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VOL. XIII.

No. 3.

BOSTON.

HARRY

MARCH, r go i.

BINGHAM.

BY HON. EDGAR ALDRICH, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE. An ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT AND THE BAR AT THE SEPTEMBER ADJOURNED TERM, igoo, IN GRAFTON COUNTY, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

THE dark shadow of death is again thrown across our circle and we are called to mourn the loss of a member of our bar who has been a notable figure at this i'orum for considerably more than fifty years. When one, who has for so many years exercised his great powers with immeasura ble influence in a State, is removed by death, the announcement of the fact to the Court in which his labor has been performed, in troduces an important proceeding, and one which involves a loss, not only to the Court and the bar, but a loss common to all the people of the State. But here, in this Court, where Mr. Bingham has labored so long, the loss can perhaps be best appreciated, for the Court and the bar know how great, how devoted, how thorough, how continuous, and how persistent his labors have been. At the outset let me say, when we come to pay tribute of respect to the memory of the venerable Harry Bingham, we come not to pay tribute to the memory of an ordinary man. With him the gifts of nature were great, and to the abundant gifts of nature was added a long life devoted to unremitting and methodic industry. The foundation and the superstructure complete present a stu pendous monument of strength and beauty. There were some sharp angles and some un hewn edges, but these defects were technical and altogether lost in the breadth and tower ing proportions — in the greatness, the grandeur, the beauty of the wonderful whole.

Those who knew Judge Bingham as a law yer only, knew but one feature of his many and diversified attainments. He was more than a great lawyer, he was a ripe scholar, a philosopher, a historian, a profound states man and a jurist. He was nowhere wordy and superficial, but ever thorough and al ways on bed-rock. He was a persistent reader. He did not read rapidly, but thoroughly, and with an understanding that surpassed even the un derstanding of the man who wrote the book. It was part of his reading process to pause to consider the reasons stated by the author, and to call up from the wonderful resources of a richly-stored mind all of value that he had ever read or seen or heard on the subject. The essence of everything he ever read or heard or saw he retained. This power to comprehensively and understanding!)- retain local and historic data, and all the shadows, and things of substance, from early youth to ripe old age, to my mind, was his most remarkable characteristic. It was not the data alone in the abstract, but what went with it; and this illustrates what I mean in taying that he read and retained understandinglv. In his mind he arranged historic mat ter, and grouped events in their proper periods. If it were a ruler of the Jews or a Roman Emperor, the causes and events in the circle of the reign; or if a Shah of Persia, it was the same. So it would be if a ruler in Israel, or in ancient or modern China, in