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VOL. XIII.

No. 9.

BOSTON

WILLIAM

SEPTEMBER, 1901.

GUSHING.

BY FRANCIS R. JONES. NO greater contrast to Mr. Chief Justice Rutledge could well have been found than his successor, William dishing. The one a Southerner, impulsive, rash, outspok en. The other, timid, reticent, a trimmer. A son of Massachusetts, a graduate of Har vard, a Colonial judge, .little remains to be told of his life. He was first and always a lawyer. His life was passed in the seclusion of judicial office. The records of it are mea ger. He kept studiously aloof from public affairs. Even the exciting times of the Revolution broke not through his cauiious and timid reserve. When compelled to decide between the cause of his King, whose commission he held, and that of his country, with hesitation he chose the latter. There is not much in his character over which to enthuse. If he was to be a traitor, it had been better to have been a whole souled one, like his friend John Adams or his predecessor John Rutledge. Interest alone seems to have guided his choice. His father and grandfather were Provincial judges be fore him. John Adams has not hesitated to charge the father with being Jesuitical and false. Think of the episodes of the time, the unselfish devotion to liberty manifested by so many, the uplifting influence of the great principles which then agitated the communi ty. Beside those principles and examples any weakness and trimming seem paltry and sordid. The comparison is too odious to dwell upon. As very little is known of the life of William dishing, as he never presided in the Supreme Court of the United States as Chief Justice, and as the events of the

era of his youth and service upon the Massa chusetts Court, and the men who acted in those events are so well known, only the briefest notice of his career will be attempted here. William Gushing was born at Scituate, Massachusetts, on March i, 1732. He was prepared for Harvard by a Mr. Richard Fitz gerald, "a veteran Latin schoolmaster," and graduated in 1751. Shortly after his gradua tion for a year he taught in the public gram mar school of Roxbury, and then entered tiie law office of Jeremiah Gridley, that Nestor of the Massachusetts bar who advised John Adams to study the law for itself rather than for its emoluments, to avoid an early mar riage and much company. Cushing re mained in Gridley 's office until 1755, when he was admitted to the bar. He then began to practice in Scituate, but soon removed to Pownalborough, now Dresden, Maine, where his father owned land. In 1760 he was appointed Judge of Probate there, a po sition which he held for twelve years. Noth ing is known of those years of his life. In 1771 John Cushing, after having been offered the Chief Justiceship of Massachusetts upon the appointment of Chief Justice Hutchinson to the Governorship, resigned. William Cushing in 1772 went to live in Scituate, having been appointed an associate justice in his father's place, to whose property also he succeeded some six years later. In 1772 popular excitement in Massachu setts was acute and daily growing worse. The power of the Crown was watched with a jealousy that already amounted to hatred.