USA > Illinois > Clay County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 17
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 17
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The extent of the labors required of these men who thus gave the world this new lease of ten years of life to the individual, was a long, a great, a patient, dangerous and im- measurable one. Their innocent and heroic blood stained the stream of time from its source to the present hour. They worked out their inventions, proclaimed their im- mortal discoveries and were killed at once, or became hiding fugitives from the inappeas- able wrath of mankind. The brutal mob tore their quivering bodies into shreds, and then complacently erected those immortal monumental piles to baseness and ignorance that pierced the heavens and disfigured the face of the earth. This was the unequel 8
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fight between truth and ignorance. To look at the world in its travails, to reflect how pure and good and stainless is truth, and how very weak it seems when brought face to face with panoplied ignorance and brute force, is to despair and believe that creation itself is a mere horrible nightmare, but in the long centuries that reach down to us, her victories are marvellous, and in return for the cruel tortures and death that were lying in wait upon every foot of the pathway of these children of thought, they have given us all these glories of this gilded civilization we now enjoy. " Return good for evil," saith the command of heaven, but here is more, it is the blessing to all, and that en- dureth forever, that transcends as infinity does the tick of the clock, all the earnest and united supplications of the just and holy that ever ascended toward the Great White Throne. Their blessings are not only the comforts, pleasures, wealth and holy love of one another that we see, but it is life itself purified and exalted beyond the comprehen- sion of the ignorant receivers of the inesti- mable boon. No lash was ever raised, no law was ever enacted, no pain was ever in- flicted, no schoolhouse was ever built, no policeman was ever starred, no judge was ever ermined, no diploma was ever granted, no law was ever invoked in the interest and in behalf of these outlawed children, who thought, who invented, who discovered these immortal truths that are great enough, strong enough to lift up and bear aloft civilization itself.
When the "learned profession " secured the protection of the State, and enacted a law that no one should practice or compete with them, except he be first licensed by an- thority, they admitted away all their claim to be of the "learned profession." The idea of a license to labor, to earn your living
by the sweat of you brow is an open confes- sion of barbarism. Protection! From whom ? The " learned " from the ignorant; the lawyer from the lout; the doctor from the quack,
"Like a weak girl, the great Cæsar cried, Help me Cassius, or I sink."
When the lawyer has set the example, and claimed a license to protect his guild from the outside and unlearned poacher, the doc- tor is certainly not to blame for claiming a sim - ilar protection for himself. The lawyer who studies the law should be the first man in the community to begin to see the plain, first principles of political economy. He should not have waited to be told by a non-lawyer, that one of the most glaring oppressions that have afflicted men in all governments, is over- legislation. This applies to every govern- ment of which history gives any account. And always it has been the newest govern ments that have suffered the least. Time only gives the legislative bodies the oppor- tunity to pile up these evils, the new upon the old, Pelion upon Ossa, until human endurance ceases, and with the sword, the insurgent people cut their way out. '
Ignorance feels an imaginary or real op- pression, and it cries out for some new law to remedy the wrong, when there can be no safer assertion than that there is not one remedial law in a thousand but that aggravates the evil it was intended to cure. So wide-spread is this ignorance, that almost every man who gets elected to the Legislature, understands his constituents, will measure his greatness and value by the number of new laws that be can have passed that have his trade mark upon them. Success here will constitute him a leading legislator. and make him a great man at home and abroad. Ignorance and demagogism have so pushed this in this country that our immeasurable statute laws are a marvel to contemplate. There is not a
