The revision of the statutes of the state of New York and the revisers. An address delivered before the Association of the bar of the city of New York, January 22, 1889
Butler, William Allen, 1825-1902 | New York (State)
flfflM m* f lM»-v-fc-w* lxww*^-« 1 \ < THE REVISION OF THE STATUTES OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK AND THE REVISERS. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, JANUARY 22, 1889. — BY— WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. PUBLISHED FOR THE ASSOCIATION. NEW YORK AND ALBANY: BANKS--& BROTHERS, LAW PUBLISHERS. 1889. COPYRIGHTED, 1889, BY THE ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. INTRODUCTION. THIS volume, commemorative of the Revisers of the Statutes of the State of New York and their work, owes its origin to the fol- lowing correspondence and the action of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York subsequently taken in furtherance of the object to which it relates : NEW YORK, March ist, 1888. To the Executive Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. GENTLEMEN : — I have for a long time desired that some suitable and permanent memorial should exist of the Revisers of the Statutes of this State, JOHN DUER, BENJAMIN F. BUTLER and JOHN C. SPENCER. I name them in the order of their appointment. The signal services they rendered have been illustrated by the course, during more than half a century, of the administration of government and the progress of jurisprudence, not only in this State but also in the other States where the statutory law has been framed on the model of the Revised Statutes, but as time advances and changes in the law are multiplied the distinctive character of this earlier work is in danger of passing out of view. It has occurred to me that portraits of the Revisers, placed side by side on the walls of the Association would be a fitting commemo- ration, and that coupled with the presentation of these portraits a succinct account of the work of the Revision, with sketches of the lives and services of the Revisers, might be prepared and published under the supervision and auspices of the Association so as to form an authentic and permanent addition to the literature of the law. With this in-view and with the consent of the representatives of the families of Chief Justice Duer and Mr. Spencer which has been cheerfully accorded, I now propose to present to the Association the 11 portraits of the Revisers as soon as they can be satisfactorily com- pleted and, if approved by the Executive Committee as works of art, the same shall be received by the Association as its property and placed on its walls, and in connection with their acceptance an historical and biographical memorial, as above indicated, and which I will undertake to prepare, shall, subject to like approval, be published in the Association's annual report or otherwise, as may be determined. Awaiting your action on this proposition, I am Very truly yours, WM. ALLEN BUTLER. ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR, 7 WEST 2pTH STREET. April 2d, 1888. WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER, Esq., Dear Sir : — I have the honor to inform you that at the March meeting of the Executive Committee of this Association, your very liberal and acceptable offer to present to the Association portraits of the distin- guished Revisers of the N. Y. Statutes together with memorial sketches of their lives and services was received, and that the Com- mittee thereupon on motion of Mr. Olney unanimously Resolved, That the letter of Mr. Butler be entered on the Minutes, and that the proposition as therein made be accepted with the cordial thanks of the Committee ; that Mr. Butler be requested to prepare the Memorial referred to in his letter, so that it may be read or delivered in the form of an address before the Association at a Special Meeting to be called for that pur- pose, and that it be referred to a Committee consisting of the President of the Association, the Chairman of this Committee and Mr. Holt, with power to carry this resolution into effect. Very respectfully yours, S. SIDNEY SMITH, Secy Ex. Com. Ill By appointment of the Executive Committee, a Special Meeting of the Association was held on the Evening of January 22, 1889, when the presentation of the portraits of the Revisers to the Association was made in the presence of a number of invited guests. It was accompanied by an address by Mr. Butler embracing a portion of the matter contained in the present volume. The portraits were accepted on behalf of the Association by Mr. Joseph H. Choate its President, and the following minute was adopted : At a Special Meeting of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, held at No. 7 West 2Qth Street, on the 22d day of January, 1889. Mr. William Allen Butler presented to the Association portraits in oil of John Duer, Benjamin F. Butler and John C. Spencer, the Revisers of the Statutes of the State of New York ; and delivered an address to the Association on the Revisers and their work. Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson presented the following resolution, which was seconded by Mr. Charles A. Peabody : Resolved, That the hearty thanks of this Association be tendered to Mr. Butler for the able, instructive and interesting address to which we have just listened, that it be appropriately published under the direction of the Executive Committee, and distributed among the members oi the Association, that there be delivered to Mr. Butler, such number of copies as he may desire ; and that Mr. Butler be respectfully invited to give the Association the manuscript of his address for preservation in its Library. Which was unanimously adopted. Extract from the Minutes S. B. BROWNELL, Recording Secretary. The Executive Committee having resolved to accompany the work with engravings of the portraits, these have been executed under the supervision of Messrs. Banks & Brothers, whose house has been honorably identified with the Revised Statutes as the publish- ers of every successive edition, since the first edition, and by whom this volume is published for the Association. THE REVISION AND THE REVISERS. THE awakened interest of the American people in the men and the events of the time preceding the war for the Union has opened for the historian, the annalist and the biographer, new paths in old fields. It was natural that with the re-establishment of the National unity, after the stormy period of peril and conflict, there should come, in due season, a great calm, in whose clear atmosphere the whole life of the nation, past and present, would stand out in such sharp outline, and in such varied forms, as to re- invite to its exploration in every part. Especially has the integrity of the Union, as vindicated and made sure by the issue of the great struggle, set in the clearest light the true sovereignty of each State as the or- ganizer and ruler of its own interior social order and devel- opment, and made it more than ever the duty of the citi- zens of each separate commonwealth to make the record of its growth and progress complete and permanent. This patriotic service is most of all required of the older States, whose earlier annals embody the beginnings of the systems of government which have now overspread the continent. The Revised Statutes of New York, familiar to us all, as the body of the written law by which, during the last fifty-eight years, under the various constitutions and as from time to time amended, the government of this State has been administered in all its departments, stand as a land- mark of the progress of free government, and the devel- opment of the law as a science within the boundaries of our own State. The lapse of time since the first enactment of the Re- vised Statutes, the many additions and changes during nearly three score years of rapid growth and new discovery and invention, and the passing away of two generations of men, have tended to obscure the original work, and to les- sen the number of the witnesses who can attest its great- ness. This Association has deemed it fitting that some com. memoration of both the work of the Revision and its au. thors should find a place on these walls and in our records, and it has been for me altogether a privilege, and in part, a filial duty, too long delayed, to provide the portraits of JOHN DUER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER and JOHN CLINTON SPENCER, the three Revisers, for preservation here as a memento of their joint labors in the work which unites their names and memories. These portraits speak for themselves. Necessarily, no one of them is from life. They are, however, from the best sources available to me with the aid of the relatives of Chief Justice Duer and of Mr. Spencer. The portrait of Chief Justice Duer is an original by Mr. J. Carroll Beckwith, that of Mr. Spencer is also an original by Mr. William M. J. Rice, while the third portrait is a copy by Howard Russell Butler, faithfully reproduced from an original in my possession, by Thomas Hicks. They have been approved by the Executive Committee as works of art, worthy of acceptance as the property of the Association. The Executive Committee have also intrusted me with the task of preparing a sketch, historical as to the revision, and biographical as to the Revisers, to be published under the auspices of the Association as a further permanent memorial of both. In performing this duty I am reminded that it was ac- cepted more than thirty years ago by the sole surviving Reviser, and its accomplishment prevented by his death shortly afterwards. Mr. Marshall S. Bidwell in his address at the meeting of the Bar held in reference to that event, December 1, 1858, said : " Upon the occasion which last convened the members of the Bar — the death of Judge Duer — Mr. Butler made an address which will be remembered by all those present ; at the conclusion of that meeting, I expressed a wish to him that, as he was the sole survivor of the gentlemen concerned in that labor, he would reduce to writing a statement of the manner in which it was accomplished, and the different parts the Revisers took