The Green Bag VOL. XVJII.
No. 5
BOSTON
MAY, 1906
FRANCOIS XAVIER MARTIN: HISTORIAN AND JURIST BY PIERCE BUTLER NEAR the close of the Revolutionary achieved in learning to print without ever War there landed in North Carolina letting his employer discover that he had a penniless young Frenchman, Francois an apprentice instead of a journeyman. Xavier Martin, who was destined to become In a short time, by close attention to his one of the most powerful personalities in work and the practice of a rigid economy the early history of two of our states. Born that was to become a lifelong habit with him, in Marseilles, March 17, 1762, of a good he became an expert printer, and saved up family of moderate means, he had received enough money to buy an outfit and set up a at least a careful and sound education be press of his own. Here he printed alma fore he found himself, about his seventeenth nacs, school books, and general odd work, year, thrown on his own resources. He together with a newspaper, which he used emigrated to the French colony of Marti to peddle himself in the surrounding coun nique, engaging unsuccessfully in commerce. try, and his business became profitable. Going to the Carolinas in the vain hope of But the trade was to be merely a means recovering something on a shipment of to an end, not the end in itself; Martin was molasses that had gone astray, he was quietly and persistently preparing himself stranded in a foreign country, whose lan for the bar, and here his studious habits, guage he did not understand, without money and the solid foundation of his education in and without friends. At first his education French and Latin, helped not a little, while stood him in good stead, and he taught such a cultivated and friendly gentleman, Mr. as would learn French or Latin. In this Abner Nash, encouraged the energetic and way, himself acquiring English, he soon plucky young Frenchman to persevere in sought other means of earning his living. his studies. Yet when he was admitted to He thought that it might be profitable to the bar, in 1789, he did not by any means become a printer, but he had never seen a give up his printing office, which continued case of type. Nothing daunted, however, for some years to furnish a more certain he sought employment of the only printer source of income than any practice that might then in the town of Newbern, where he was come to him. Indeed, it was through the living. The employer took it for granted combination of trade and profession that he that one applying as a printer knew some not only won reputation and fortune, but thing of printing, and gave him a trial. also acquired the wider and more accurate Such was his adroitness and aptness that he knowledge of law that was to secure greater managed to conceal his utter ignorance until preferment in the profession. Along with he could pick up the rudiments of the craft the forgotten almanacs and other "pot by watching the other printers, excusing boilers" that issued from his press, we find, his errors by explaining that the distribu in 1792, and the years immediately following, tion of the types in France was necessarily his first modest attempts at legal writing, quite different, and his kind-hearted em a volume containing the statutes of the Par ployer forgave the errors. In after years liament of England in force in North Carolina, he used to tell with keen relish of the success a treatise on the powers and duties of a
