Life and Character of judge Wallace which anticipation was verified; and in the moulding and shaping, and in the advocacy of such measures as were then presented, the varied resources of Judge Wallace were called into play and I may say without derogation to others, made him the chiefest legislative factor in that body; in fact wherever he lived and moved, the baton of leadership was
381
lawyer and of long abiding observation of and friendship for Judge Wallace, who said :— “Judge Wallace verified the truthfulness of the Baconian pronouncement that "talking made a ready man, reading a full man and writing an exact man.”
I do not hesitate to avow (and it is
not trenching upon the license accorded
without dissent placed in his grasp.
mortuary encomium when I declare)
The debates in both houses of Con gress are preserved in what is known as the Congressional Record and con
that I have never known, in a career
stitute an invaluable magazine of essays, law, and facts, such as cannot be found, owing to the entire freedom of speech permitted in that body, in any other deliberative body in the world, unless
it be that of Great Britain and some of the British dependencies. I have often thought, because I was an observer upon several occasions of the proceedings of the California Legislature, during his term of service, that it would have been a priceless legacy if the debates of that body had been preserved in volume form as is the case with reference to those of the federal Congress. {Judge
Wallace's mind was so stored,
as it
were, so surcharged, with the great,
salient,
important
facts
of
history;
his wonderful and varied knowledge
of the law of the land, and the common law of England upon which it is based, was such-—so replete with the beauties of literature, ancient and modern,
a
knowledge enabling him to embellish
every subject with which he dealt, that no lawyer or student could lay down unfinished any of his literary or forensic
productions. Riding along in the carriage attending the obsequies of Judge Wallace, I was struck with the justice and soundness of the remark of Dr. Taylor, Mayor of San
of some diversity of experience, a more felicitous talker or a reader of wider research, or a writer of more painstak ing exactitude than the man of whom I speak. I recall and reproduce with great pleasure an extract from his commemo
rative
remarks
upon
Chief
Justice
Sprague, upon the death of that dis
tinguished man, at the time when Judge Wallace was an Associate Justice upon our Supreme Bench. judge Sprague
had theretofore been a prominent mem ber of the state senate, from which he
had retired; alluding to that fact and commenting thereon, Judge Wallace said:— "But
though
retired
from
the
senate,
Sprague had not become inattentive to passing public events. Though he had declined to be any longer a senator, he was still a citizen and bound to the performance of what he esteemed the great duties imposed upon him by that relation. His soul was too ardent, his nature too earnest, and his sense of duty too high, to admit of inattention or
indifference upon his part, to principle asserted or measures projected, which he believed to involve the wellbeing of his country. It was therefore, and only therefore, that he was ready to enter the arena and do battle for what he deemed the right, and was willing to bear the standard which was the emblem of the principles be cherished, even though impending defeat and disaster were sure to whelm and trail it in the dust.”
Francisco, himself a man of diversified
Or again let me quote a gem from his eulogy upon the death of Hon.
accomplishments,
Edward
of
high
rank
as
a
Norton,
nomen
clare
et