in it. He ex- pressed his willingness, if it was the desire of the members of the Bar, to do so. On enquiry I found it was, as I an- ticipated, the general desire of the Bar, and I had taken measures to have it accomplished when he was obliged to depart for Europe." As the circumstances seem thus to have devolved this duty upon me as a special obligation, its discharge, how- ever inadequate, will, I trust, be accepted as an effort to furnish a record not unworthy of a place in the history and literature of the law. The place of ]S"ew York in the Union of the States was originally determined and has been maintained by lawyers. Within her boundaries, on her Bench and at her Bar, there have always been jurists of integrity, ability and patriot- ism, devoted to the task of creating and administering her free government. The Dutch colony of New Netherland, dating from 1614, and continuing for half a century, adopted the system of townships and magistracies derived from the institu- tions of Holland, whose local municipal system, under the government of the States General, embodied the theory of Republican Government. Under this system the people were trained in the rudimental ideas of representative government and on the establishment of the English rule in March, 1664, the population, although not then exceeding ten thousand souls, were impatient of external control, and ready to assert and maintain popular rights. The English Colonial rule proceeded on the assumption of absolute control in the Crown. No charter was ever granted to the colonists ; the Governor and Colonial Council of seven members, afterwards increased to twelve, were com- missioned by the King, and the General Assembly was chosen by the freeholders of the several counties, but the Governor had an absolute veto on all bills passed by the Assembly and Council, and also the power of proroguing and dissolving the Assembly. All laws passed by the Colonial Legislature were subject to approval or rejection by the King, and if disapproved were void. This semblance of a representative government, made more intolerable by the oppression of Parliament, culmi- nating in the Stamp Act, was thrown off by the Revolu- tion, and the State of New York came into existence under the Constitution of April 20, 1777. This Constitution, the fifth of the series of Constitutions adopted by the States, was drawn by John Jay, afterwards the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, as chairman of the committee to whom its prepara- tion was intrusted. Robert R. Livingston, the first Chancellor, William Smith, one of the ablest jurists of his time, John Sloss Ho- bart and Robert Yates, the first puisne Judges of the Supreme Court, Gouverneur Morris and William Duer, father of the Reviser, were conspicuous members of this committee. The Constitution declared that " such parts of the com- mon law of England and of Great Britain and of the acts of the Colonial Legislature as together formed the law of the colony at the breaking out of the Revolution in 1775, constituted the law of the State, subject to alteration by the Legislature." The Colonial Laws from 1691 to 1777, inclusive, had been the subject of several revisions and additions. The Laws of the State were edited and revised in 1789, under the direction of the Legislature, by Samuel Jones and Richard Varick, and later, in 1801, by Chief Justice Kent and Justice Radcliff of the Supreme Court. In 1813, another revision was made by William P. Van Ness and John Wood worth, known as the Revision of 1813. None of these so-called revisions was anything more than a mere re-enactment in a consolidated form of the ex- isting statutes as they had been passed from time to time, with some amendments suggested by the Revisers or inserted by the Legislature. They were drawn in separate acts with no attempt at systematic arrangement. They were all similar to the earlier revisions made during the Colonial period, first by William Smith and William Livingston in 1762, and afterwards by Peter Van Schaick in 1774. Thus the first general statute in the two volumes of the Revised Laws of 1813 is one passed in 1784 in relation to magistrates who may take affidavits, and the last is one passed in 1813 to prevent trespasses on Indian Lands. Between these are inserted, in chronological order, but otherwise without any attempt at classification, the many hundred statutes of the intermediate years as modified by amendments or other changes in the law. In 1821 the Constitution was amended and again the lead- ing lawyers of the State controlled the convention. Chan- cellor Kent, Martin Van Buren, Ambrose Spencer, Peter A. Jay, John Duer, Erastus Root and Henry Wheaton were among the members of the body. Radical changes were made in the organic law and in the mode of administering the government,' and soon after the new Constitution went into effect, January 1, 1823, it became evident that these 6 changes as well as those made by the successive Legislatures since 1813, necessitated a new revision of the statutes. Governor Yates had been a Judge of the Supreme