tion in what history terms the Boston Mas sacre. Thereafter he became one of the chief legal advisers of the patriot party. Jefferson, during the very first year of his colonial practice at the Virginia bar, had sixty-eight clients; and during the next year took legal supervision of an hundred cases, as his early register showed. He found time also to edit Henning's Statutes of Vir ginia in collected form. One of his sayings, when yet a young attorney, was that " the study of Coke tended to make Whigs of students, but of Blackstonc, Tories." His dispute of Sir Mathew Hale's contention that Christianity was part of the common law gave rise to the assertion that Jefferson was an atheist. But Jefferson, inheriting a fine patrimony from his father, and sharing the fortune of his wife, had no need to en gage in hearty practice of his profession, from which indeed patriotism detached him. But historically his legal attainments are shown by his masterful indictment of George the Third in the Declaration of Independence, and by his after voice and writings. Madison imbued himself with legal princi ples and was admitted to the bar; but he cannot be said to have ever practiced at it. Yet at the bar of the constitutional conven tion he showed how great a lawyer he was. If the Revolutionary War had not inter rupted the studies of James Monroe at WilHams and Mary College and called him into the army while not yet of age, he would un doubtedly have also embraced the legal pro fession; yet as author of the world-renowned Monroe doctrine his fame became more than juridical. Although the pursuits of diplomacy pre vented John Quincy Adams from embracing the legal profession until he was forty-three years of age, and although immersion in politics prevented his shining at the bar as equally as he shone in the forum as the "Old Man Eloquent, " there cannot be a question that his knowledge of all the tenets of jurisprudence was philosophically pro
found and entitles him to a place on the roll of presidential lawyers. President Jackson interrupted the legal sequence held by those predecessors; but the election of Van Buren resumed the suc cession. It is difficult to decide from the accounts of his earlier career given by his contemporaries and biographers whether his career excelled most as the politician or the lawyer. But he was primarily the lawyer, adopting as one preceptor at his birthplace the clever lawyer, Francis Sylvester, and another at New York City in William P. Van Ness, a bar leader with Burr, Kent, Emmet and Sampson. Van Buren's legal eminence was emphasized by his selection as attorneygeneral of his State; and Johnson's reports show his legal assiduity and ability both in private and official practice. His power as a politician was also emphasized by his re moval as attorney-general for political rea sons when the opposition obtained power; and by the offer of reinstatement when his own partisans resumed control, which he de clined in order to continue legal partnership with the New York Benjamin F. Butler, who became the first attorney-general of the Van Buren administration. The legal succession of presidents was again interrupted by the accessions of Gen eral Harrison and Tyler, but resumed in their successor, President Polk, who had in Tennessee studied law with Felix Grundy, who was President Jackson's attorney-gen eral. Polk spent two decades in the suc cessful practice of his profession at several Western circuits, and was esteemed for his argumentative qualities of mind, and of an address that avoided the ornate. Again came, so far as the White House was concerned, an interlude of inter arma by the election of General Taylor, who, dy ing in the second year of his term, restored, in his ex ojficio successor Fillmore, the old in fluence of bar in the executive chamber, an influence which survived during four suc ceeding presidential terms. President Fill
