USA > Georgia > The bench and bar of Georgia: memoirs and sketches. With an appendix, containing a court roll from 1790-1857, etc., volume I > Part 20
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The committee are aware that something is claimed for these applica- tions from the force of precedent, but they cannot for a moment believe, if they have presented a correct view of the subject, that it will be seriously contended that the plain and positive stipulations of a contract, and the still higher and more solemn obligations of the Constitution, shall be made to yield to a practice certainly founded in error, and perhaps without due consideration. Nor can any sanction be drawn from the example of a certain disposition of lands within the new States, where the public domain is situated, for the benefit of schools, inasmuch as such disposition was evidently predicated upon the provision in the Constitution which vested Congress with the " power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory belonging to the United States." Nothing could so much contribute to the population of the new States as the institution of schools. The means of education certainly furnished the strongest motive to the purchase of the public lands, and a donation for that object in different parts of the territory came properly within those needful "rules and regulations," well calculated to enhance the value of the residue, and was alike due to the condition of the new States that were entirely without the means of offering such an indispen- sable inducement to their early settlement. This is a regular system in reference to the new States organized from the Territories; and, though one of the applications is from a new State, it does not fall within that system,-a departure from which would entitle not only the other new States, but the old ones also, to similar donations. Under these opinions, the committee ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the said petitions, and all of a like nature since referred to them.
The author has no record to show on what different committees Judge Clayton served during the four sessions he was in Congress, nor what reports he made. It is not material, however, to parade these facts : his reputation is sufficiently established without them. Ile was ever diligent, ever animated, ever watchful of the public good; and he let no occasion pass unimproved to benefit his country to the best of his power.
Dismissing his judicial and legislative career, in both of which he displayed eminent ability, the author proceeds to the literary character of Judge Clayton, which is not less enviable. The author regrets that he is so inadequately supplied in this field ; for, although it is known that Judge Clayton wrote a great deal for the public eye, in all of which he infused his pure diction and flowing spirit, yet, for the twenty-four years after he graduated at Franklin College, in 1804, until his address before the societies of the same institution in 1828, no production except the "Myste- rious Picture" has come to the notice of the author which might be regarded as a proper test of his literary merits. His speeches at the bar, in the Legislature, and on other public occasions, -his
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charges to the grand jury,-his communications to the press,- though all evincing ripe acquirements, did not, however, take on a form of literary preparation which might decide his claims to the favor of competent judges of style. It was reserved for the col- lege commencement in August, 1828, at Athens,-when he and the Hon. John M. Berrien met in friendly, yet in high-toned, ear- nest competition,-for his happiest effort to be made. Both se- lected a similar theme. One exemplified "Eloquence," as did the chaste and melodious Berrien, and the other asserted the power of "Oratory," which he illustrated in his own person. Such a lite- rary feast had never been spread before an audience in Georgia; and it may well be feared that its like will never be repeated. The brief extract from Judge Clayton's address here given will afford some idea of the whole, which was equally brilliant and elaborate :-
Oratory is the great moral agent that guides and controls all human passions. Eloquence is the universal instrument by which all the wants of animated nature are supplied. It is to the moral what electricity is to the natural world. It is the great pervading, connecting, and upholding principle of all sensual inclination and of all intellectual influence.
It is the subtle, active, quickening impulse, restless as air and rapid as lightning, that runs through all sense, gives edge to its desires and effort to its designs. It assumes all shapes, tries all forms, and shines in all varieties. It sues in the cry of infancy, woos in the sigh of love, wails in the groan of pain, implores in the suffering of despair, supplicates in the wretchedness of sorrow, besecehes in the misery of want, persuades in truth, demands in justice, melts in pity, thunders in vengeance, and rages in distraction.
At one moment it fans like the zephyr, at another blasts like the simuoom ; now plays and refreshes like the breeze, then storms and de- stroys like the blast. The mind is never steady under its operation : reason dreads it, judgment shrinks from under its crushing energy, and neither in their dominion has the security of an hour under its ravaging march.