Court from 1808 to 1822 and by his judicial experience had become familiar with the defects of the existing statutes. He urged the subject upon the Legislature and an act was passed, November 27, 1824, appointing James Kent, Erastus Root, then Lieutenant- Governor, and Benjamin F. Butler, to revise the statutes of the State. The act required the work to be completed in two years and provided for a compensation of one thousand dollars each for the services to be performed by the Revisers. This act contemplated a revision similar to those of 1813 and former years. It did not authorize anything beyond the compilation of the existing statutes in the manner pursued in the earlier revisions, much less a remodelling of the statutory law or the reduction to statutory form of the Common Law. JAMES KENT, whose name stood at the head of the commis- sion thus constituted, had retired, July 31, 1823, from the office of Chancellor. He had served the State as one of the puisne Judges of the Supreme Court, from his first ap- pointment February 6, 1798, to July 2, 1804, when he be came Chief Justice and so remained until February 25, 1814, the date of his appointment as Chancellor. His judicial career had placed him on the roll of great Judges, and the wonderful revolution in the practice and administration of equity accomplished during the nine years of his service as Chancellor is attested by the tributes paid him by the Bar on his retirement and which occupy the concluding pages of the final volume of Johnson's Chancery Reports. This brilliant career on the Bench was cut short at the age of sixty years, by the operation of the provision in the Constitution of 1821, which perpetuated a similar provis- ion in the Constitution of 1777, disqualifying the higher judicial officers from the exercise of their duties after attaining sixty years of age. The fiYst draft of the judiciary article of the Constitu tion of 1821 extended the tenure of the judicial officers to seventy years of age, but by some sinister influence the un- reasonable limitation of sixty years was substituted by the convention. Denounced in strong terms by Hamilton, in the Federalist, as early as 1778,* its reappearance in the new Constitution was justly declared to be " a satire on the intellect of the Bar and a standing re- proach to the discernment and integrity of the appointing power, f " Driven from the Bench at the height of his judicial fame and in the fullness of his judicial capacity, it was incom- patible with the views of the ex- Chancellor, governed as they probably were, by the prevailing ideas of the period, that he should resume practice at the Bar. He said to James I. Roosevelt, then a young man, long afterwards a Judge of the Supreme Court, in our city, " I would rather saw wood." Judge Roosevelt, in relating to me this in- cident, added that he himself suggested to Chancellor Kent the preparation of a work on Equity jurisprudence, an idea amplified and improved upon in the noble task to which he addressed himself, whose splendid issue in the Commentaries on American Law have more than healed the wound inflicted by the blunder or the crime of the Consti- tution makers of 1821. Chancellor Kent, in a manner entirely characteristic, declined to act as one of the Revisers. While the question of his acceptance was pending, a rumor was started by the gossip mongers, of whom the political circles were as full then as they are now, that he was unwilling to be associated with the Commissioner whose name was last on the list, because of some strictures he had made in the Court of Errors on one of the Chancellor's decrees, and it was doubtless thought a very probable circumstance, at a time when judges and lawyers were alike partisan and * Federalist, No. 79. f 7 John's Chy. R., p. 347, note. 8 prejudiced to an extent we can hardly understand and happily do not emulate, that the antagonism in the political views of the veteran Federalist Chancellor and a young and ardent Republican lawyer, the political associate of Tompkins and Van Buren, might well be an additional obstacle to their serving together on the com- mission. It turned out that the Chancellor had been wholly mis- represented as to this supposed ground of reluctance to ac- cept the appointment. He was willing to serve, but he did not want any associate. He wrote under date of November 29, 1824, as follows : " BENJAMIN F. BUTLEK, Esq., Dear Sir. — I beg leave to assure you that Mr. C. is wholly mistaken in supposing there is any personal differ- ence between you and me, or that I should for that cause be unwilling to be associated with you. I have the highest confidence in the purity and honor that govern you, and I can scarcely recollect anything of the occurrence which was the foundation of the supposed misunderstanding. I have only a faint recollection of something having been said by yon in the Court of Errors, relative to the errors of one of my Chancery decrees, which as reported to me in the first instance, gave me some pain. But the explanation followed immediately afterwards and was entirely