Matthew Hale Carpenter as a Lawyer.
443
praised nearly to death. I had half of the Senate for an audience. Miller's face was as the face of an angel radiant with light and joy; Davis and Field looked troubled; Nelson, Clif ford and Grier dead against me. But I shook them up and rattled their dry bones. Kiss the pets and believe me always the same. Matt."
the Act of Congress of March 27, 1868, and almost re-saving the Union. I can not refrain from quoting from the opening sentence of the magnificent argument in that case, as it evidences the intrepidity of the man before the most august of tri bunals : —
After Carpenter's victory in the slaughter house cases, as soon as Justice Miller had rendered his opinion affirming the decision of the State court, he telegraphed to his New Orleans clients as follows, " The banded butchers are busted." Carpenter, although a man of the highest professional ideals, was never seriously dis turbed by what has always seemed to me the most absurd of ethical questions. Should a lawyer fight for his client though he knows him to be in the wrong? Among the famous whiskey cases which he defended was the United States v. " three tons of coal." At this trial Carpenter, having made a desperate attempt to pass by Judge Drummond for the purpose of instructing and soothing the jury, was sharply reprimanded by his honor, with the pungent remark that it was the province of no one but the court to instruct the jury. After the case, to friends asking him why he undertook so desperate a course, and one that might have entailed a fine for contempt, Car penter replied, " All the law was against me, public opinion was against me, the press was against me, the court was against me, and my clients were as guilty as Cain. Whiat could I do? My only possible chance was to get by the judge and at the jury." A more detailed account of the McCardle case may not be without interest. As re ported in the U. S. Supreme Ct. Reps., 6th Wallace, 318, and 7 Wallace, 515, the case appears a rather simple one, but pro bably no graver questions were ever pre sented before the Supreme Court, involving as it did, the constitutionality of the entire reconstruction acts and directly causing
"This is the first time in the history of the world that a bench of judges has been invoked to redress the wrongs, real or imaginary, of eleven millions of people, and to establish the authority of ten pretending governments. Such controver sies have been decided by force, not by reason; in the field, not in the courts. Waterloo deter mined the fate of Napoleon, and he went in sullen silence to his ocean rock, never dreaming of the habeas corpus. No lawyer can argue, no judge decide, this cause without a painful sense of responsibility. Its consequences will be upon us and our children; and generations yet unborn will rejoice or mourn over the principles to be here established. "This court has been told, not for the first time, that it is the great conservative department of the government; that if it does not keep constand vigil over the other departments, they will rush, as would the planets without the law of gravitation, into ' hopeless and headlong ruin.' There is nothing within the circle of human emotions, unless it be the pleasure with which a lover praises the real or imaginary charms of his mistress, at all to be compared to the delight experienced by a lawyer in glorifying a court. It results from our studies and our training, and we entertain the utmost reverence for those who must declare what the law is. Within proper bounds this disposition is commendable; but the bar, in a free country, often have higher duties to perform; and this adulation of the judges may be carried to excess. The judges of this court, like the apostles of our Lord, are men of like passions and infirmities with other men. The bar stands in much the same relation to the court that the prophets held to the ruling powers of the ancient dispensation. It is our duty, when occasions require, to admonish and warn, and that, too, whether courts u<ill listen, or whether they will refrain. There are times when general truths should have personal application; times when a prophet in Israel must say to a
