VOL. XVI.
No. 8.
BOSTON.
AUGUST, 1904.
CHARLES FITZPATRICK. BY CHARLES MORSE. IN undertaking to write his Lives of the Chancellors, Lord Campbell said that above all things his ambition was that a re cital of the struggles and triumphs of many of the great lawyers of his race "should ex cite the young student of the law to emula tion and industry, and confirm in his mind the liberal and honorable maxims which ought to govern the conduct of an English barrister." Despite the cynicism of a recent observation that every man is his own ex ample in the twentieth century, it is some what of Lord Campbell's sentiment, as ap plicable to the profession in the New World, that influences the writer to set down briefly such of the more important facts as have come to his notice in the career of the Hon orable Charles Fitzpatrick, К. С., at this time Minister of Justice and Attorney-Geneial for the Dominion of Canada. While only now in the prime of life, the subject of this sketch has achieved so large, and withal so genuine, a measure of success that his present biographer feels that while it may be well to apologize for forestalling to some extent any posthumous record of the distinguished lawyer's career, no extenuation will be demanded by the readers of THE GREEN BAG in respect of their interest in this brief story of his public life. Charles Fitzpatrick was born in the city of Quebec, Dec. 19, 1853. After a preparatory training in the well-known "Quebec Semi nary," he entered Laval University, where he received the degree of B. A. He then followed the law course in his alma mater, carrying off the Governor-General's medal
in his final examination for B. C. L. in 1876. In the same year he was called to the Bar of his native Province. Three years later he was appointed by the Provincial Govern ment Crown-Prosecutor for the City and District of Quebec. Speaking the English and French tongues with equal facility, pos sessing great industry, and with a natura! gift of rhetoric enriched by literary studies, to which he has always been a devotee, the young advocate soon attained an assured place at «ш priiis, especially in criminal cases. Speaking of him in this connection, a professional journal recently said: "To enumerate the criminal cases wherein Mr. Fitzpatrick has been engaged, whether for the prosecution or defeлce, would be to men tion nearly every one of importance before the courts of the Province of Quebec for the last twenty years. One of the earliest cases of importance in which he was engaged was In re Eno ( [1884] 7 L. N. 360), in which he acted for the United States Government . in certain extradition proceedings taken against John C. Eno. the defaulting president of the Second National Bank of New York. In the following year he led for the defence in the canse célebre of The Queen v. Lours Riel, his client being the conspicuous figure, and indicted as the fans ct origo malorum, in two armed rebel lions (1870-1885) of the Métis in the C'anadian Northwest. His first, though unsuccessful, defence of this unhappy zealot may be regarded as the corner stone of Mr. Fitzpatrick's professional fame, for there he was not only pitted against two