satis- factory, and I have not thought of the matter since. I have no other feeling towards you than those of strong respect and esteem. I am your Friend & ob't Ser't JAMES KENT." A few days later, December 8th, 1824, after having for- mally declined the appointment, he again wrote as follows : " It would have been most convenient to me to have had the duty of revising the laws assigned to me alone, giving me a reasonable time and allowing me a reasonable com- 9 pensation, but if it was thought best to have an associate that was agreeable to me I should have had no objection and you would have been entirely and perfectly agreeable to me as an associate." It was fortunate for the work of the Revision, as finally developed, that Chancellor Kent declined to take part in it. As the sole Reviser, he would have been more than com- petent for the task, which would have been mainly a repe- tition of his earlier work in conjunction with Judge Radcliff, in 1801, but while his long exercise of undivided authority as Chancellor made him averse to working with associates, his still longer exercise of the judicial function had unfitted him for sympathy and co-operation in the bold and novel methods for which the Revision gave the opportunity and which demanded the enthusiasm and courage of men of a new generation. A quarter of a century passed on the Bench, in the application of the rules of the English Common Law and the English Court of Chancery to the affairs of a new commonwealth which, while it gloried in its independence as a State, held fast to the systems of law and equity of the mother country, with a tenacity which independence seemed only to strengthen, was an admirable preparation for the task of a commentator whose work is mainly retro- spective, but not for the architect of an improved system of jurisprudence. John Duer was appointed by Governor Yates to fill the place vacated by Chancellor Kent. He accepted with alacrity and, as the speedy result of the concurring views of himself and his junior colleague, a bold and radical change was made by them in the whole scheme of the Revision and the methods of its execution. By that kind of inspiration which so often waits on true devotion to a high calling, the idea came to them of replac- ing the mass of disconnected statutes they were called upon to collate by a new and complete system of original 10 laws, regulating every department of government, based upon the old foundations of the common law and the exist- ing statutes, and made serviceable by fundamental and far reaching changes and by a symmetrical and scientific ar- rangement. This rare opportunity they seized with that unquestion- ing enthusiasm which, when rightly directed and controlled, is the surest presage of success. To set this new movement in operation far greater powers were needed by the Revisers than those conferred by the appointing Act of 1824, and, immediately upon the assembling of the Legislature of 1825, which convened on the fourth day of January, we find the two junior Revisers in communication with the Assembly, stating, very mo- destly but with absolute clearness, the plan they proposed and asking for the needed grant of power for its execu- tion. They advanced the proposition that the time had come when the whole written law might be comprised under appropriate titles, classified in natural order and arranged, as to each of its branches, in a clear and scientific method and, while conceding the novelty and difficulty of the pro- ject, declared their readiness to undertake it. Their statement was accompanied by a specimen of the new style of statute by which they sought to replace the old and cumbrous system of Revision. This specimen embodied the statutory regulation of the Court of Errors and the Court of Chancery. Placed side by side with the existing statutes on the same subject the comparison showed at a glance the vast advantage to be gained by reduction in length, in simplifi- cation of expression and in the scientific co-relation of all the parts to the whole which was the key to the entire sys- tem as proposed. In connection with this profert by way of sample, they urged the importance of redeeming the laws from the uncertainties and obscurities arising from the intricate and obsolete diction in which so many of them, especially those copied from the English acts, had been 11 written and the advantage of establishing the whole body of the statute law in such permanent form that instead of constantly recurring Revisions, particular amendments and additions could be made as occasion might require, with- out disturbing the other parts of the system. They add : " We are fully aware of the responsibility that we incur by proposing to the legislature a new mode of conducting a Revision of the laws, and are prepared to encounter the charge, so easily preferred, of rash and unnecessary inno- vation. In reply DO such a charge, we shall only observe, that the conviction of the practicability and great import- ance of the change which we recommend, has been pro- duced in our own minds by slow and careful