The Supreme Court of Maine. he seemed to be pre-eminent in a bar which contained lawyers of such ability and learning as Edward Kent and Jonas Cutting, both of whom were afterwards associated with Chief-Justice Appleton upon the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. . . . His services were in demand upon one side or the other of almost every case tried in court at that time." As all these elements of temperament, training and character enter into the foun dation and success of his judicial career in after-life, and to enable us to still better ap preciate them, we will quote the words of another, couched with deeper analytical power and written by an acknowledged mas ter of the subject, — an active practitioner before him and his associate on the bench for upwards often years, — his present suc cessor, Chief-Justice Peters : — "His management of causes was reliable, safe and successful. He was deeply interest ed in the work in hand. The court-room seemed a home to him, and the trial of a cause an apparent delight. Possessing then, as ever afterwards, fine physical health, his powers of both mental and bodily endurance were simply marvelous. He would pass from case to case, entering upon one trial with the same zeal and vigor he had just ex pended upon another, whether his previous efforts had been attended with victory or defeat. He did not forget that a battle well prepared is half won, and he was a master of the principle of promptness to the end of his life. He was active in both the prepara tion and the execution of business. I should doubt if he ever asked for the continuance or postponement of a case in court for his own personal convenience. . . . "He was distinguished for his prepara tion of the law of a case, as well as of its facts, and his opponents learned to be on the look-out against his assaults and sur prises. He continued the same studious, active, attentive and successful lawyer until he exchanged his duties at the bar for those
513
of the bench. . . . There were distinguished lawyers and advocates in this bar at that time but no one of them possessed a better professional aptitude or had at tained a better professional fame than John Appleton." The bench is what the bar chooses to make it. This tireless, hard-worked lawyer did not forget what he owed the profession in this respect. The two fundamental re forms which he largely assisted in bringing about are those relating to the abolition of the District Court and the removal of the disability of parties as witnesses in their own cases. Notwithstanding the great eminence he acquired as a judge, I think he took nearly, if not fully, as much satisfaction to himself in seeing his advanced views adopt ed by the legislature. While at the bar he moved and promoted the plan of consolidat ing the District and Supreme Judicial Courts, by abolishing the one and concentrating in the other the jurisdiction belonging to both; also consolidating into three districts the law court which sat in each county. He was chairman of a commission appointed by the legislature to consider and report a plan, and drafted the act by which the present system was established in 1852. Of these labors he has said, since he retired from the bench : " The delays incidental to and resulting from two Courts with appeals to and exceptions from one to the other, led to the entire transference of the jurisdiction of the District to that of the Supreme Court, with a saving of the delay, expense and vexation incident to protracted litigation; so that I think it may be truly said that there is no State in New England where a judgment may be obtained so speedily and with so little expense as in this good State of ours, when parties and counsel desire it." At the time (1883) when he thus spoke there were only 950 actions pending on the docket of the Supreme Court, whereas a few years after he began practice at Bangor (1837) there were 1,484 actions on the
