Charles O'Conor. of procedure of 1848." This, undoubtedly, is the universal belief in New York, and the unquestionable fact. This search into ancient history has served to inform me of Mr. O'Conor's views upon another great legal reform of our state, namely, that in respect to the property rights of married women. He opposed it. He made a long and earnest speech about it, very beautiful in point of style. He admired the law as it then was, and declared that " He was no true American who de sired to see it changed." He repeated in substance the stock argument that it would be cruel to wives to give them the right to their own property, because it would make their husbands so angry, and thus " tend to impair domestic harmony." "The hammer fell " in the midst of this touching harangue, but by unanimous consent he proceeded, and closed with the following dismal pre diction: "From amid the less pure and in corrupt habits and manners as then existing around him, he would look back to the present day with emotions akin to those which affect our minds when contemplat ing the first family in happy Eden before the tempter came." Up to that time the distinguished speaker had not indulged him self in any practical attempt to realize Eden with a common-law wife; but the reality introduced by the incendiary change must have proved less objectionable than his anticipations indicated, for in 1854 he took unto himself a wife who possessed all the dis advantages brought in by the reformed law. Mr. O'Conor however was with the majority in his views, for the proposition, afterwards effected by legislation, was rejected by the convention by nine majority. One Mr. Simmons, a bachelor lawyer, pronounced it " a strumpet provision." But in small matters Mr. O'Conor was apparently very gallant to women. Thus he was among sixty-one members who voted against fortyseven, in favor of giving the "ladies" a gallery in which they could listen to the
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debates, under the protection of a door keeper. (Atlas Report, p. 67.) It must have been improving to the inmates of that gallery to listen to Mr. O'Conor and Mr. Simmons on their " rights."1 It is interesting also to note that Mr. O'Conor advocated giving the defendant's counsel in criminal trials the closing address to the jury. (Atlas Report, p. 1051.) SLAVERY — THE JACK AND LEMMON CASES. In his Memorial of Mr. O'Conor, prepared by Mr. Frederick R. Coudert for the Bar Association of the City of New York, he tells how Mr. O'Conor was moved to tears while reciting some fragments of William Samp son's article, "The Irish Emigrant." "He had now lost control of himself," and " tears stood in his eyes," as he recited : " He was born in a land which no longer was hi,s; in the midst of plenty his children ate the bread of poverty; he toiled for a landlord whose face he never saw; he heard there was a great country beyond the sea where" . . . and Mr. O'Conor exclaimed : " Are we not both sons of the Irish Emigrant? " One would suppose that a person of such tender sensibilities, who was " always overcome by pathos," would have had some sympathy with the four millions of black slaves in this country at that time. On the contrary, he always admired, and defended the system of human slavery, and thought its subjects very reprehensible for trying to run away from it. This in an Irishman and a lawyer seems anomalous. It was, however, fortunate for one suitor that there lived one lawyer at the North who entertained such sentiments; otherwise Mrs. Lemmon could not easily have found an advocate to urge the rendi1 Mr. O'Conor's inconsistency was shared by Mr. Russell, who in the amusing debate on a doorkeeper for the ladies' gallery, observed : " In this country, where the sex have higher privileges than in any other upon the face of the earth, and where they are held in higher estimation by men (a feeling which should be universal)," etc.; and then the faithless flatterer voted against giving them their rights in the Constitution!
