Some Kentucky Lawyers of the Past and Present. The first chief justice of the court of ap peals, Harry Innés, was commissioned June 28, 1792. He was the grandfather of the present mayor of Louisville, George D. Todd. He was a cultured, able lawyer, and remained on the bench until his death in 1816. William Murray, it is said, " was prob ably the most accomplished scholar among
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all the eminent men of Kentucky of his day." In 1798 he was a leader in the op position to the reso lutions offered by John Breckinridge, and it is a curious fact, stated by Col. Durrett, that his ar gument against them was almost identically the same as the one used by Daniel Web ster against Robert Hayne, in the United States Senate, in 1835. The speech of the brilliant speaker in the backwoods of Kentucky had never been printed, and yet, fifty years after, the JOHN L. great Webster repeat ed it almost verbatim. It has been said, " Next to Henry Clay, no man, living or dead, possessed a larger share of the affections of Kentucky than John J. Crittenden." He was governor of Kentucky, many times elected to the United States Senate, and attorney general of the United States under Harrison, and again under Fillmore. His daughter, Mrs. Chap man Coleman, a brilliant and charming wom an, wrote a life of him. She says : " He was so popular in his home county, Woodford, that criminals from other counties were always trying, first to employ him to defend
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them, and then to have the trial transferred to Woodford, well knowing that a jury could scarcely be found in the county that could resist him. Indeed, there were many old men who declared they could not conscien tiously serve on the jury with him as coun sel for the prisoner, they were so completely fascinated by his eye and his voice that jus tice and the law were lost sight of." On one occasion he closed a powerful argument, defending a mur derer, with these words: "When God in his eternal counsel conceived the idea of man's creation, he called to him the three ministers who wait constantly upon the throne — Justice, Truth and Mercy — and thus addressed them : ' Shall I create man?" О God, create him not,' said Justice, ' for he will trample upon Thy laws.' Truth said : ' Create him not, О Lord, for he will pollute Thy sanctuaries.' But HELM. Mercy, falling upon her knees and looking up through her tears, exclaimed, ' О God, cre ate him; I will watch over him in the darkest paths which he may be forced to tread.' So God created man, and said to him, 'O Man, thou art the child of Mercy; go and deal mercifully with thy brother.'" As he fin ished, the jury were in tears, and the man was, of course, acquitted. Mr. Crittenden was wont to say in speaking of it : " Yes, I begged that man's life of the jury." The last words of Mr. Crittenden were : " May all the ends thou aimest at be thy God's, thy coun try's and truth's." They are engraved on
