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VOL. XIII.

No. u.

BOSTON.

OLIVER

NOVEMBER, 1901.

ELLSWORTH.

BY FRANCIS R. JONES. AFTER his failure in the appointment of John Rutledge to the Chief Justice ship, Washington seems to have turned to an entirely different type of man for that position. After William Gushing de clined it he nominated Oliver Ellsworth. Ellsworth seems to have been a typical Connecticut Yankee. He had a pretty wit. He was shrewd. He was honest. He was kindly. He was parsimonious. He amassed a large property. He ap pears to have been singularly, short sighted in his public views. His ideas of the powers of the National Government, as evidenced in the convention of 1787, were contracted. Judged in the light of history for the most part they were erroneous. It now seems strange that he should have cut such a large figure in the public eye. It is remarkable that he was placed upon almost every important committee of that Conven tion with Hamilton, Madison and Rutledge. His mission to France most unfortunately showed his limitations. He had no grace of oratory, no distinction of person, no depth of learning, no fertility of mind. Apparent ly he was a much over-rated man. Perhaps the explanation is that he was the best whom Connecticut at that time produced. No doubt he shone beside Roger Sherman, the Wolcotts, and Eliphalct Dyer. I have in this series of papers on the Chief Justices of the United States hitherto studU ously refrained from entering upon the his tory of the Revolution and the formation of the State and National Governments, except in so far as the life under consideration came

into direct contact with those events. To go beyond this limit would involve a treatise upon a subject which, however glorious, is trite. By keeping within this limit the story of the career of Mr. Ellsworth can be briefly told. It was in reality not an exceptional career. Mutatis mutandis, it has been dupli cated again and again by both English and American lawyers. To-day there are a score of men in this country whose lives af ford almost complete parallels. Oliver Ellsworth was born at Windsor, Connecticut, on April 29, 1745. His boy hood and youth were spent upon his father's farm. His mind developed slowly and its processes were always laboriously sluggish. He owed his education to his father's desire to make him a clergyman. The Reverend Dr. Bellamy prepared him for Yale, which highly respectable institution he entered at the age of seventeen. After remaining there two years in disgust he changed his college to Princeton, where he graduated in 1766. He then began the study of theology with the Reverend Dr. Sinalley. In a year, how ever, his own desire for the profession of the law prevailed over that of his father's for the ministry. After reading law with Governor Griswold and subsequently with Judge Root he was admitted to the bar in 1771. At that time he was in debt. Determined to liqui date his obligations, before he entered upon the practice of his profession, he cut timber off land which he had tried to sell. The tim ber was marketable. About this time he married, and his father gave him the lease of a farm near Windsor, where for three years