The Green Bag
626
did he always marshal his arguments so as to give to his learning the greatest
But by long odds the greatest of our purely legal orators was William Pink—
possible efiect, but he poured it forth at random in a disconnected manner, often
beacon-lights
tiresome and ineffective. With nothing
steps of the Supreme Court of the United
like the learning of Martin,
States in the formative period of our government. His argument in the epoch
Samuel
Dexter was more ingenious and success ful in combining his facts into a series of well-knit sequences rendering them singularly forceful. Like Martin, how ever, he was not gifted highly with ora torical graces, and while always a leader at the bar, was not listened to as eagerly
ney of Maryland. His speeches were the that directed the foot
making case of McCulloch v. Bank of Maryland was praised in the most enthu siastic terms by Judge Story, then on the ‘ bench, and was regarded on all hands as
the wonder of its day. Webster, in the same case, was said to have seemed dry
as were Emmet, Hopkinson and Wirt.
and tame by comparison.
These three, indeed, together with Pinkney, inaugurated the golden age of
umphant, too, beating down all opposi
American legal oratory. Practising be fore the bar of the United States Supreme Court almost exclusively, they spurred each other to higher efiorts of eloquence and grander productions of learning.
It was tri
tion and winning the verdict. The great argument in the Nereide prize law case is steeped in a richer
rhetoric than almost any other of his speeches. The bold figure of Hercules, crushing the Nemean lion, has been re
To be lacking in learning, eloquence or
ferred to as one of the sublimest in our
any attribute of orator and lawyer
oratory.
would have insured anyone a minor place at that bar.
Thomas Addis Emmet possessed the brilliant oratorical faculties and gener ous sympathies of his brother Robert Emmet, and though seriously handi capped by his unfamiliarity with our system he steadily rose to a commanding position even among the giants of his day. No lawyer, aside from Pinkney, ever won a clear-cut and decisive victory over him. His oratory was bold, natural, impulsive, and gave to any subject a peculiar interest and charm. Hopkinson and Wirt were learned and
literary as well.
In their day the Su
Seldom has any man been so abun dantly equipped for the highest displays of eloquence, and this, too, was largely the result of his later studies. When sent as an Ambassador to Eng land he was asked at table, one day, for
his opinion on a certain Greek phrase being discussed at the time, and was
ineffably mortified and humiliated to confess that he knew nothing of the subject under discussion. Then and there
was born in him the determination to be a classical scholar, and bending him~ self to the task he became in a few years
highly proficient not alone in the ancient but in the modern classics as well. His
preme Court must have been a fairyland to lovers of eloquence. Among the best
mind became a reservoir of judicial and literary learning and his speeches began
they stood foremost, and in all of those
to bear the indefinable impress of mental
early epoch-making cases will be found
mperiority. The most gorgeous and de ceptive claptrap would have shone forth doubly revolting by comparison with his speeches, while mere brilliancy or excel lence could not hope to vie with it in
the names of one or the other.
Wirt
was, however, at his best as a jury orator, and it is there the reader will find a more thorough notice of him.
