Reuben Hyde Walworth. I can only assure you that I will spare no exer tions in endeavoring to deserve the approbation of an enlightened Bar, and an intelligent commu nity." Mr. Edwards in his Reminiscences tells us that Aaron Burr advised the Chancellor not to publish the address, " because if the people read this they will exclaim, ' Then if you knew you were not qualified, why the devil did you take the office? ' " According to Mr. O'Conor, Burr believed that Wal worth decided all his causes against him from personal pique on account of this ad vice. Such a belief would have been char acteristic of Burr, but no one else would have entertained it. In one point of the address the Chancellor certainly was too modest, and that was in regard to his age, for unless the best records which have come down to us are all wrong, he was forty instead of thirty-eight when "placed at the head of the judiciary of the state." 1 The published record of his administration of this office is found in the three volumes of Barbour's Chancery Reports and the eleven of Paige's Chancery Reports, which are wholly taken up with his decisions, and in his opinions in the Court of Errors, reported by Wendell, Hill and Denio. He also left thirty-nine folio volumes of unpublished opinions. In the latter court he delivered an opinion in every important case on appeal from the Supreme Court, but none on appeals from his own court. He was reputed in his day to be a prodigy of legal learning, and this 'There is great confusion as to the date of Walworth's birth, and even as to his death. Appleton's Dictionary of American Biography puts his birth Oct. 26, 1788, and his death Nov. 27, 1867; I.ippincott's Biograpical Dictionary puts his birth in 1789 and his death in 1867; the Encylopsrdia Britannica puts his birth Oct. 26, 1789; and his death Nov. 21, 1857; Stone in his Reminiscences of Saratoga puts his birth Oct. 26, 1788, and his death Nov. 28, 1866; at the meeting of the Saratoga Bar on his death, his birth was put Oct. 26, 1789, and his death Nov. 28, 1867,
- • in his eightieth year "; Livingston's " Portraits of Eminent
Americans " puts his birth Oct. 26, 1789. The question may >c deemed settled by the Chancellor's statement in the Hyde Genealogy, that he was born in 1788.
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it is easy to believe on glancing at the exhaustiveness and variety of these opinions. There were a great many appeals from his decisions to the Court of Errors, which was composed of the Senate, the judges of the Supreme Court and the Chancellor. He was reversed in thirty instances, which seems to be nearly one-third of the whole number of the appeals from his decisions — a large pro portion, certainly; but it must be borne in mind that the Court of Errors was but little better than a town-meeting, and that it com paratively seldom pronounced a unanimous decision. The reversals, however, included several cases of vast importance, such as Costar v. Lorillard, Stewart's Executors v. Lispenard, Miller v. Gable, and Hawley v. James. In some instances the reversal was unanimous, and in several others there were but one or two dissentients. In spite of these facts, and in spite of Mr.O'Conor's exalted opinion of that court, it is quite probable that Chancellor Walworth is to-day a greater legal authority than the Court of Errors, containing so many members untrained in legal modes of thought, unaccustomed to intricate statements of law and fact, and un acquainted with the history of jurisprudence. William Kent said of his judicial career: "Never, perhaps, were so many decisions made where so few were inaccurate as to facts or erroneous in law." Soon after Walworth came into the Court of Errors, by virtue of being Chancellor (in 1830), he raised the question whether he could take part in appeals in cases heard before him as Circuit Judge of the Supreme Court. The statutes seemed to prohibit him, but he pointed out that they seemed to be in conflict with the constitution. It was decided that he could take part, fifteen senators so voting, one voting to the con trary, and seven declining to vote. Senator Benton observed : " We cannot presume that the feelings and wishes of an individual, holding a high judicial station, will influence his judgment in the re-examination of a
