their right of trial by jury according to the course of common law. It clogged the right of appeal from the decision of an inferior magistrate, with conditions unprecedented even in absolute mon archies. It provided that the accused might again be put in jeopardy after a full acquittal upon the merits. It usurped the province of the judiciary, and by a legislative decree confiscated fifty mil lions of property. It adjudged the guilt of tens of thousands of citizens, and substantially restricted the courts to the execution of a search-warrant for the culprits. . . . "But the immediate victims are not the only sufferers under the act. Like every similar blow, it strikes at the framework of society. The sense of wrong arouses the spirit of resistance. Dissen sion and discord arise, and divide men in their business, their private and their social relations. Animosities are kindled which years will not quench. Rumor is made the basis of criminal accusation, and espionage receives the sanction of law. Secret societies are organized to conduct State prosecutions, and the accused are admon ished that they must confederate to resist them. Foul imputations, invective, and calumny are used by heated accusers as weapons of war. The weapons of assault may become, in their turn, the weapons of defence. Men do not willingly consent to be at once robbed and maligned. To ameliorate one evil a hundred are introduced, tending to demoralize society and foster the spirit of private feud and mutual enmity. Old ties are severed, old rights impaired, old guarantees re pealed. To reform here and there a straggling inebriate, constitutional rights are to be invaded, and a criminal code introduced which has no parallel even in the history of New England." And all this was about two glasses of brandy which " Messrs. Johnson v. Hast ings" would perhaps have been better without. The Parish Will Case was argued in the Court of Appeals in April, 1862. William M. Evarts and John W. Edmunds were on one side, and Charles O'Connor and John K. Porter upon the other. Porter's argu ment remains a model of critical analysis of facts, made persuasive and winning by foren sic eloquence. The case was a great one in its day. A fortune was involved, besides
most interesting questions touching the tes tamentary capacity of, and the validity of gifts inter vivos by, a paralytic, speechless, helpless husband to a wife, who had entirely excluded his own family from him during seven years of this disability, had entirely surrounded him by her own relations, and who appeared at his death, by gifts, and by codicils executed during his alleged disabil ity, to have absorbed a great estate. In looking at the argument, I find some thing at the outset which shows Porter's usual plan of work, — one which can, I think, be commended to all who may not employ it. His first step in any case was to jot down every act, event, document, scrap of paper, or whatever came into the case, in the order of their real or supposed dates. He said : — "I submit to the court a printed statement of the material facts, arranged in chronological order. This statement was prepared with the conviction that in a case where the evidence extends through several octavo volumes, it might aid your Honors, in conducting the investigation, to consider events in the order of their actual sequence, — a mode which rarely fails to bring to light the nature and mutual dependence of a series of acts, and the objects and motives of the various actors and participants." There is a great temptation to quote freely from this argument, which seems to me un surpassed as an example of the criticism of facts as to their legal significance. But to do so with freedom would involve the men tion of names, and, to a degree, the revival of things now forgotten, which might be painful to living persons, unknown to me. A few phrases, however, may, I think, with out much risk of offence, be quoted. Judge Porter, declaring that certain facts which he recited, demanded explanation, said : — "We find it close at hand, in the prominent, controlling, undisputed feature of the case. "On the 19th day of July, 1849, Henry Parish was struck down with apoplexy. From that day he never spoke and never wrote a single sentence