He who witnesses the calm serenity of a summer's morn, or the mellow stillness of an autumnal eve, forgets that they can be disturbed by any cause. Let but the angry lightnings of heaven gather in the west, growl for a time as they thicken in the cloud, rise in swelling murmurs as they come over the fearful silence of nature, then quicken in flashes, streak through the vaulted skies, peal from pole to pole, from heaven to earth, and rend the lofty forest, in vain may he look for those tranquil seasons that so regaled his senses before this "war of elements."
So with oratory. Reason and judgment sit secure amid its playful gambols ; but let it once swell into a tempest, drive upon the feelings, strike at the sympathies, beat upon the affections, storm on the passions, dash on the sensibilities of the heart, and reason and judgment are gone, -fled from the sober helm of conscience: the mind surrenders at dis- cretion ; decisions are made and sent forth which no future composure can repair, and often become fate to an individual and destiny to a nation.
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In 1825 there appeared in the book-stores a pamphlet of two hundred pages, bound in the style of the Quarterly Review, en- titled " The Mysterious Picture, by Wrangham Fitz-ramble, Esq.," with the following lines on the title-page :-
Hence Satire's power : 'tis her corrective part
To calm the wild disorders of the heart. She points the arduous height where glory lies, And teaches mad Ambition to be wise.
In the dark bosom wakes the fair desire,
Draws good from ill, a brighter flame from fire.
Strips black Oppression of her gay disguise,
And bids the hag in native horror rise ;
Strikes towering Pride and lawless Rapine dead, And plants the wreath on Virtue's awful head.
As noted by the author of the pamphlet, its contents were- The Mysterious Picture; Human Depravity; Vanity ; The Illusions of Pleasure ; Pride and Love; The Disappointed Author; The Politician ; The Widow and Widower; Education; The Negro's Dream.
The conception was singular, tinged with the supernatural. While restless on his pillow, Mr. Fitz-ramble was addressed as in a vision :-
"You have nothing to fear," said the genius, for so he called hin- self. " I have beheld your difficulties, and am ordered to furnish the relief. Arise; follow me, and, strange as it may appear, I will discover to you an unknown world of thought, where mortal research has never penetrated and which human ingenuity can never fathom."
I instantly arose, and seemed to possess a surprising activity of body and a subtle elasticity of mind,-in the first to move without exertion, and in the last to think without an effort.
The genius then conducted him into a church where the con- gregation were arrested by a spell, yet each individual retaining the images passing in his or her mind at the moment. Thrilling reflections are thus indulged :-
When I surveyed this immense crowd in a state of apparent torpor, possessing the same complexion, cast of countenance, and expression of eye as if alive, in the deathlike stillness and inflexibility of statues, the inward employment of whose minds was shortly to be in my power, I felt an impressive distrust of my own firmness and a repulsive dread of the scene. I seemed to think that I was meddling with what did not belong to me; that I was lurking around the privacy and prying into the secrets of heart which ought to be held saered by reason of their undivulged nature and in virtue of their deep concealment in the very folds of hte; that I was taking an ungenerous advantage of a sudden and unavoidable misfortune, which foreclosed the mind from all preparation for such a distressing examination. Indeed, I would have given any thing to have
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silently withdrawn, and to have refused an insight into this serious and delicate development ; and for this purpose I fondly asked myself, "Is it not all a dream? Exert yourself, and try to shake off the delusion, and by that means escape from this unsought dileunna and fly from what you so much dislike." But at this moment the genius approached me sternly saying, "You are not asleep; it is no phantom. You are com- pelled not only to witness, but to reveal, the whole; and why should you be afraid or ashamed to do so? There is One infinitely greater than you -the Source of all virtue and the Fountain of all purity, before whom you are a loathsome worm-obliged daily to behold these vain imagina- tions : there is not a secret spring or the lightest conceivable motion of the mind that is not instantly open to his view. And if these people are not ashamed to indulge before Him what you will soon discover, why should they be before you, even if they were sensible of it? Do you imagine they care more for you than Him ? Besides, suppose that sud- den death had seized them: would it not have taken them in those very thoughts? and will they not, as well as all others, in a coming day be exposed to the gaze of an assembled world? They wrong themselves ; you do them no injury. Come, then, and I will show you how to get at the contents of each story, drama, novel. romance, or whatever else you may choose to call it, ia this singular sleeping library."
