THE GOLDEN DAYS OF THE MARYLAND BAR. By Eugene L. DlDIER. WITHIN the memory of men still living, the bar of Maryland was adorned by a group of lawyers, some of whom acquired a national and others an international repu tation. It is necessary only to mention William Pinkney, Roger B. Taney, William Wirt, Robert Goodloe Harper, Reverdy Johnson, and Francis Scott-Key. In this cluster of legal luminaries none shone more brilliantly than William Pinkney, orator, statesman, jurisj, and diplomatist. Luther Martin had reached the zenith of his fame when Pinkney appeared upon the stage. There could not be a greater contrast than was shown by these great lawyers, both in their dress and address, in their private conversation and in their public speeches. Pinkney was elegant, polished, refined, fas tidious; Martin was slovenly, careless, coarse, and sometimes vulgar. William Pinkney was born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 17th of March, 1764. His father was an Englishman, whose property was confiscated during the American Revo lution, because of his stubborn adherence to the British Crown. Young Pinkney, on the contrary, was a zealous patriot from the time that he was old enough to have an opinion of his own upon the question of the dispute between the colonies and the mother country. His ambition was fired by the fame of three illustrious lawyers of Maryland, — Dulany, Martin, and Chase, — and at the proper age he became a student in the office of the last-mentioned gentleman. In 1786 he was admitted to the bar, and two years later he began his public career as a mem ber of the Maryland Convention which rati fied the Constitution of the United States. The same year he was elected a member of the Maryland Legislature. Here he gave the first promise of that eloquence which was to place him among the great orators of
America. His rise was so rapid and brilliant that Washington, in 1796, appointed him a Commissioner of the United States, under Jay's treaty with Great Britain. He re mained abroad eight years; returning to the United States in 1804, he resumed the prac tice of the law, and the next year was ap pointed Attorney-General of Maryland. In 1806 Jefferson appointed him to act with Mr. Monroe (then our minister at London) as minister extraordinary to treat with the British Government upon the subjects in dispute between the two countries. For five years he continued to urge the claims of his country for the redress of grievances, but without success; and seeing that war must be the result of England's policy, he asked to be recalled. William Pinkney was one of the most accomplished men of his age, and except John Randolph, of Roanoke, the best read in general literature. We have the authority of a great lawyer and a greater orator for saying that an orator should know every thing, — "ex rerum cognitione, efflorescat et redundent oratio." Pinkney's varied and extensive reading made him familiar with the beauties of English literature, from the sublimity of Milton to the lighter graces of Goldsmith and Scott. During his diplomatic missions abroad, he frequently heard the most famous orators of Great Britain, — Sheridan, Fox, Pitt, Erskine; and at the same time he constantly studied the great orators of the past, — Burke, Chatham, and Somers, — so that, as was beautifully said of him by a con temporaneous writer, like Achilles, although withdrawn for a time from the field, he was not wasting his energies in indolent repose. He not only heard the greatest of living ora tors, and studied those of the past, but he enriched his diction by mingling freely in the brilliant literary circles which at the