deliberation, overcoming the prepossessions common to the profession to which we belong. That much care, diligence and research will be requisite tc the successful execution of this plan, we freely admit, and it is with a full sense of the difficulties it may impose upon ourselves, that we urge its adoption ; yet we trust we may without presumption express our belief that these difficulties may be overcome, the evils which may be appre- hended effectually obviated, and the advantages which we have endeavored to indicate, to a considerable extent be secured and realized. We solicit a comparison of the acts drawn up by us, with those now in force, of which they are Revisions. After such a comparison * * * it will be found that we propose to do nothing more than to free our writ- ten code from the prolixities, uncertainties and confusion, incident to the style and manner in which it has hitherto been framed, and to apply to the elucidation of this branch of the noblest of all sciences, those principles of an enlarged philosophy, which now obtain in every other department of knowledge." It will be noticed that General Root did not unite in this communication, nor did he ally himself to the advanced methods of his colleagues. An active and veteran party leader and an able advocate of the older type, he was neither adapted -nor inclined to the work of a pioneer in legal reform. He had already since his appointment done something at his home in Delaware County towards Revis- 12 ing, in the old fashioned way, the laws relating to taxes and to highways, subjects always interesting to the rural legislator, but the change of plan on which his associates had resolved led to his retirement, and the new bill giving the Revisers ampler powers, substituted Henry Wheatonin his place and provided for a compensation of 8500 to Gen. Root for the services he had rendered. This new bill was not passed without a struggle. It was at first laid on the table by the Assembly by a vote of 54 to 51, and finally passed by a vote of 56 to 38. Nothing which involved a delegation or an exercise of public powers could be accomplished in those days of bitter political con- flict without a struggle between the Clintonians, whose great leader had just been elected Governor, and the Buck- tails, as the Democrats of the day were dubbed. In the Senate, John C. Spencer, then a member of that body, afterwards one of the Revisers, moved to amend by striking out Mr. Wheaton's name and committing the whole work to the two acting Revisers, Messrs. Duer and Butler. This was voted down. It was then moved to increase the compensation of General Root, who had been the presiding officer of the preceding Senate, from $500 to $1,000. This was carried and for a time imperiled the whole measure. The Assembly thought $500 ample compensation for a few months work, for which a thousand dollars for two years service was the stipulated price. It refused to concur in the Senate's amendment ; the Senate refused to recede ; finally a conference committee adjusted the differ- ence, the higher measure of compensation was conceded and the bill as finally passed, April 2, 1825, gave the retir- ing Reviser a thousand dollars which must be placed to the debit of the general tax system and the turnpikes and other highways of the State. The new Act allowed two years for the completion of the work, and while fixing the same compensation as the former Act, provided that it might be increased by the Legislature. Whatever questions had arisen as to the wisdom of 13 entering on the unexampled movement of reform authorized by the Act of 1825, none had been raised as to the com- petency of the two men who had initiated it and who vol- unteered to carry it to completion. JOHK DUER, born at Albany, October 7, 1782, a son of Colonel William Duer, of Revolutionary memory, had, after two years' service in the United States Army, which he joined at the age of sixteen years, entered the office of General Hamilton. The deficiency of his early education he made good by a thorough course of study, particularly in the classics and the modern languages, preparatory to entering on the special study of the law. As early as 1816 we find him acting as counsel in the Court of Errors, associated with John V. Henry and opposed by Thomas J. Oakley and Martin Van Buren, in the important case of Jackson vs. DeLancey, reported in 13 Johnson, which involved the title to lands in the city of New York, once the property of his maternal grandfather, William Alex- ander, the Lord Stirling of the revolutionary army. He was at that time practising law in Orange County, and was firmly established in a leading position at the Bar. He came into prominent public life as a delegate from Orange County to the Convention of 1821, in which he distinguished himself by his ability and eloquence. He had acquired a reputation, justly accorded and never impaired during his long and active life, for "great quickness and fertility of intellect, and for a vast amount of acquired knowledge not merely in the learning of his profession, but in kindred sciences