ugly and talked with a broad Scotch accent. Once he was arrested and brought before the bar of the legislature for speaking dis respectfully of the members. He was 're quired to retract on his knees. Kneeling down he said; "Mr. Speaker, I confess I did say that your honors were not fit to carry guts to a bear. I now retract that assertion and acknowledge that you are fit ." Alexander Campbell was also a very eccentric man and a celebrated lawyer of the early days. In his will, made in 1795, he says: "I hope no tombstone will be raised over me, because it will merely hinder something from growing. If all men had tombstones erected over their graves, the earth, in a few centuries would be one entire pavement." Wirt said : " In logic Camp bell did not wield the Herculean club of Marshall; nor did he in rhetoric exhibit the gothic magnificence of Henry, but his quiver was filled wih polished arrows of the finest point, which were launched with Apolloniate skill and eloquence. Some of the most beautiful touches of eloquence, I have ever heard, were echoes from Campbell which reached us in the mountains. His arguments were much extolled for their learning and strength, as well as beauty." Edmund Ran dolph said his argument in the case of Roy and Garnctt was the most perfect model of forensic discussion he had ever heard. An eminent lawyer was Alexander McRac. He was, in the latter years of his life, consul at Paris. Once he was a candidate for the legislature against another lawyer named Samuel McCraw. A brother member of the bar, who liked them both, wrote the follow ing: Hurray for McRae and hurrau for McCraw! Hurray and hurrau for McKae and McCraw — Hurrau for McCraw and hurray for McRae! Hurrau and hurray for McCraw and McRae!"
Alexander Botts, a learned member of the bar, perished in the burning of the Rich mond theater in 1811, he was the father of
another prominent Virginian, John Minor Botts.1 George Hay was a distinguished lawyer and politician. He was United States dis trict attorney under Thomas Jefferson and prosecuted Aaron Burr. He was a member of the Legislature and judge of the United States district court for the eastern district of Virginia. He died in 1830. Bushrod Washington, a nephew of George Washington, was born in 1759. He prac ticed law in Richmond and his office was on the square west of the Capitol. It is related that while his uncle was president, he being a very young lawyer, his friends persuaded him, against his judgment, to ask the president to appoint him district attorney for Virginia. Washington's short reply is said to have been : " Do you think yourself worthy of the office, and even if you do, do you suppose I would use the patronage of my office for the benefit of anyone, however worthy, connected with me?"' In 1797, President Adams appointed him a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Adams first offered the place to John Marshall but he declined it. The President wrote the following letter on the subject to his secretary of state, Mr. Picker ing, which shows how highly he regarded both men. "The name, the connections, the charac ters, the merits and abilities of Mr. Washing ton are greatly respected, but I still think General Marshall ought to be preferred. Of the three envoys to France, Marshall alone has been entirely satisfactory and ought to be marked by the most decided approbation of the public. He has raised the American people in their own esteem, and, if the influ ence of truth and justice is not lost in Eur ope, he has raised the consideration of the lln a clever article published some years ago in Thf. Green Uau on "The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia," Mr. S. S. Patteson, of the Richmond bar sketch ed nearly fifty of Virginia's foremost lawyers and there fore there has been little left for me to say of some of them.
