Reuben Hyde Walworth. not since it fell upon you been soiled or rent." At a meeting of the Bar, in the city of New York, on the 18th of May, 1848, res olutions highly complimentary to the out going Supreme Court were passed, and also the following: "Resolved, That we deem the close of our former judiciary system a fitting occasion for the expression of our own respect and regard for the eminent jurist who for so many years past has discharged the laborious and responsible duties of Chancellor of this State, and whose last term for hearing arguments has also recently ended. That the published vol umes of his reports evince a degree of acuteness and discrimination, love of truth, sound morality, and thorough legal research, unsurpassed by any others, and honorable alike to himself and the jurisprudence of our State." Although Walworth declined the office of a commissioner of codification, it was not because he believed the scheme impolitic or impracticable. In his letter to the Legisla ture he said : " I am not one of those who believe it is wholly impracticable to carry out the provisions of the Constitution on this subject. On the contrary, I think it not only practicable but highly expedient to collect the general principles of the un written commercial and other civil laws, and of our equity system, as well as of the crim inal law of the State, now scattered through some thousands of volumes of treatises, com mentaries, digests, and reports of judicial decisions, and to arrange them under appro priate heads, divisions and titles, in connec tion with the statute law on the same subjects. Such modifications of the law should also be suggested and incorporated into the code as arc necessary to adapt the laws of the State to the present advanced condition of society, and to the principles of our free institutions." It is plain to see that the Chan cellor was in favor of codification, and he would have had time to do much toward
the great work before its submission in 1865. From what I have heard and read I should infer that the Chancellor was by no means a formal man upon the bench, and that indeed he may have been somewhat lacking in dignity. He would drink water by the quart, eat apples by the peck, and ask questions by the score. As Major Bagstock would have said, there was " no bigod non sense" about him. In hearing cases he loved to get to the core of the controversy, as well as of his apple, in the shortest order, and so he would interrogate counsel, and cross-examine them, and anticipate them, and make suppositions to a very unusual and disagreeable extent, but after he had found out what he wanted to know, he would suffer them to drone away after the fashion of their old-fashioned tribe to their heart's content. This colloquial habit seems always to have been more prevalent among the English judges than among our own, and to use a Briticism, it does not seem " half a bad sort." At the end of the case, counsel could always depend on two things, — that he understood the case and that he under stood his own mind. He was not in the habit of saying, " I doubt," and I believe there never was any serious complaint of procrastination in his mental processes nor of delay in decision. But it is undoubtedly true that his judicial manners made him many enemies. One of the oldest surviving lawyers of New York, writing to me, while he concedes that Walworth " was the most extensively legally-learned man he ever saw," and that his decisions were honest, continues as fol lows: "The change in the Constitution wrought in 1846 was desired more as a means of getting rid of the Court of Chan cery than for any other object. The court was unpopular to the last degree, and the personality of Walworth was the most un popular element under consideration. He was sure to follow a lawyer with comments