and general literature." His mind had a wide range without being weakened by its discursive habit. The more recondite the subjects of legal investigation the more they attracted him, and the remodelling of the law was a task kindred and congenial to his intellect. BENJAMIN F? BUTLER, a native of Columbia County, N. Y. , was born December 14, 1795, at Kinderhook Land- ing, on the Hudson, afterwards set off as a separate town 14 by the name of Stuyvesant. He came of an original Irish, stock, combined with that of the early Puritans by the marriage of his ancestor, Jonathan Butler, with Temper- ance Buckingham, a daughter of one of the first settlers of Connecticut. His father, Medad Butler, emigrated from Branford, Connecticut, in 1787, at the age of twenty-two, to the banks of the Hudson, where he established himself in business, and where he lived during the rest of his life of eighty-four years, serving the State during a part of it in the Legislature, and for many years as a county judge of Columbia County. Of a family of twelve children, six of whom died in infancy, the Reviser was the eldest. Educational advantages were almost unknown in this State in the earlier part of this century, outside of its more thickly settled portions, and the Dutch settlers of Kinder- hook did not include the schoolmaster in their municipal arrangements. To a native of New England who had enjoyed the benefit of the schools already planted there, the want of like facilities for his children was a sore trial. By a happy accident the need was amply supplied. Two young men, John Freese and Elijah Garfield by name, came from Stockbfidge, Mass., to Kinderhook Landing, bound for New York, and asked for passage on one of Medad Butler's sloops. He found that their voyage was with the intent of establishing themselves as schoolmasters on Long Island, where they hoped to find employment in some of the older settlements. He at once tried to persuade them to tarry at the "Landing" and set up a school there, specially for the benefit of the bright pupil he could furnish in his eldest boy, who had shown a wonderful love of reading and study. The young men were, however, bent on pushing their way southward, but agreed that, in case of the failure of their plan, they would return and accept the offer. Long Island did not prove the land of promise they had looked for, and before many days they re-appeared, and, true to their word, started the school at the " Landing." 15 Both these men were good teachers, and inspired their young pupil with a love of the classics he never lost. He read Latin as a habit almost daily during his life, carrying in his vest pocket a leaf torn from an old edition of his favorite Horace, employing his spare moments while wait- ing in Court, or at other chance periods of leisure, in read- ing and re-reading, and sometimes turning into English verse, the numbers of the Roman poet. Garfield, a type of the old style pedagogue, taught school all his life, and for many years at Middletown, Con- necticut, where he prepared boys for college. After his favorite pupil had fulfilled all his early promise, and risen to the highest rank in his profession and to prominence in public service, he made a visit to the school of his old preceptor, whom he found engaged as of yore in the drudgery of the recitation room. Overjoyed at the appear- ance of his old-time pupil, he threw aside his text book and ferule, dismissed the school, and sent the boys off happy in an unexpected half- holiday. On leaving school in 1811, the young student went into the office, at Hudson, of Martin Van Buren, a warm personal friend of his father, who saw such signs of promise in the son that he pressed him into his closest service. Until his marriage in 1818, he was an inmate of Mr. Van Buren' s family, his law partner in Albany from the time of his ad- mission to the Bar in 1817, and the successor, in large measure, of the legal business from which Mr. Van Buren withdrew on his election to the United States Senate in 1821. Mr. Van Buren' s standing and repute as a lawyer were greater than is generally supposed. His later conspicuous public career, culminating in the Presidency, has obscured his earlier brilliant record as a lawyer. In fact, he was, during his active practice and until his exclusive devotion to public affairs, at the very front of the Bar, succeeding Abraham Van Yechten and preceding Thomas J. Oakley as Attorney- General of the State at a time when leadership in the profession was an essential qualification for the place, 16 and competing in forensic struggles with the ablest advo- cates. The terse and frank admission of his great rival, Elisha Williams, the incomparable jury lawyer of his time, that, while he got all the verdicts, Van Buren got all the judgments, was only a fair tribute to his ascendency. Tardy justice is being done to Mr. Van Buren as jurist, statesman and patriot, and it is to the honor of our Associa- tion that one of its members, in a recent biography marked by absolute candor, thorough research, and a rare literary skill, has rescued