The Green Bag.
WILLIAM HENRY RAWLE.
By George W. Biddle.
THE subject of this sketch, William Henry Rawle, of the Philadelphia Bar, was connected on all sides with the profession of the Law. His father (William Rawle, Jr.}, both his grandfathers (William Rawle, Sr., and Edward Tilghman), and his maternal great-grandfather (Chief-Justice Benjamin Chew) were distinguished practitioners, and some of them prominently connected with official administration of justice. Among his collateral relatives are to be found Chief-Justice Tilghman, the late Thomas I. Wharton and his sons Dr. Francis Wharton and his accomplished though less distinguished brother Henry Wharton. It would have been strange, if with such surroundings and belongings and breathing such an atmosphere from his infancy, our deceased friend could have taken up any other pursuit than that of the Law; and he seems to have accepted with alacrity the duties and responsibilities thus cast upon him.
Mr. Rawle was admitted to practise at the bar of his native city, at the age of twenty-one, in the latter part of the year 1844. His first appearance in the Supreme Court of the State was in the year 1848[1] in a case involving a point of practice; but the chief interest of his introduction at that time into the highest court of Pennsylvania is that the illustrious John Sergeant was still continuing to exhibit his great forensic powers there, his name being several times found in the same volume of reports. The next case[2] in which Mr. Rawle is found in the Court of Errors was two years later, his argument being pretty fully reported, and when he was on the successful side. It was an important case involving the right of alteration of the charter of a trading corporation and the mode of signifying assent to the proposed changes. After this Mr. Rawle's success was assured, and his name appears regularly in tho reports down to within a year of his decease, the last cause argued by him being in the spring of 1888,[3] in which the doctrine of the rule against perpetuities was thoroughly discussed. For forty years Mr. Rawle is thus found actively aiding the administration of justice by his arguments before the highest court of his native State, over which his ancestor Chief-Justice Chew had presided while it was yet a British Province. The amount of thoroughly good work done by him during the whole period of his adult life is difficult to express in words; for the results of his learning and ability were so often unconsciously absorbed and reproduced in the opinions of the tribunal before which he was practising, that it is impossible to adjust the proportion of originality in the processes of legal ratiocination and ultimate judgment between the counsel laying down the reasons for the decision and the judge who finally pronounced it. It is enough to say here that the court was always well supplied with materials for its judgment when Mr. Rawle appeared before it, whatever may have been the conclusion to which it found itself impelled.
But great as his merits were on the active side of his professional life, they were only a part of his title to our respect, and per-