The idea then proceeds : heads are unlocked by a touch, flying open to inspection, and all secret thoughts are revealed. Here is a cotton-planter fixing up his crop for market,-the best of his staple where it can be seen. By his side is a Yankee cotton- buyer, with gimlet and samples in his pocket, contriving how to mix up the qualities so as to obtain an advantage in the classifi- cation and sale. The details are quite minute in both characters, -- both resorting to unworthy devices for profit.
"Merciful Heaven!" thought I; "are these the pranks that are played in the disposition of that great and valuable staple of the Southern States, that constitutes their wealth and strength ? Is it possible," continued I, turning around toward the females and casting my eye upon one who was richly attired, " that the beautiful drapery that covers that more beautiful form has been made to pass through such a demoralizing process? Can it be that the gay apparel, which flows with so much grace and shines with such splendor on the glittering nymphs who so often adorn the mirthful hall, is stained with fraud, has been familiar with falsehood, and almost associated with felony?" I trembled at the idea, lest it might be imbued with a contagion that would impart treachery to the bosom it so modestly concealed, or faithlessness to the heart by which it was so unconsciously caressed.
On the subject of petty frauds, artful projects, cunning stratagems, cheating schemes, overreaching devices, and swindling contrivances, 1. shall never be able to disclose the half I saw on that occasion. In the mechanic arts there was a great inclination of the mind to imposition, to slight work, and to charge high, particularly in all the handicraft-work ; and, if the nature of the labor was out of the common observation and ordinary experience of the customers, they were certainly exposed to a fraud. For instance, I noticed one watchmaker had determined that
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cvery watch in his shop should have either a mainspring or a pivot wheel broken ; and the repair of these would, of course, just command the highest pricc.
In commercial business the tricks were innumerable. Vintners were adulterating wines; druggists were corrupting medicines, particularly the article of Peruvian bark ; and merchants were altering invoices and fur- nishing themselves with the materials, to give it no worse name, for making round assertions about the "cost" of their goods. One old te.low had just concluded that his last supply of rum would bear " fully a fourth ;" and, as to his molasses, it must take a "third," or he should absolutely lose " on the article," it was so villanously wasting.
Then a variety of characters are peeped into : the horse-jockey patching up eyes, smoothing over defects, and concealing bad qualities ; debtors were framing excuses for a want of punctuality ; tailors were cabbaging remnants ; millers, heaping up toll ; bank- directors contriving to serve themselves and friends liberally; clerks resorting to various stratagems-some had been knocked down and robbed-to account for the money intrusted to them ; other officers of the bank were using false keys, some making false entries on the books, and other individuals were digging under ground to rob the vaults ; some were counterfeiting bills, and others making a chemical preparation to change their amount. Mr. Fitz-ramble then lets off his animosity to banks in the following words :-
All kinds of plans and inventions were in train either to make, alter, forge, counterfeit, or steal bank-money; to break open merchants' shops, to rob desks and counter-drawers, pick pockets, and especially to filch pocket-books; so that I could not but believe-and such is my honest conviction-if the whole institution could be swallowed up as by an earthquake, Icaving not a vestige behind, that with it would disappear one-half the crime and its demoralizing effects which at present so deeply corrupt the frame of society; and, as to the increase of private happiness and the diminution of individual suffering and anxiety, the consequences would be incalculable.
The genius next escorted his companion to a great elevation, and then showed him the entire world below, with all its transactions. The view is powerfully summed up :-
Such deeds the most lawless fancy cannot portray, heart cannot con- ceive, and to which, of course, utterance is denied. Imagination in the fullest sweep of voluptuous contemplation, whetted by the most luxuriant passion, and urged by the sharpest penetration, can never reach the thou- sindth part of the deep-dyed and ingrained hue of this hidden licentious- In ... "And yet," thought I, " this is forever passing before the all- seeing eye of a pure and spotless Deity."