his memory from the disparagement and detraction of prejudiced and superficial writers of opposing political views, and set it in a true historic light. Mr. Van Buren had no misgiving in committing to his young partner in the law the care of his clients and their causes. In fact, the junior was already established on his own merits. In illustration of this, I may be permitted to quote from a biographical sketch published in January, 1839, fifty years ago, a passage which describes his first appearance in the Court of Errors, which runs as fol- lows : "He was the attorney in a cause, with Colonel Burr and Mr. Van Buren, against the celebrated Mr. Henry, then at the head of the Albany Bar, and one of the most eminent lawyers in the State. The case turned on recon- dite questions of black-letter learning, and such was the impression made by Mr. Butler's argument, that neither of his distinguished senior counsel thought it worth while to speak in the cause, which was gained single- handed by the young advocate whose first effort was thus so arduous and so honorable. His first cause in the Court of Errors was also won, in the next year, in a similar single combat with the same powerful antagonist. Mr. Van Buren who had argued it in the Supreme Court below, having, on his withdrawal from practice, advised his client to entrust it to Mr. Butler's hands. This success placed him at once in the front rank of his pro- fession." In 1821 he was appointed District Attorney of Albany 17 County, and was the incumbent of that- office when, most unexpectedly to himself and also to Mr. Duer, as he de- clared in his eulogy on the Chief Justice at the meeting of the Bar of this city, held August 6, 1858, they were ap- pointed Revisers. The casual intimacy they had formed as associates in a cause at the Columbia Circuit, was thus suddenly cemented into a close alliance. On his resignation from the office of District Attorney in March, 1825, the Court of Common Pleas, by an entry in its minutes, paid an unusually warm tribute to the fairness as well as the fidelity with which he had discharged his duties as a public prosecutor. When appointed Reviser, he lacked seventeen days of being twenty-nine years of age. We thus find the task of re-framing the whole statute law of the State upon a new and untried basis, committed mainly, and on their own motion, to two young men who had sprung from the ranks of the people, neither of whom held a college diploma, both of whom had carved their own way to leadership, and who, whiJe their elders shrank from this task, had courted it them selves with that consciousness of strength and mastery which the world of smaller men sometimes calls self-conceit, but which is so often, in the in- dividual aspirant, only the healthy beating of the pulse of genius. The Legislature, by the Act of 1825, as we have seen, probably at the suggestion of the two other Revisers, had named Henry Wheaton as their associate. He had been a member, with John Duer, of the Constitutional Convention of 1821, and at the time of his appointment as Reviser was the reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States, an office he held until January, 1827. In April of that year, he was sent as Charge d' Affaires of the United States to Denmark, and ceased to act in the Revision. In the correspondence of the Revisers in my possession there is no trace of any considerable work done by Mr. 18 Wheaton in conjunction with his colleagues, although his name appears with theirs, appended to the Revisers' re- ports to the Legislatures of 1826 and 1827. He prepared one or two of the earlier chapters, but, probably, besides this did little more than to concur in the action of his as- sociates. But, at the outset, he gave to their plan his hearty assent, and while no letters or memoranda by him are included in the papers of the revision, one important docu- ment exists which, by a few words of endorsement in his unmistakable handwriting and phraseology, establishes the authorship and the date of the first written plan of the en- tire work. This paper of eleven pages of the coarse un- ruled foolscap of the time, is entitled "General Arrange- ment," and contains a sketch and outline of all that was afterwards embodied in the Revised Statutes, classifying the entire body of laws for the government of the State, under five leading heads. Prepared immediately after the passage of the Act of April 21, 1825, it brings into outline the work as it lay in the minds of the promoters of that act, and is a summary of the system they sought to esta- blish. It starts by dividing under five leading heads, the whole body of the law. 1. The laws which relate to the government, to the gen- eral policy, and to the internal police of the State. 2. The laws which relate to the domestic relations, to property, to contracts, and to other matters connected therewith. 3. The laws which relate to the judiciary establishments, and to the mode of procedure in civil cases. 4. The laws relating to crimes and punishments, and to the mode of prosecution and punishment. 6. Local Laws. 