Excerpt from The Leaders of the Old Bar of Philadelphia

IT may be thought that I select a very narrow and local theme, when I attempt to sketch some of the personal and professional characteristics of a lawyer of the Philadelphia Bar, who was little more than a lawyer, though he was a great lawyer, and who culminated in his profession more than sixty years since. But I adopt the theme, in some degree, because it is narrow and local, and is therefore more within my compass; and because it is beyond the memory of most of the living, and therefore, in the advantages of personal recollection, is pretty much an octogenarian perquisite of my own. What I write upon the subject, cannot be of any general interest. It is too remote, and too limited. It wants the essen tial, and, at this day, all-engrossing attractions of the new and the various or diversified; and it will want, what alone can supply the place of these attractions, a treatment that is a substitute for the subject. But it is a debt that I would pay; the joint debt, perhaps, of several, which has fallen, according to law, uponthe longest liver; and I would pay it for them and for myself. A general interest in the transaction is therefore comparatively indifferent to me. I expect, consequently, that no one out of the Pennsylvania Bar, and very few who are not of the Philadelphia Bar, will look at it; and, except to this Bar, I offer neither invitation nor inducement to put aside for it, even for an hour, the more stimulant interests of the day.

Has not the modern race of lawyers everywhere undergone some change from the old times, by rising or falling into the. Athenian category, the very large class of those who spend their time in telling or hearing some new thing? There are, at least, professional tendencies that way, which make them less and less curious of anything that savors of a former age. Most of the old limitations have been abridged, and the exceptions to them cut away, to save the labor of looking back. Old authorities no longer divide with old wine, the reverence of either seniors or juniors. Most of the old law books, that used to be thought almost as good a foundation for their part of the truth, as the prophets and apostles are for the whole truth, are taken away, I rather think, from the bottom of the building, and thrown into the garret. That Littleton upon whom Coke sits.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.