After his retirement from the Court of Appeals, he resumed the practice of law in Louisville. In 1844 upon the resignation of Chancellor George M. Bibb he was made second Chancellor of the Louisville Chancery Court, a position which he held until 1850. In the mean time, the third constitution of the state had gone into effect, providing for an elective judiciary. Judge Nicholas though an able and impartial jurist, was not a popular man and he could not bring him self to make a canvass before the people for the office. He accordingly resigned and Judge Henry Pirtle was selected to succeed him. Judge Nicholas when holding court was courteous and attentive in a marked degree, but when off the bench he had a stiffness and formality of manner that repelled those who did not know him intimately. On the street, he walked with an air of abstrac tion and seldom greeted or recognized any one. It is related that on one occasion he was a candidate for some office and one of his closest friends swore that if Nicholas recognized him on the street during his campaign, he would do his best to defeat him, for such unusual conduct would be demagogism pure and simple. After his resignation of the Chancellor ship, Judge Nicholas was in 1850 appointed one of the commissioners provided for in the new constitution to revise the statute laws of the state. His associates in the impor tant work were Charles A. Wickliffe and Squire Turner. All three of these men were able lawyers and as a result of their statute labors the first codification of statute laws in Kentucky was adopted by the Legislature under the title " Revised Statutes of Kentucky." The opinions of Judge Nicholas were de cidedly laconic in style. He was a man of. few words, who spoke seldom, but always to the point. He rarely argued the case in his decisions, but contented himself with stating the facts with simply enough of
reasoning to sustain the conclusions an nounced. One of his most elaborate and interesting opinions is in Gray v. Combs, (7 J. J. Marshall, 478), where he controverts the rule laid down by Blackstone that " the law will not suffer any crime to be prevented by death unless the same if committed, would be punished by death." Judge Nicholas denounces the rule of Blackstone as " draconic " and as unsupported by pre cedent in most civilized countries. With re spect to the rights of self-defence he says, "But it is emphatically a right brought by the individual with him into society and not derived from it." Accordingly beheld 'that a man has a right to protect his property in a warehouse against burglars or thieves by the use of a concealed spring-gun and the person injured "flagrante delicio" has no cause of action for the injury. Judge Nicho las died at his home in Louisville in Novem ber, 1869, aged seventy-three years. EPHRAIM M. EWING.
After the resignation of George Robert son in April, 1843, Judge Ephraim M. Ewing was promoted to the Chief Justice ship. He had shared in the labors of the court and contributed greatly to its reputa tion since his appointment as Associate Justice on March 5, 1835. It seemed there fore eminently fitting that he should have succeeded his great co-laborer, Chief Justice Robertson. By his appointment the court lost none of its prestige. His opinions are contained in fourteen volumes of Kentucky reports from 3 Dana to 7 Ben Monroe inclusive. Chief Justice Ewing was born in David son County, Tennessee, on December 4, 1 789. He was the son of a distinguished Revolutionary officer, Gen. Robert F. Ewing. He was educated at Transylvania Univer sity when it was the seat of culture of the West, and early in life he located in Ken tucky. He was repeatedly honored by the people of his adopted state, and after a
