Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/64

 Rh rado a figure of Spring, New Mexico a cowboy or a t rain- robber, Alaska a seal; Wisconsin an enormous keg, fit to rival the tun of Heidelberg; South Caro lina a Persian fire-worshipper; nothing short of an appalling image of Divorce parting husband and wife would do for South Dakota; and California should show Justice cutting off a Chinaman's cue. MR.

COUDERT

ON

THE

NEW

V'ORK

BАК. —

There has come to our chair a pleasant pamphlet on "The Bar of New York, 1792-1892," by Mr. Fred eric R. Coudert, well known to all New Yorkers as one oí the wittiest and wisest ot men, as well as one of the most brilliant members of the New York City Bar. In this excellent reminiscence the writer speaks some wise words, such as. " Take away the sanction of the law and nothing is left m Pandora's box, least of all, freedom, for freedom without the law ceases to be anything of value. Government by law, admin istered by lawyers, is the best that has thus far been tried." He also observes. "Washington was not a lawyer, at least so tar as I am informed. Probably there were many occasions in which this chasm in his early training was to him a source of deep but un availing regret." Some impious person might reply that the good man could not have regretted the omis sion, for a reason implied in the hatchet incident. Speaking of the transience of the lawyer's lame, and instancing Hamilton and Hurr as examples, he says. "If they had been engaged in the manufacture of tinplate, they would have been equally (if not more) con spicuous." Of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston (whom he misnames Brockholst) he narrates this incident : "It seems that Mr. Livingston was a bit of a wag — this was, of course, before he was placed on the bench — and amused himself on a certain occasion in writing an ac count of a political meeting which had been attended hy some of his political adversaries Tnebe he --ought to turn into ridicule. His raillery seems to us at this day quite harmless. He spoke of a Mr Fish as a stripling about forty-eight years old, and of a Mr. [unes as Master [iminy Jones, another stripling about sixty.' Why Messrs. Jones and Fish should have resented so mild a form of pleasantry does not appear, but they did feel very deeply whatever sting there may have been in these mysterious imputations. They demanded an explanation of Mr. Livingston While he was walking on the Itattcry with his wife and children. The explanation docs not appear to have suited Mr. Jones, who proceeded to chastise Mr. Livingston with a cane, whereupon Mr. Livingston be came, in his turn, dissatisfied and gave evidence thereof by challenging and killing Mr. Jones, after which per formance he felt at liberty to resume liis promenade,», famille, on the Battery, which he did without further molestation. Mr Jones having been removed in this summary but orthodox fashion, there was nothing to pre vent Mr. Livingston from reaching high political prefer ence. He accordingly became Chancellor and shortly

45

after a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."

Perhaps it was the Chancellor's intense waggishness that led him to conceal from his contemporaries and posterity the manner of his own death, — or indeed that he has ever died, for his taking-off was never accounted for. It is to be hoped that none of the Jimmy Joneses made away with him. Mr. Coudert also indulges in some speculations as to the comparative merits, intellectual and moral, of the early and the present New York Bar. He quotes some pessimistic utterances of Kent upon the growing degeneracy of the bar of his day. and descants thereupon as follows : — "Who would have believed that our professional fore runners were afflicted with such fearful propensities? Good, great, venerable gentlemen we supposed them to be, eminently respectable from the top of their bald heads to the soles of their gaitered feet, moving with decorous deliberation from their shabby office to their uptown resi dence in Prince or Houston Street for dinner, returning to work until supper-time, unmolested by telephones, un disturbed by tclcgiaphs, ignorant of messenger-boys, living in happy though unconscious immunity from steno graphers, interviewers, law reporters, daily law journals, and other sources of unhappincss — to think that the virus of avarice, gambling, selfishness, and the like had polluted their simple and virtuous natures! Pei haps we may Ix' better than they, after all. for we have to contend against all these insidious foes, and yet we still exist as a body, and upon the whole may claim, in comparison with the rest of the community, to constitute a very respectable class of citizens."

Mr. Coudert says that Hamilton's character was good, and that Burr's was bad : but yet Hamilton was no Joseph, as he confessed in print, by reason of which failing his enemies got a bitter advantage of him. In asserting that Hamilton contended, fifty years before Erskine. that the jury were judges of the law in libel, he has probably confused him with Andrew Hamilton, of Philadelphia, who was the first, we believe, to make that contention in this country, about 1730. Mr. Coudert celebrates the merits of the earlier lawyers, O'Conor. Cutting, Brady, Wood, Evarts, Fullerton, Field, Van Buren, Noyes. Gerard. Silliman, but also has a good word to say of Carter. Choate. Parsons, and Butler, and might well have included Beach and Porter. Although he could not gracefully include himself, we can and will do it for him. Indeed as a lawyer he has but one fault, and as a Frenchman but one anomaly. — he is opposed to Codification! A Bn.L OF FARE. — We always like to set before our readers a good bill of fare. The following was provided at a " banquet " to retiring judges Finn and I.awler. by their associates of the Superior Court, at San Francisco, on December 2 : —