and the preservation of democratic simplicity. He objected to the term ' National Govern ment.' He wanted no central authority to interfere with the supreme sovereignty of the States. In spite of the fact that the Articles of Confederation had been found utterly inade quate, he urged that no new frame of govern ment should be attempted, that only Amend ments to them should be made. Consider the crisis. Think of the peculiar mental gestation that could produce such an attitude I He op posed at first the payment of representatives in Congress out of the National Treasury. Of course he advocated the equality of representa tion of each State in both branches of trie Legis lature. He supported the proposition to make the Justices of the Supreme Court an Executive Council with revisionary powers. He was hos tile to giving the Executive authority to appoint judges. He wanted to leave the question of the qualifications for suffrage entirely to the States. He favored annual elections, saying that the people liked them and that they could do no harm. It is evident that not to him is due any of those provisions which have made the funda mental law of our country so workable that under it we have grown to a mighty and power ful nation." Fortunately, less narrow views than Ells worth's prevailed; and it is, indeed, to his credit that when it became apparent that the scheme of government must be fashioned on broader lines than he himself had advocated, he did yeoman service in the practical and difficult task of bringing about the adoption of a compromise plan. Even if, as Mr. Cook laments, Ellsworth's "name is almost unknown to the present genera tion," we do not feel that any crying injustice has been done. It is inevitable that the names of only a handful of the leaders in any genera tion should live in the popular memory. That Ellsworth did good work as a public servant, especially in the Senate, cannot be gainsaid; that he was, as Mr. Cook says, "one of the ablest politicians or party leaders in our his tory," is true; but that his work, his ability, his character, do not entitle him to a niche in the Temple of Fame beside the few real leaders and true statesmen of his time seems equally clear.
To the Editor of the Green Bag : Your February number gives much of Ambas sador Choate's address, delivered in Edinburgh, on Abraham Lincoln, so admirable in its rhetoric and portraiture of character, yet some of us hardly agree with him that he was not " a learned and accomplished lawyer." Still, Mr. Choate says, " there were many highly educated and powerful men at the bar of Illinois," and that "it was by constant contact and conflict with these that Lincoln acquired professional strength and skill." To cope with such, why was he not a great lawyer? What constitutes the great lawyer.? Is it not to be great in any one of the great departments of law? Is it to be the fullest of black letter reading? Then Blackstone was a greater law yer than Coke, that chief among lawyers. If there should be the largest scholastic acquire ments, Bacon is preeminent, who is supposed by some to have been the author of the choicest literature of that period, and its most illustrious philosopher. But others surpassed him as law yers. Hale and Mansfield, like Brougham, were scholars, which gave them graces at the bar, but the Scottish Erskine, and our Pinkney and Wirt, had not like advantages. Justice Story was a prodigious reader, with rich scholarship, an able judge, with the literary ability to adorn any law journal, but Chief Justice Marshall, with no such learning of the schools, was the giant of that United States Supreme Court bench. The orator tells us of the mental development of that extraordinary man, that " his logic was invincible, and his clearness and force of state ment impressed upon his hearers the convictions of his honest mind." Yet he did not, Mr. Choate thinks, have " any of the graces of the orator." The accomplished ambassador speaks of Lincoln's "powers of persuasion" being "de veloped to an extraordinary degree " : and with such ability to array his facts before judges and juries, with his intimate acquaintance with the law that was applicable, could there have been a better equipment to meet his opponents? Can legal learning effect more? Mr. Choate is truly an able and a polished lawyer, and there appears to be seen in his favored family line the culture of generations to come to his aid, so that he is within Dr. Holmes's idea of education, which came to his mind; but how many a masterful
