Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/84

 WHEELER H. PECKHAM power of hope was not essential to him against the debased commercialism and if he but knew that he was right. His very political degeneracy of his time. Fearlessly he confronted the evils of his hopelessness became the hope of others for they knew he could not be disappointed nor day wherever he encountered them. When dismayed. Oppressed in later years with the the cause was weak and unpopular, and gloomiest forebodings for the future welfare needed support, which more politic men of the Republic which he loved so well, he withheld, his ringing voice was heard sum was foremost in every movement to better moning citizens to their duty. It was in existing political and social conditions in such crises, which have frequently arisen the city and state in which he lived, as well in New York in the past quarter of a cen as in the nation. He was absolutely to be tury, that the people were accustomed to relied upon to support cordially and actively look to Mr. Peckham for aid. The influence which Wheeler H. Peckany just cause which needed a bold champion without regard to its popularity or the effect ham as a lawyer, a citizen, and a man, of its advocacy upon himself. It was his exerted in his unostentatious way upon the outspoken independence in the Maynard age in which he lived and upon those about campaign that cost him a seat upon the him, can never be measured. He struck United States Supreme Court Bench. But down vice and corruption wherever he met it was not in the nature of poetic justice, them, and upheld and defended virtue and that it should have been lost to him entirely, truth, which he typified in his own life. The death of such a man is not his loss; through his efforts to defend the purity of the Bench of his own State; and he had the his works and his example remain to en supreme satisfaction of seeing his brother, courage those who in this and succeeding to whom he was devotedly attached, receive generations will be found striving to uplift the appointment, which had been denied the standards of professional and civic to him in all save its honor. life. Certainly, of such a man it may be justly The unique and commanding position which Wheeler H. Peckham held at the Bar said that the world is better for his splendid of the nation, and in the community in life, and his epitaph might be written in the which he lived, was not the result of pre words of Plato: "There can no evil befall a good man eminent intellectual ability alone, but was equally a moral achievement. His pure whether he be alive or dead." and unselfish life stands out in bold relief NEW YORK, N. Y., January, 1906.