and beneficent prin ciples into which he had expanded the germs of our crude, disjointed, technical, and incongru ous Jurisprudence, em bodied and bound up in terse yet perspicuous definition, furnishing rules The court as consti of uniform and essential tuted after the adop service, by which the tion of the new Consti controversies of men tution in 1868 formed could be adjusted, in the ablest tribunal that masterly portion of that had occupied the our Code which is gen erally understood to be bench since the organ the work of his beloved ization in 1845. The JOSEPH E. BROWN. son-in-law, the late Gen. Chief-Justice was Jo Thomas R. R. Cobb, the seph E. Brown (after ardent and enthusiastic child of genius, the wards United States Senator), of whom, by Christian patriot, and great lawyer. the principle of exclusion already fixed, it is "Looking back over the gradual development of our system, the jurist of the present day will not contemplated that this article should most probably deem it fortunate that the tribunal speak. By a habit of early pronunciation, through which this has been chiefly effected was Senator Brown has forever linked his name organized under the auspices of a fresh mind, full with the word judg-wr«/; and the associa of knowledge, enthusiastic, and in the vigor of tion of ideas is aided by the fact that in manhood, — of one who had early imbibed much perfect self-poise, in knowledge of men, in of the sceptical spirit of Bentham as displayed in comprehension of the people, in intuitive his treatise on the Rationale of Judicial Evidence. perception of public opinion, in adaptation of "I am inclined to think, had Judge Lumpkin means to ends, in many varieties of success been older when called to the bench. — had he ful achievement, that rare faculty has seldom become the head of a school, withdrawn from the had a more complete exemplification.