Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/549

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The Green Bag.

monwealth administered justice so as to give law to the whole country. Such tributes as Loring, and Curtis, and Dana lavished upon his grave can never stale or wither. Each one of them had been his constant antago nist in the great arena, and each could say with authority : ". . . experto credite, quantus In clvpeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam."

One after the other, they portrayed in words not to be forgotten his fidelity to the Court, to the client and to the law, his pro found learning, his invincible logic, his rare scholarship and his persuasive eloquence, his uniform deference to the Court and to his adversaries, — and more and better than all these — what those specially interested in his memory cherish as a priceless treasure, his marvelous sweetness of temper, which neither triumph nor defeat nor disease could ruffle — his great and tender and sympa thetic heart, which made them, and the whole bench and bar, love him in life, and love him still. He magnified his calling with all the might of his indomitable powers. Following the law as a profession, or, as Judge Sprague so justly said, " as a science and also as an art," he aimed always at perfection for its own sake, and no thought of money, or of any mercenary consideration, ever touched his generous and aspiring spirit, or chilled or stimulated his ardor. He espoused the cause of the poorest client, about the most meager subject of controversy, with the same fidelity and enthusiasm as when millions were at stake, and sovereign states the combatants. No love of money ever planted the least root of evil in his soul; and this should not fail to be said in remembrance of him, in days when money rules the world. His theory of advocacy was the only pos sible theory consistent with the sound and wholesome administration of justice, that with all loyalty to truth and honor, he must devote his best talents and attainments, all that he was, and all that he could, to the

support and enforcement of the cause com mitted to his trust. It is right here to re peat the words of Mr. Justice Curtis, speakfor himself and for the whole Bar, that "Great injustice would be done to this great and elo quent advocate, by attributing to him any want of loyalty to truth, or any deference to wrong, because he employed all his great powers and attainments, and used to the ut most his consummate skill and eloquence, in exhibiting and enforcing the comparative merits of one side of the cases in which he acted. In doing so he but did his duty. If other people did theirs, the administration of justice was secure." His name will ever be identified with trial by jury, the department of the profession in which he was absolutely supreme. He cher ished with tenacious affection and interest its origin, its history and its great fundamental maxim; that the citizen charged with crime shall be presumed innocent until his guilt shall be established beyond all reasonable doubt; that no man shall be deprived by the law, of property or reputation, until his right to retain it is disproved by a clear pre ponderance of evidence, to the satisfaction of all the twelve; that every suitor shall be confronted with the proofs by which he shall stand or fall; that only after a fair hearing, with the fullest right of cross-examination, and the observance of the vital rules of evi dence, shall he forfeit life, liberty or property, and then only by the judgment of his peers. Regarding these cardinal principles of Anglo-Saxon justice and policy, as essential to the maintenance of liberty and of civil society, he stood as their champion "With spear in rest and heart on flames,"

sheathed in the panoply of genius. To-day, when we have seen a great sister republic on the verge of collapse, for the vio lation of these first canons of Freedom, we may justly honor such a champion. But he displayed his undying loyalty to the profession on a still higher and grander scale, when he viewed and presented it as