principles; and his citations range back to olden times. So that to-day any fellow lawyer entering the offices of the Stocktons — father and namesake son — will find among the several thousand volumes of treatises and reports — such old time vol umes as " Home's Mirror," " Fearne on Contingent Remainders," " Plowden, and Burns' Justice" "East's and Burrow's Re ports"; although close neighbors of them are the recent labor-saving encyclopaedias and the latest treatises whereof the copy right clerk in the Congressional Library well knows. When John Potter Stockton took oath as counsellor he signed a roll already enriched with such names as Boudinot, Southard, Pennington, Williamson, Jackson, Frelinghuysen, Parker, Green, Dickerson, Hornblower, Whitehead, Halsted and Bradley. During his novitiate Trenton was a hot bed of stormy legislation and political con tests, and Stockton was not only a diligent student of the law and zealous attendant up on the many courts centred in the capital city; but he took to heart, the saying of the Pope of Poets " the proper study of man kind is man," so as to become a delver into the human nature of the politician and the statesman, as well as of the client and the wit ness. He was fortunately saved the usual rough-and-tumble of the tyro attorney in minor courts, for when family connections took him at once into practice he in return speedily showed that the confidence was not misplaced. Early in his legal career Attorney Stock ton was concerned in suits affecting the im position or remission of taxes which led to his exploring the law relating to that subject which since then has been so learnedly un folded in " Cooley on Taxation. " That subject became so integrally another specialty that when Governor (now Federal attorney general) Griggs was in March, 1896, legis latively empowered to appoint a commis sion to investigate the whole subject of State
assessment and taxation, and report rec ommendations toward remedial statutes, Mr. Stockton was made chairman of the Commission, although he was a Democrat, and the governor a Republican. The subject to be investigated was of great moment, for the question of a just, efficient and constitu tional method of valuation and taxation of railway and canal companies, and their prop erty, had been during half a century a much controverted point; and in 1884, a sweep ing statute of applicable taxation for such corporations had been enacted only to be held unconstitutional by the State supreme court, and to be reversed by the court of errors after a protracted and expensive litigation. In January, 1897, Chairman Stockton prepared a report so exhaustive as to fill forty closely printed pages of a legis lative pamphlet; but three of the commis sioners made special reports also, embody ing personal and lay views. However, the views of Chairman Stockton are admitted, (like the name of Abou Ben Adhem in Leigh Hunt's celebrated poem) to lead all the other names. The main report with rec ommendations, really constitutes a remark able condensed treatise on proper railway taxation and doubtless will become a prec edent in many States, and ought to be in all public libraries. General Stockton, in private life, maintains the old society maxim—if an interesting host or guest is wanted you shall find him in the lawyer, ready in affairs, and of a large prac tice. He is an interesting raconteur and has a storehouse of rich memories and anec dotes to draw upon. Diplomatic experience made him a courtier, with none of the in sincerity of one as portrayed by many his torians and novelists; and much burning of the traditional midnight oil never cast upon him the shadows of pedantry that often mark veteran lawyers. He is an eclec tic; showing the benignity that Joseph Story exhibited, and when occasion demands the noli me tangere dignity of Simon Green-
