Reminiscences of David Dudley Field. ring, you always came up smiling in the next round and —" "— and never struck a foul," continued Mr. Field. "I was candidate for the Assembly, hoping to force a hearing for my reform, and was beaten by the lawyers, who pcrseveringly canvassed against me. I did not blame them. They did not wish to lay aside traditions and usages and oldfashioned rules, or in short, to work into a new system. But I never made a foul." This conversation occurred in the winter of 1857 in the room of his then younger partner, the late James T. Sluyter, who had been elected assemblyman, and who was in that capacity as a member of the judiciary committee engaged in aiding Mr. Field as to amendments to the code of civil procedure; for Mr. Field was ever alert to make his codification perfect by conforming old or inserting new provisions to meet fresh emergencies. The code of civil procedure was then nearly at the end of its first de cade. Yet some lawyers, mainly of the rural districts, were even then engaged in thwarting Mr. Field's reforms. He was also at the same sessions knocking with his other codes upon the legislative doors — and vainly. I remember an assemblyman asking Mr. Part ner Sluyter what compensation Mr. Field got (or all his trouble. "Compensation indeed," was the retort; "to my personal knowledge Dudley is many thousands of dollars out of pocket for clerical hire and expenses of printing and travel." There was a look of disgust on the in quiring assemblyman's face, for the Legisla ture of the- day became famous, or rather infamous, for its jobbery. It was during this time that, to my own personal knowl edge, Mr. Field was offered very large fees by city railroad corporations to address a committee in behalf of proposed charters, but he declined them, averring as his reason that he did not wish in any way to antago nize or endanger his cherished codification plans. In his life work of ameliorating and
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advancing jurisprudence he made not only sacrifices of professional employment, but at this time he was busied aiding his brother . Cyrus with advice and means in the first laying of the Atlantic cable. His codifying labors were enormous; and it must be re membered that then was not the era of stenography and type-writing — those laborsaving systems of the present for the author and commentator. I dare say that in pre paring his various codifications David Dud ley Field's hand and pen traced millions of words. Fortunately he was gifted with great constructive ability, which lightened his labor of compilation and arrangement, but nevertheless his mere labors with pen, ink and paper during the thirty years of his toil and anxiety deserve to be ranked with those of Dr. Johnson in the making of his diction ary. During this time also-— and this is not generally known — he was suggesting to the Federal authorities at Washington the codification of the Federal statutes. And practically he is the artificer of the large volume divided into sections that the whole legal profession so well know. During thirteen years of my district-attorneyship in New York City I was honored with frequent consultations by Mr. Field in respect to the preparation, revision and final report of the codes of criminal procedure and penal code. I beg to testify to his utter absence of pride of opinion in that work, and to his marvelous knowledge of the ins and outs of the science of criminal jurisprudence. Beccaria, Bentham (who owed so much to Beccaria), and all the Knglish-writing authors on criminal juris prudence from Chitty and Archbold to the days of Stephens, Wharton and Bishop, were his very familiars. He seemed to hold in his accurate memory all the leading cases in that jurisprudence as fully as evidently Mr. Smith held when he sat down to pre pare his celebrated book of leading cases in common law. Yet he was ready to hear and to entertain any suggestion from any