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lawyer alive that ever even cursorily read them all, and yet the most practical and in- flexibly enforced maxim is "every man is presumed to know the law." Indeed, an in- stance happened in the Supreme Court of this State recently, wherein, without knowing it, it gave one opinion that was exactly opposite to a recent preceding one An opinion of the Supreme Court is law. An act of Con- gress is law. So of the Legislature. A city ordinance is law. A custom is law. Con- tracts, agreements and transactions among men are quasi laws. The United States, the State, the county, the city and village, thie township and the road district, all have exec- utive and to some extent law-making powers. Then there are the multitudinons courts . pouring out their printed volumes of laws annually by the hundreds of volumes. And next month the high courts will reverse each decision upon every contested caso made last month. To all these are charters, constitu- tions, treaties, great libraries of commenta- tors, laws fundamental, general, public and private. Decisions and orders of depart- ments, civil and military. Revenne, postal, and excise laws, criminal, civil and chan- cery, written and unwritten laws, worlds without end. Upon nearly every contested question of law may be found hundreds of decisions, no two of which will exactly agree, and the proposition has been seriously ad- vanced for the State to commission a board of lawyers to attend upon the Legislature to act as a surpervising committee upon every new law brought forward by our great states- men, to see how many other laws it may come in direct conflict, or agreement with. In the mad whirl of folly we cannot imagine why such a commission is not in existence. It might be a good thing. Who can tell? Let this commission be provided with clerks, auditors, judge advocates, and a hundred
or so of the leading attorneys of the State, at a fat salary, as counsellors, and a suffering world that is always weeping for more law- forever more, may temporarily be made happy, until some other good scheme is thought up. The thing of appointing a board of commis. sioners, is a modern invention. It relieves the strain for more new laws by the cord and ton every hour from the legislative solons. Its a kind of side-show possessing, we snp. pose, a mixture of the legislative and execu- tive powers and duties. Illinois is now blessed with commissioners on taxes and on railroads. Why not follow this up with one on forms and another on tooth-pick shoes for our dudes? In short, there need be no limit to this new patent process of multiplying laws and law makers, and it is a thing that would only exhaust itself when every man, woman and child in the State was in some way a part and parcel of a board of com- missioners.
The unthinking people do not realize the evils that come to them from the folly of the law makers. They are taught that it being the highest duty of a good citizen to obey and respect the law, therefore, law is of it. self a good. And from here springs much of the flood of foolish and mostly bad laws. And, hence, the evils aro now great from this source, and a mere reference to the whole stupendous fabric is but little else than a biting satire upon the common intelligence.
For mach of these evils wo lay the charge at the door of the lawyers, not that they have any more than the average intelligence as a mass, but their study and investigation should have shown them first of all, and they should have warned the people that it is not quantity in laws that is good, but that the fewer. simpler, and more stable the laws, the happier and better the people. Upon the threshhold of their reading. this simple fact
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should have been patent to the law student, and we do not doubt had such convictions ever entered his mind, he would have at once so proclaimed to the world We are aware it has not been a willful fault of the profes- sion, but the law student, like nearly all other students, when he was first placed in position to study and prepare himself to master his profession, universally had his face turned exactly the wrong way, and that he would look only in the direction pointed out to him was to be expected. Hence it has been that the world is at last being taught the true philosophy of law by biologists and philoso- phers that have come not of the "learned professions.'
It will take many years to teach the mass of mankind to unlearn the lessons that have been instilled into it on this subject. The average man clings to the old; he reverences only long accepted ideas of things, and he resents as a personal indignity, as well as a slur upon the memory of his forefathers, any innovation upon the way that they thought, and the ideas they accepted and approved. When schools are founded and run npon this idea, the world will soon be much better ed- ucated than it now is. Better scholars will come from our colleges, and better lawyers and doctors from the universities. Then the great doctor will be he who teaches mankind how to best live; how to conquer contagious diseases and epidemics, and to avoid disease and suffering in all its forms, and meet and overcome them in a better way than did our progenitors. He will then cease to be an empiric (that's all there is in medicine now), and his greatness will not consist in these miraculous cures that are so common, and that bring such notoriety and so much money to the lucky ones in life's lottery. Empiri- cism and quackery are a mere play upon words -tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. To
the money-getters in the profession these will be words worse than wasted. They will, as they ought to, resent and condemn them without stint. But, nevertheless, while it has always been true, it will always remain true that the world's truly great men, its sublime benefactors, its givers of all good, have received neither money nor fame for their grand labors in behalf of mankind. Their immortal work came like the gentle dews of heaven, silent and unseen, aud no more appreciated by men than they were by the dull cattle upon the hills.