Under the head of "Vanity," the writer sketches to the life a flygout young man bent upon pleasing the ladies, dashing through
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the streets with a fine switch-tailed horse and an elegant new silver-tipped gig, (no buggies then,) and managing to pass " all the houses that were inhabited by fair damsels." At length a tender heart is broken by this "inflated Adonis," and he is much exalted thereby in his own estimation. A group in the church is thus described :-
I came across several young gentlemen dressed in the highest ton, their bodies drawn to the shape of an inverted cone, well swaddled in a fresh and increased supply of cravats, standing upon brass-heeled stilts, behind a goodly bale of ruffles, just ready to leave the house; and they would have been off in a second but for their untimely arrest.
No apology will be made for the introduction here of the follow- ing admirable picture :-
I found one collegian-who had taken an honor upon graduating, had been much flattered in the progress of his education, created great hopes in his friends, and possessed greater notions of himself-absorbed in a most delightful trance of self-homage. He had just entered upon the profession of law, and delivered a Fourth-of-July oration, and was then enjoying the fruits of his resplendent debut. All eyes, he conceived, were upon him : the men coveting his talents and genius, and the ladies courting an alliance with him through their fair daughters. He had gone to the head of his profession at a stride, made a fortune right off, and was somewhat perplexed in his mind whether he should go upon the bench or go into Congress. This last field opened to wider fame and higher glory; but he did not like to leave any distinction unworn if he could take them all in his march, and at that time he did not discover much difficulty in his way, only he noticed that most other great men had to leave one or the other. " Alas, poor fellow !" thought I, "what an ignis fatuus you are dancing after ! Professional success, as well as political fame, depends upon a thousand things you cannot now foresee, but especially upon the caprice of a huge and unthinking multitude, who are slow to discover merit and slow to reward it. The forum is not like a college-stage, nor Congress like a polemic society. From these great theatres, as many mournful adventures will reveal, the laurel of renown is not easily snatched. How often will day after day and court after court pass away and leave you rooted to the spot at which you com- mienced ! Mountains of no description have ever been readily climbed ; and your ascension up the long slopes of wealth or steeps of fame will be equally toilsome."
There was no subject, whether great or small, that did not employ this engrossing passion. One was sweeping every thing before him and out- stripping all his associates in a perilous fox-hunt. Another was actually ex- periencing a flesh-crawling, hair-raising elevation of soul in the loud and repeated huzzas of the rabble, vented on no other occasion than that of a triumphant horse-race. In both these cases, as well as others that I noticed, the smiles and approbation of the fair constituted by far the greater part of the fancied glory of these bewitehing day-dreams. A third, being the lady of a member of Congress, took great pleasure in looking down upon the plebeian rank that surrounded her, and a greater pride in their looking up, as she conceived, to her official dignity.
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There was no end to the military men whom I found there. Such march- ing and countermarching; such martial music; such fine war-horses, so richly and gaily caparisoned; such splendid apparel; such glittering swords, sashes, sword-knots, and waving plumes; such rapid movements and mighty battles, in which the roar of cannon and the clash of arms, mingled with clouds of dust, volumes of smoke, and seas of blood, presented an awful picture ; and then, when returned from "wild war's alarms," such ravish- ing applause from the people ; such balls and dinners ; such city-parading ; such corporation-addresses and modest answers, manufactured for the occa- sion and by preconcerted arrangement; such transporting and soul-devour- ing gazes from the ladies on the public promenades, at the theatres and all kinds of public assemblies. Oh, it was delightful to see how well these great generals stood with themselves : every one of them had fought one duel, and some as many as three, merely for the purpose of lamenting the circumstance before some fine lady.
