cal forms of the common law, and though he did not hesitate to say even here, that he was as ca pable of fencing with them as his neighbors, and of taking care that his clients should not suffer from their misapplication, yet he had long thought that there was no propriety in the existing distinctions, in the forms of practice and pleading between these two tribunals — that of law and that of equity — and therefore, with the same view as the committee, that of ultimately blending them together, and forming one consis tent, uniform and harmonious method of practice in the administration ofjustice, he had brought forward, as well as the committee, a system tend ing to that end. His method of effecting the result differed from that of the committee in this one important respect — in no part of the article which he had presented had he introduced the phrases courts of law, and courts of equity, jurisdiction in law, or jurisdiction in equity. "By denying to the distinction a constitutional recognition it was left fully and unquestionably within the power of the Legislature, should they in their wisdom, on a full examination of the subject, find it proper to blend the system, to do so. It left the law-making and law-reforming power unembarrassed by any language in the Constitution which might be a barrier to such blending. It also left to them the power of re tracing their steps, if, after making the experi ment, it should befound that the project of blend ing the two systems was impracticable — was, as some supposed, a dream of visionary enthu siasts in law reform. If, enlightened by the de velopments of experience, they should find the distinction salutary, they would be free to erect anew this barrier between law and conscience, which nothing but the iron test of mischiefs actually experienced from its abolition could con vince him was necessary. It was, in a princi pal measure, with the view of avoiding the per manent establishment in the Constitution, be yond the reach of legislative power, of these two modes of proceeding, that he had felt himself constrained to write out anew the whole article; otherwise he would probably have confined him self to his right to propose, in committee of the whole, amendments of the article reported by the chairman. In other respects he mainly con curred with the committee. Whilst he con curred most fully in the remarks of the honor able chairman as to the expediency of assimilat
ing the modes of taking testimony in those dif ferent classes of cases called cases at law and cases in equity, and especially that the trial by jury should be extended as far as possible, still he had omitted that provision from his system, because he conceived that these minute details belonged to the field of ordinary legislation, or to that of court rules, and not to the Constitu tion." (Argus Report, p. 375.) These remarks were made a month and a half after the introduction of the resolution by Mr. White which gave rise to them. It is evident that Mr. O'Conor was a follower and not a leader in these reforms, a modifier, an adapter and a keen critic rather than an originator. The foregoing will certainly serve to dis abuse any New York lawyer of the im pression that Mr. O'Conor could ever seriously have claimed for himself the credit of the " authorship " of the great legal re forms of 1846 and 1848. So much for his course in the constitutional convention as to the judiciary article. As to the code of civil procedure adopted in 1848, his spirit is sufficiently indicated - by Mr. Field's letter and in his animadversions upon the new system of pleading which it introduced. It is sufficient to add that Mr. David Dudley Field assures me that " Mr. O'Conor did not invent the code reforms, but opposed them with might and main from beginning to end." Of course Mr. Field refers to the code system independent of the judiciary article, in respect to which he has ex plained Mr. Conor's position in his foregoing letter. The code enacted the substance of the judiciary article as well as the minutiaz of practice. The Hon. Martin I. Townsend, who was a member of the convention of 1867-8, also writes me that " D. D. Field, Michael Hoffman and Arphaxed Loomis reformed our law practice." The venerable Benjamin D. Silliman, at a dinner given him by the Bar of New York and Brooklyn, in 1889, spoke of Mr. Field as "the chief author" of" the change created by the code
