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1 George F. Hoar, Some Famous Judges 357 (1903)

handle is hein.lbr/smfmjdg0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SOME FAMOUS JUDGES By George F. Hoar NQUESTIONABLY the most im- portant character in the legal history of Massachusetts is Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. He was a great lawyer be- fore he came to the bench. He had written one or two very able articles for the Vor/l/ American Review, one of them a vigorous statement of the opinion of Massachusetts upon slavery. He was the author of a petition signed by many of the leading men of Massachusetts in opposition to the high tariff of 1828. No more power- ful statement of the argument against high protection can be found. I have been surprised that the modern free-trad- ers have not long ago discovered it, and brought it to light. He was one of the managers of the impeachment of Judge Prescott, securing a conviction against a powerful array of counsel for the defend- ant, which included Daniel Webster. He was consulted in difficult and important matters by eminent counsel in other coun- ties than Suffolk. But all these titles to distinction have been forgotten in his great service as Chief Justice of Massachusetts for thirty years. No other judicial fame in this country can rival his, with the single ex- ception of Marshall. He was induced to undertake the office of Chief Justice very reluctantly, by the strong personal ur- gency of Mr. Webster. Mr. Webster used to give a humorous account of the difficulty he had in overcoming the mor- bid scruples of the great simple-hearted intellectual giant. He found Mr. Shaw in his office in a cloud of tobacco-smoke. Mr. Webster did not himself smoke, and was at some disadvantage during the in- terview for that reason. Mr. Shaw was rather short in stature and, in the latter part of his life, some- what corpulent. He had a massive head, a low forehead, and strong and rather coarse features. He reminded you of the statues of Gog and Magog in the Guildhall in London. His hair came down over his forehead, and when he had been away from home for a week - OL. XXXIV.-39 or two, so that his head got no comb- ing but his own, it was in a sadly tan- gled mass. His eye was dull, except when it kindled in discussion, or when he was stirred to some utterance of grave displeasure. There is an anecdote of Mr. Choate which occasionally goes the rounds of the papers, and which is often repeated quite inaccurately. The true version is this. I heard it within a few hours after it hap- pened, and have heard it at first hand more than once since. Mr. Choate was sitting next to Judge Hoar in the bar when the Chief Justice was presiding, and the Suffolk docket was being called. The Chief Justice said something which led Mr. Choate to make a half-humorous and half-displeased re- mark about Shaw's roughness of look and manner, to which Judge Hoar replied: After all, I feel a reverence for the old Chief Justice. A reverence for him, my dear fellow? said Choate. So do I. I bow down to him as the wild Indian does before his wooden idol. I know he's ugly; but I bow to a superior intelligence. Judge Shaw's mind moved very slowly. When a case was argued, it took him a good while to get the statement of facts into his mind. It was hard for him to deal readily with unimportant matters, or with things which, to other people, were matters of course. If the simplest mo- tion were made, he had to unlimber the heavy artillery of his mind, go down to the roots of the question, consider the matter in all possible relations, and deal with it as if he were besieging a fortress. When he was intent upon a subject, he was exceedingly impatient of anything that interrupted the current of his thought. So he was a hard person for young advo- cates, or for any other unless he were strong, self-possessed, and had the respect of the judge. My old friend and partner, Judge Washburn, once told me that he dreaded the law term of the court as it approached, and sometimes felt that he 357

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