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The Green Bag
- Or else for contempt he will quickly get bounced.
- But the lesson to learn and the sooner 'tis done
- The better, my readers will find, every one,
- Is not to demand of all slanders the truth,
- Nor an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth.
- And if you are hit on the cheek by a blow,
- It has wisely been said, "Turn the other also."
- But ne'er go to court when the fires of hate
- Are aflame in your soul; — it is better to wait.
- P. A. Sawyer.
The Interest and Value of the Study of Legal Biography1
By Hon. Hampton L. Carson2
MR. President and Members of the Bar of Rhode Island: —
I appreciate deeply the distinction conferred by asking me to share with you so interesting an occasion. I was a little at a loss to understand why a Philadelphia lawyer should be selected, particularly when I recall that a Philadelphia lawyer in the early days was not highly regarded. I remember picking up in one of the old book stalls of London, some ten or twelve years ago, a brochure of about ninety pages, printed in London fifteen years after William Penn had landed at Old Chester, and written by Gabriel Thomas, in which, after giving an account of "ye flourishing province of Pennsylvania," which at that time consisted chiefly of the town of Philadelphia and some two thousand people, and after describing the butchers, the bakers, the brick layers, the masons, the carpenters and the jewelers, the author said, "Of doctors
- lAn address delivered before the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Bar Association, at the banquet held December 5, 1910.
- 2Of Philadelphia, former Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, author of "History Of the Supreme Court of the United States," "The Genesis of Blackstone's Commentaries and their Place in Legal Literature," etc.
and of lawyers I shall say nothing because the place is very peaceable and healthy," and then he added this pious prayer, “Long may we be preserved from the pestiferous drugs of the one and the abominable loquacity of the other."
Now, the doctors and lawyers, in the early history of Pennsylvania, had quite a neck and neck race. William Penn, before he left London, appointed a lawyer, a man by the name of Crispin who was his cousin, to be the first Chief Justice of the province, and it happened that on the ship in which Crispin was coming to America there was a doctor of the name of Nicholas Moore. Crispin fell sick, and according to the experience not altogether beyond our own, it happened that the doctor survived the patient, and thus it came about that it was a doctor who became the first Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and it was a doctor also who was the first Speaker of the province. Pluralism was catching, for at one time Thomas McKean held the offices of President of the Continental Congress, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and Governor of the state of Delaware. They had to borrow men from Pennsylvania, in those days, in
