afterwards received a patent of precedence. It is said that owing to a scruple connected with his past career he refused to be sworn as a queen's counsel. His patent, however, carried with it by courtesy the privileges of that rank. After a time he ceased to practise at nisi prius, where, though his addresses to juries were very able, he failed in cross-examination and the general conduct and strategy of a case. His forte lay in argument, especially on colonial appeals before the privy council, where his great knowledge of systems of law other than the English gave him an advantage over purely English lawyers. Henceforward he appeared often before the courts sitting in banc or in equity cases, and at length only took briefs below the Privy Council and House of Lords on a special fee of 100 guineas. He had a great faculty for argumentative statement, and would put his case at once fairly and yet so that it seemed to admit of no reply. Naturally he objected to being interrupted by the court. Once in the House of Lords, so he told the story, he heard a noble lord—it is believed to have been Lord Cairns—on some proposition of his ejaculate 'Nonsense!' Benjamin stopped, tied up his brief, bowed, and retired; but the lords sent him a public conciliatory message, and his junior was allowed to finish the argument. His power of stating his own case probably was the cause of the very sanguine character of the opinions he gave on cases laid before him. Among his best known arguments were those in Debenham v. Mellon, United States of America v. Wagner, and Ditto v. Rae, the Franconia case—one of his rare appearances in a criminal court—and the Tichborne appeal to the House of Lords.
Latterly he suffered from diabetes and weakness of the heart. He had built himself a house in the Avenue de Jéna, at Paris, where his wife, who was a Frenchwoman, and daughter lived, and he constantly went there, living only a bachelor life in London, and frequenting the dining and billiard rooms of the Junior Athenæum Club. In 1880 he received an injury through a fall from a tram-car in Paris, and, on going there as usual at Christmas 1882, was forbidden to return to work. So unexpected was this by him that he had to return many briefs.
His retirement caused deep regret. He was entertained at a farewell banquet in the hall of the Inner Temple, 30 June 1883. He said on this occasion that in giving up his work he gave up the best part of his life, and that at the English bar he had never felt that any one looked on him as an intruder.
From this time his health fast failed, and on 8 May 1884 he died. In his habits of life there was a good deal of the southern temperament. He was skilful at games, and used to say of himself that he loved to bask in the sun like a lizard. Though on compulsion he would work into the small hours, he preferred to put off his dinner until late in order to complete his work before it, and he owned that to rise and work early in the morning was impossible to him. To the last he retained his loyalty to the lost cause of the Southern Confederacy, and was always bountiful to those who had suffered for it.
By his will, made 30 April 1883, and proved 30 June 1884 by the executors, his friends Messrs. De Witt and Aspland, of the common law bar, he left of his total personalty of 60,000l. legacies to his sisters in New Orleans, his brother Joseph, of Puerto Cortez in Spanish Honduras, his nephew and five nieces, his wife Nathalie, and his daughter Ninette, wife of Captain Henri de Bousignac of the 117th regiment of the French line, and to avoid questions of domicile he declared his intention to reside till his death in Paris. To commemorate the banquet given to him on his retirement, an engraving was published by W. Rofle, after a portrait by Piercy. He left no memoirs, his habit being to destroy private documents. His works are: 1. 'Digest of Decisions of Supreme Court of New Orleans,' 1834. 2. 'Brief: Lockett v. Merchants' Insurance Co.,' Bruslé, New Orleans, 1841. 3. 'United States v. Castillero,' San Francisco, 1860. 4. 'Address to Free Schools,' New Orleans, 1845. 5. 'Changes in Practical Operation of the Constitution,' San Francisco, 1860. 6. 'Defence of National Democracy' (speech in United States Senate 22 May 1860), Washington, 1860. 7. 'Relations of States' (speech in senate 8 May 1860), Baltimore, 1860. 8. 'Speech on the Kansas Bill: Slavery protected by the Common Law of the World; 11 March 1858,' Washington, 1858. 9. 'Speech on the Kansas Question, Reasons for joining the Democrats; United States Senate 2 May 1856,' Washington, 1856. 10. 'On the acquisition of Cuba,' 1859. 11. 'On the right of Secession' (speech 3 Dec), 1860. 12. 'On Sales,' first edition, London, 1868; second, 1873; third, 1883.
