He was a farmer, became a town officer in Clarendon, and represented the town in 1795, 1797 to 1803 inclusive. The latter year, he was elected Speaker; he was Chief Judge of the Rutland County court for three years, at the end of which term he was elected judge of the Supreme Court and served ten years, a greater number of elections than given any other judge, save one, ufcitil the change in the judicial system in 1825. He was not admitted to the Bar until after his term of service as Chief Judge of the county court ended, and after his first election as Supreme Court judge. His term of service in the latter office ended but a few days before his death. His successive re-elections to the highest judicial station indicate the ability and faith fulness with which he performed his duties. He was rough and unpolished in his de portment, his personal appearance was far from prepossessing, and it is said he often went into court barefooted. He had no ac quaintance with the technical principles of the law or with the learning of Coke and Blackstone, yet in discharging his judicial duties, his mind was so energetic and vigorous, his discrimination so acute, his investigation of the justice of the case so thorough, that he seldom had any difficulty in applying the fundamental principles of right to the case in hand. Whether the technical points before him were correctly or incorrectly decided, it is certain that substantial justice followed his rulings. To do justice was his sole aim. When the two leading lawyers of their day, Mr. Chipman and Israel Smith, were arguing before him a question under a de murrer to a declaration, he listened to them attentively for a long time, then taking the demurrer in his hand, said, " Mr. Chipman, what do you call that?" "That is a demurrer, your Honor." Turning to Mr. Smith, he said, " Do you call it a de murrer?" He answered in the affirmative;
whereupon Judge Harrington said, " I do not know as the Court knows what a demur rer is, but it knows what justice is, and this plaintiff is entitled to a judgment." A man stole a horse in Canada, and took it through Vermont into Massachusetts and sold it. He was indicted in one of the Ver mont counties through which the horse was taken, for stealing the horse in Vermont, and his case came before the Supreme Court. It was objected with plausibility that he stole the horse only in Canada, and merely took it through Vermont, and could be pun ished either in Canada or Massachusetts, where he sold it, and not elsewhere. The other judges doubted somewhat, but Judge Harrington said that in his opinion the man stole the horse when he took it, and stole it every step of the way he took with it until he sold it, and therefore was stealing it all the way through Vermont. The other judges concurred, and the man was con victed. When, in the trial of a land case, the objection made by the counsel to the ad mission of a deed in evidence was that the instrument had never been sealed, the coun sel were inquired of if that was the only objection, and replied it was. " Mr. Clerk," said the Judge, " hand me a wafer"; and with the old-time wafer and a piece of paper, the instrument was sealed forthwith, and the Court said, " That objection is removed, now proceed, Mr. Attorney." This was doing what it would have taken a court of equity probably three years to accomplish, but it effected justice in the case in the same manner and to as full an extent as the act of the chancellor. But the greatest case ever heard before Judge Harrington, and one that has made his name famous and by which he will al ways be remembered, was the slave case which arose under an act of Congress, authorizing the owner of a slave, that had escaped into another State, to seize him and take him before a magistrate in the district
