talent for ease and elegance as a speaker, as well as a turn for wit and humor. He was educated at the school established by Friends in the immediate neighborhood of the Quaker Alms House, the scene of the closing pages of Longfellow's " Evangeline," and subsequently entered the grammarschool of the University of Pennsylvania. His father died when he was but eight years of age; and upon his mother's second mar riage with Dr. Spring, a physician of Boston, he left Philadelphia, attending school at Medford, and from there entered the Fresh man class at Harvard, graduating in 1797, and dividing the first honors of his class. For a time he studied medicine, but subse quently sought employment in a mercantile house in Philadelphia. Fortunately for the law, if not for himself, the counting-room was supplied with clerks, and he entered the office of Jared Ingersoll, Esq., then AttorneyGeneral of Pennsylvania, one of the framers of the Federal Constitution, and an acknowl edged leader of the bar. Of " my learned master in the law," Mr. Binney himself wrote many years afterwards, " in his full vigor, which continued for nearly twenty years after the year 1797, I regard him as having been without comparison the most efficient mana ger of an important jury trial among all the able men who were then at the bar of Phila delphia." Among " the able men " alluded to in this connection, was William Lewis, the fearless advocate who braved the rough and overbearing Justice Chase, of the Supreme Court of the United States, who presided at the trial of John Fries, convicted of treason during the John Adams administration, his conduct in this case being made the basis of one of the articles of impeachment of the Judge brought forward by the eccentric John Randolph in 1805. Other leaders were Edward Tilghman, the most consummate real-estate lawyer of his day, who could untie a knot in a legal limitation of lands "as familiarly as he could unloose his gar ter; " William Rawle, the author of an early work upon the Constitution, and the cele
brated A. J. Dallas, who was Secretary of the Treasury under Madison. These men led the bar of the old Supreme Court of the United States before its removal from Phila delphia to Washington. Closely observing the combats of such antagonists, and with the celebrated John Sergeant as a fellow student, whose speech in Congress upon the Missouri Compromise has ever been regarded as the ablest in that memorable debate, Mr. Binney sedulously improved the unusual opportunities afforded him for study and observation. On the 3ist of March, 1800, he was admitted to the bar of the Common Pleas, and at the March term of 1802 was called to the bar of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, at that time presided over by Chief-Justice Shippen, who had acquired wealth in the colonial days as a Judge of the Vice- Admiralty, oí marked Tory proclivities during the war, and the father of the renowned belle, Peggy Shippen, whose portrait in the dress of the Meschianza was sketched by the unfortunate Major André, and who subsequently became the devoted wife of the traitor Benedict Arnold, For some time Mr. Binney had a most meagre clientage; but he had patience and industry, and for several years discharged the duty of reporting the decisions of the State Supreme Court. Mr. Binney's reports are well known to the profession, containing, as they do, many of the decisions of ChiefJustice Tilghman, a master of Equity juris prudence, and the earliest opinions of the young but legally gigantic John B. Gibson. They are marked by rigid and accurate analysis, clearness of statement, a compre hensive grasp of facts and principles, and a skilful arrangement of matter. Indeed, they stand as models of reporting. When Mr. Binney had been seventeen years at the bar, he had argued about thirty cases before the Supreme Court of his State, and one (Bank v- Deveaux, 5 Cranch, 61) before Chief-Justice Marshall, a case estab lishing a principle of much importance; that
