Scholarship The Handmaiden of the Lawyer. During his long and interesting public life of forty years, he filled every office that he cared to hold both in his State and in the United States—member of the Virginia Leg islature, member of the Continental Con gress, Governor of Virginia, minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice-Président of the United States, and, finally, President of the United States. In all of these various positions, he displayed conspicuous ability, and in each added new laurels to those al ready won. On the 4th of March, 1809, Jefferson re tired from public life, and returned to Monticello. He was glad to be again a private citizen in the republic of which he was one of the founders. Two days before the expira tion of his second term, he wrote to his friend, the Duke de Nemours:
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"Within a few days, I retire to my family, my farm, and my books; and having gained the harbor myself, I shall look on my friends still buffeting the storm with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. Never did a prisoner re leased from his chains feel such relief as I shall in shaking off the shackles of power." As a diplomatist, Jefferson was the equal of Franklin; as a statesman, he was excelled by no man of his time, or since; as a patriot, he ranks with Washington, Pinckney, Car roll and Patrick Henry. If, as has been well and truthfully said, to Gen. Washington more than any other man, this country owes its existence, to Thomas Jefferson, more than any other man, it owes the peaceful pre servation of its unique political position and the successful carrying out of its magnificent destiny among the nations of the earth.
SCHOLARSHIP THE HANDMAIDEN OF THE LAWYER.1 BY PETER J. HAMILTON. AT the outset we are met with very differ ent opinions on the subject of scholar ship in law. Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer and a good one, and he declares that a law yer without knowledge of history and litera ture is a mere mechanic, a man earning his daily bread. On the other hand Sir Wil liam Jones, possibly the most learned man ever at the English bar, said that in his pro fession scholarship was a dead weight, and we are all familiar with the remark of our Lord Coke, when there were but thirty-six reports and text-books, that law is a jealous mistress, which in parlance appropriate to the day we celebrate might mean that we must have no other valentine. To the same effect is the old saying that Lady Common Law must lie alone,—although I cannot un dertake to say in what sense the word lie is used. 1 Response to a toast at a banquet of the Mobile Bar Association, February 14, 1903.
And yet it would be strange if law is to be entirely dissociated from literature. In point of fact when we go back to the beginnings of things, law was literature. The first lispings of letters were in numbers, in poetry record ing customs and beliefs, themselves the laws of the day. Of course things have become differentiated, so that law literature stands by itself, and whatever form they assume, whether text-books or reports, law books are mere tools for the lawyer's business. Literature in the more general sense is a sep arate thing, and yet as it is part of our busi ness to understand human nature, convince human reason and captivate human imagi nation, all literature must be laid under con tribution. Whatever moves man must be a part of the lawyer's mental make-up, whether poetry, history, fiction, or above all the Book of Books, which has done so much to mould civilized thought and control civil
