Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/80

 WHEELER H. PECKHAM below par in 1873 to its present market value of $1,400 a share. It is but fair to assume that its counsel played an important part in the building up of the institution. Mr. Peckham was the safest and most conserva tive of advisers, and became a great author ity upon all questions of trust .and corpo ration law, and he was constantly and laboriously engaged in advising upon and litigating such questions as they arose in many of the great financial operations of the day. The Reports are filled with his cases. One of his celebrated cases for the Union Trust. Company was the case entitled, The People ex rel U. T. Co. v. Coleman, 126 N. Y. 433. In that case the tax office had assessed the Union Trust Company upon the market value of its entire capital stock, with certain deductions. Mr. Peckham contend ed that the Company could only be taxed on the actual capital of the corporation together with its surplus, and that they, being invested in United States Securities, were exempt. The Court of Appeals so decided, reversing the courts below, and holding with Mr. Peckham that the company's capital stock and the shareholders' capital stock were two things essentially and in every material respect different, only the former and the surplus being within the purview of the taxing act. This is a cause celkbre and established a precedent of great importance. It will be a surprise to the profession to know that of all the great cases in which Mr. Peckham had been engaged and the many briefs that he had written, his office does not contain a single one. While other lawyers were dotting their i's and crossing their t's in their learned briefs, hoping that posterity, if not the Court, would notice their perfection, and filing them away for future use and as a record of their life-work, Peckham, in the plentitude of his knowledge and splendid vigor of his mind, wrought them out in labor, used them and threw them away, utterly regard less of thfeir value and his fame, leaving at

the end of his long and brilliant professional career, "not a rack behind." Nothing could be more characteristic of him, and his modest estimate of his own work. Those who have had occasion to read his briefs and arguments, know them to have been models of clearness, learning and literary style, cleared as they were of all the rubbish of the case, and eternally to the point. Rarely does it fall to the lot of any one lawyer, however well-equipped, to render such a great and conspicuous service to the cause of justice and the State as Mr. Peckham rendered to New York, with other great lawyers, in destroying the Tweed Ring in 1873. Mr. Peckham had crossed swords with Charles O'Connor, the great leader of the New York Bar, in a suit in the United States Supreme Court in 1868 (7 Wall 16, 26) and Mr. O'Connor, always on the look out for able men, was so impressed with him that when he was appointed counsel for the People in 1873, to prosecute Tweed and his associates, he selected Mr. Peckham as his chief assistant; and the principal burden-, of the great criminal trial, which resulted in Tweed's conviction, fell upon Mr. Peckham, although he was ably assisted by O'Connor, Lyman Tremain of Albany, Peter"B. Olney, and the late Col. Henry C. Allen. Not only the criminal trial, but the civil suitsbrought against Tweed to recover the stolen moneys of the City were conducted by Mr. Peckham, he having been appointed Special Deputy District Attorney and Spec ial Deputy Attorney-General for this purpose. For several years he devoted himself with Mr. O'Connor to the destruction of the infamous Ring. The actual conviction of Tweed, for which Mr. Peckham was mainly responsible, broke the power of the Ring, and its fragments were scattered to the four corners of the earth. Tweed escaped from his jailor, but was afterwards retaken, and ended his days in prison. The most important result of the over throw of the Tweed Ring was the reclama