John Tayloe Lomax. posed limitation of age in the tenure of judicial office by which Judge Lomax would have been excluded, and when by that con stitution the office was made elective he was without opposition chosen by the peo ple to continue in discharge of his judicial functions. To Judge Lomax as a judge the highest praise has always been accorded. He ap plied the law with careful, even painstaking exactness. His analytical power of mind resolved at once the most complex case into simple, essential fact, with an almost intuitive sense of -justice. His calm and equable nature stood by him and enabled him to poise steadily the scales of justice. If they inclined to one side or the other, it was toward mercy. During his judicial career, withdrawn from the pandemonium of the world, living above the hurly-burly of politics, he sought rest and refreshment in the love and peace of home, and the inter course of social life, and came forth from this environment unbiased by interest, prej udice or passion to deal righteously, judge justly between his fellow men. Beside his work on real property, he was the author of quite an exhaustive volume on the law of executors and administrators, new editions ofwhich were published as late as 1857. These, unfortunately, did not escape the fate of relentless war. During the evacuation of Richmond by the Confederates in 1865 and the conflagration which followed, the house of his publisher was consumed. Even the title to his work deposited in the clerk's office of the Court Federal was destroyed, with the court records, and the publisher having failed to deposit copies in the Con gressional Library at Washington, the loss became irreparable. He continued to exercise the discharge of his judicial functions until his resignation in 1857, when the continued illness of his wife appealed to him strongly for his minis trations and companionship. It may be of interest to know something of the man
377
ner of his 'reply, when requested earnestly by the members of the bar to reconsider and withdraw his resignation. "With whatever complacency," he wrote, " my own con sciousness, or the opinion of others, which you mention, may contemplate a capacity for the service of the bench, as yet being unimpaired by the hand of time, there are, I regret to say, weighty considerations that impel me and make it necessary that I should now retire from the duties I have been employed in discharging for more than a quarter of a century. During this entire period, with the exception of one court last month, I have never lost a single day or a term of any court, which was by law ap pointed for me to attend in the circuits. "Now, however, there are anxieties of a domestic nature, engendered by a union of more than half a century, that plead with resistless importunity and designate home., its peace, comforts and consolations as the fit resting place at the last advanced period of life. This devotion of the brief remnant of declining age claims a sacred preference above the employment in public service during the few years that now remain of the official period for which I was elected." However, the peace and consolation so much desired in the retirement of his own health were fated to be of brief duration. The peaceful prospect was all too soon over clouded by the sounds of political strife which absorbed his attention, and pained and thrilled him with apprehension for his home and to an even greater extent for the future of the old commonwealth so dear to him. Throughout the winter of 1860-6 1 he looked eagerly to Washington, watching with in tense interest the efforts of Mr. Crittenden and his coadjutors to adjust a compromise between the jarring factions and thus secure peace and preserve the Union. It was at this time that be sent a letter to a friend saying: " My feelings all gravitate to the 'irre pressible conflict ' which is beginning and is likely soon to rage and with disaster that none
