GLANCES AT OUR COLONIAL BAR. 1.
THE colonial lawyers who are entirely unknown to the present, and perhaps to the last generation, are many, and num ber some who are well worth recalling to the legal readers of the present. In considering them, it must be re membered that the study and pursuit of the legal profession during, for instance, the lifetime of Colo nel or General or President Washing ton, was one calcu lated, to bring forth natural mental quali ties in a high de gree of development. Human nature and its pursuits were then precisely as now, and, in its way, litigation was then as charac teristic of the times as it may be termed peculiarly so in the present. But then, colonial students were dependent for EDMUND books upon Eng land. To-day the law student may find himself embarrassed with the number of le gal treatises at his beck and call, and the practitioner has a wealth of digests and encyclopaedias at his command. Compar atively, there is now a royal road to the bar and not over-anxious hours to the judge; but in colonial times the law-student and lawyer were thrown upon natural law and the resources of thought and introspection. The tendency of legal pursuit then was to
make his intellectual faculties very alert; and to necessarily inspire him with ponderings upon the maxim, eadem ratio ibidem lex. This legal generation should entertain the deepest respect for colonial lawyers, for in the main they were the colonial fathers of the Republic and foremost in war and in civil councils. Roger Sherman was a colonial law yer who contra dicted and defied the maxim, ne sutor ul tra erepidam : for in early life he was a shoemaker, and hammered soles with the object of buying books — as he once punningly remarked — with which to hammer his own soul. He even studied law-books in Connecticut while at his bench; and after RANDOLPH five years of distin guished practice be came county judge. He was chosen con tinental congressman, aired his legal talents with the greater learning of associates, signed the Declaration of Independence and died, as United States senator, the chairman of the judiciary committee. One of his descen dants and namesakes is now a leader of the New York bar and an approved juridical author. First Federal Attorney-General Edmund Randolph was the colonial son of an attorney
