in the rebellion of 1798; was released on condition that he should go to Portugal, which he did; there he was imprisoned at the instance of the British Government; he es caped into France, and thence came to Eng land and defied the government, and was allowed to depart for the city of New York, where he landed, very appropriately, on the fourth of July, 1806. In 1825 he removed to Georgetown, D. C. More than one hun dred of the most eminent lawyers and judges of New York united in a letter of regret at his removal, with a strong expression of their respect for his " attainments, genius and vir tues." Gov. De Witt Clinton and Chancel lor Kent sent him special letters of regard. A volume of reminiscences written by him was published in 1807 at New York, and a second edition . was published at Leesburg, Va., in 181 7, and reprinted in London in 1832. He was perhaps the earliest of our lawyers who raised his voice in favor of codification, and there is extant an address delivered by him before the New York Histori cal Society on the Common Law, which, with his correspondence, newspaper articles, and other addresses on this topic, was published in Washington, in 1826, by Fisbey Thompson. Among his published writings is a pamphlet on the " Catholic Question in America "; another entitled, " Is a Whale a Fish? " and reports of the trials of Cheetham, Renshaw, Maurice and Niven. Samuel Woodworth, the author of the well known poem, " The Old Oaken Bucket, " published in New York, in 18 11, a sextodecimo of one hundred and four pages, entitled : " Beasts at Law, or Zoologian Jurisprudence. A Poem, Satirical, Allegorical, and Moral. In Three Cantos, Translated from the Arabic of Sampfilius Philoerin, Z. Y. X. W. etc., etc., whose Fables have made so much noise in the East, and whose fame has eclipsed that of /Esop. With Notes and Annotations." This is a trial by the beasts, under Latinized names, of Canis for an assault on Capra. Both are brought in guilty, and are whipped by the
ape. It is a heavy as well as a somewhat broad performance, the satire of which is im perceptible at this day.' I am indebted to the Honorable Charles P. Daly of New York, the oldest surviving law yer of that city, for information as to Samp son's writings. He corrects the statement in Appleton's Biographical Cyclopaedia that "Sampson among the Philistines, or the Re formation of Law Suits," Philadelphia, 1805, was from Sampson's pen. It was by Wil liam Duane, editor of the Aurora newspaper, to which Jefferson attributed his election to the presidency. He also doubts the state ment in the same Cyclopaedia that Sampson acquired a large practice in New York. This venerable and accomplished gentleman delivered before the Law School of the New York University a lecture on the common law, in which he showed what part Sampson took in bringing about the reform which led to the adoption of the Revised Statutes of 1830. He informs me: "I do not recall that he suggested any one of the valuable changes made by the revisers in our law, unless it might be in a very general way, and the impression left upon my mind by his writings is an undiscriminating attack on the common law, that was quite as objectionable as the prior indiscriminate laudation of it. But it is by agitators like him that the public mind is finally aroused and important changes are brought about." In the address above mentioned Judge Daly observes, in speaking of Sampson's Address on the Common Law : " So far from being, as its title would indicate, an attempt, by a competent legal historical investigator and critic, to explain what the common law was, or pointing out its defects, and suggesting how they could be remedied, it was the production of a fluent rhetorical writer, denouncing the common law as a system wholly unsuited to our repub lican government, ignoring or probably ig norant of how much we are indebted to it 1 Chief-Justice Daly, after a critical examination, comes to the conclusion that this is the work of Sampson himself.