I found, too, a great many statesmen and orators who seemed to take a cruel pleasure in torturing their auditory,-first, by gently leading them, as by a hair, from one place to another, altogether charmed by the witchery of their persuasive elocution, and then all at once rending them to atoms by the lightning of eloquence and a sudden burst of its overwhelming thun- der. The poor hearers were represented on the canvas of their fancy with distorted countenances, frightfully gazing at each other, their eyes "rolling in frenzy," their hands clenched, and their breathing almost suspended. I seemed to catch the terror-smitten feeling of these unfortunate victims of oratory, and I was glad to flee from their fate by dropping the curtain upon the subject.
After describing the thoughts of a widow lady whose sons and daughters had in her imagination experienced fortune in a variety of shapes, with sorrow greatly overbalancing the joys of life, the writer thus impressively moralizes :-
Our mortal existence is a fixed and positive state of suffering. We enter upon life with a pang and leave it in agony ; our birth is in shrieks and our death amid sighs. Collectively taken, there is not a pulse of the heart that does not begin or end a life; there is not a human respiration which is not to some unfortunate being either his first or last. The world, to its successive generations, is nothing but a fading gewgaw ; and we ourselves are only empty bubbles, sparkling as we glide down the tide of time, and bursting at every breath.
"Long o'er the wrecks of lovely life we weep ; Then, pleased, reflect, 'to die is but to sleep. Organic forms with chymic changes strive, Live but to die, and die but to revive. Immortal matter braves the transient storm, Mounts from the wreck, unchanging but in form."
The "Disappointed Author" is a rich exhibition. IIc had written articles which he fondly concluded would at once establish his fame, and he was ever looking out for praise. But the poor fellow never had the satisfaction of hearing a word of eulogy bestowed on his "Letters" which he so highly prized. Once he
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heard them alluded to in a public reading-room as containing the "most incorrigible nonsense and sleep-producing stupidity that had certainly ever found its way into print; that writers of such trash and printers of such trumpery ought to be sewed up in a bag and thrown into a ditch,"-whereupon he fell into a very earnest soliloquy, in which he discoursed himself into the opinion that
Literary intelligence is not collected and embodied as it should be. If any important ideas are suggested, they are not extended or improved ; and henee they pass off unnoticed by ourselves, and, of course, by foreigners. But if it were some low wit or light humor, the account of a sea-serpent, a boat or a horse race, the arrival of distinguished foreigners, curious mur- ders, extraordinary births, wonderful inventions that were never made, and amazing appearances that never occurred, all the prints from one end of the continent to the other, in compliment to the taste of their witch- believing readers, would be filled with those very dignified and important subjects, giving so much consequence to their papers and character to the nation.
Let but a petty ensign in the army happen to knock down an Indian chief with the butt of his musket, or a midshipman choke a pirate to death, in their official capacities, and, in the pedantry of the black gown, they become co instanti and ipso facto entitled to attend the President's levees, liable to be suffocated in the fumes and steam of a smoking dinner, drowned in a pipe of old Madeira, and shot to pieces by cannon in every city through which they may pass having good, fat aldermen. Not so by literary achievements ; not so by the essayist.
The "Mysterious Picture" should be read as a whole, to appre- ciate the satire which lurks in every paragraph. The quotations will close with a fashionable lady whose charms had so wrought on two rival admirers that the code of honor had to decide between them :-
This duel seemed to season all her other thoughts with such a smack of importance, which, besides giving her a great deal of self-complacency, served to regale her with a foretaste of her future consequence. She appeared to have, though not a sorrowful, yet not a very unreasonable, view of the affair. If people were such fools as to try to shoot out what little brains they had, (which, by-the-by, she thought would require some skill, ) why should she grieve about it? Everybody likes to be talked of, and she did not pretend to suppress the satisfaction it would give her to learn that one was killed dead on the spot and the other mortally wounded, for the bloodier the battle the more noise it would make : it would even get into the papers, those kind propagators of all sorts of good news ; and surely, she thought, it will be asked, What is the melancholy cause of such a pathetie catastrophe? This would at once float her name upon the waves of conversation, and she would be tossed mountains high on the surges of publie admiration.
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