The coming great lawyer will be also not the great compiler or the brilliant student of ancient precedents and hair-splitting decis- ions; not the magniloquent orator, nor the successful and rich practitioner, with his troops of rich clients; and the mob, with greasy caps and stinking breaths, shouting at his heels, but he who frankly tells them the truth, and, mayhap. therefor receives their blows; he who teaches the people that law is not a blessing, but a necessary and oppressive evil. It is immaterial whether this truly great man has a license and is called a law- ver by authority or not. He will compel ig- norant man to know that his welfare consists in the fewest, plainest, simplest possible laws; so few and so plain and so simple that the school child may be able to master them all in a day, and once mastered they will never be forgotten and they will not be changed. This Utopia may never come-we do not at all believe it a possibility-but its smallest approach is a boon for which let the praying pray, and the militant tight to the death.
Gor. Hubbard .- The first lawyer that ever filed a paper in the Circuit Court of Wayne County was Adolphus F. Hubbard. As further noted above, there were but two civil cases, both of debt, at this first court,
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and the declaration in each case was signed by Hubbard. He was the second Lieutenant- Governor of the State, succeeding Pierre Menard December 5, 1822. His residence was Gallatin County.
Concerning Gov. Hubbard we find the fol- lowing interesting items in the current his- tory of the State:
"In the summer of 1825, emigration re- vived considerably. A great tide set in toward the central part of the State. Through Vandalia alone, 250 wagons were counted in three weeks' time, all going northward. Destined for Sangamon County alone, eighty wagons, and 400 persons were counted in two weeks' time. Sangamon County was at that time, without doubt the most populous county in the State. All the northern coun- ties were most disproportionately represented in the General Assembly. While such coun- ties as Randolph and White had each a Sen- ator and three Representatives, Sangamon had one Senator and one Representative.
" It happened at this time. that Gov. Coles was temporarily absent on a visit to Virginia, and Lieut. - Gov. Hubbard was acting-Gov. ernor. His excellency, ad interim, struck with the injustice of this unequal representa- tion, issued his proclamation for an extra session of the Legislature, to convene at the seat of government on the first Monday in January, 1826, for the purpose of apportion- ing the State and for business generally. He was not loth to claim power. Gov. Coles returned on the last day of October, and re- snmed his office, but the acting-Governor was not inclined to yield up, claiming he had superceded the former, and to be Governor de jure under Section 18, Article 111, of the constitution which read:
In case of an impeachment of the Governor, his removal from office, death, refusal to qualify, resig- nation or absence from the State, the Lieutenant- Governor shall exereise all the power and authority
appertaining to the office of Governor, until the time pointed out by the Constitution for the elect ion of a Governor shall arrive, unless the General Assembly shall otherwise provide by law for the election of a Governor to fill such vacancy.
" After the arrival of Gov. Coles, Hubbard, as a test, issued a commmission to W. L. D. Ewing, as Paymaster-General of the State militia, which was presented to the Secre- tary of State, George Forquer, for his signa- ture, who refused to sign and affix the signa- ture thereto. In December following, the Supreme Court being in session, Ewing ap- plied for a rule on the Secretary to show cause why a mandamus should not be awarded requiring him to countersign and affix the seal of the State to his commission issued and signed by Adolphus Fredrick Hubbard, Governor of Illinois. The rule being granted, the Secretary answered, stat- ing the facts, whereby the whole question was brought before the court, and argued at length with much ability by talented counsel on both sides. The judges after much deliberation, delivered separate opin- ions of great learning and research, but all agreed in the judgment pronounced, that the rule must be discharged. Hubbard was still irrepressible, and next memorialized the Legislature in reference to his grievance. But the Senate decided that the subject was a judicial one, inexpedient to legislate upon, and the House laid his memorial upon the table."
In this connection, we cannot refrain from giving a remarkable [incident in the State's history, a part of which arose out of this contest of Hubbard's.
The census of the State, for 1825, returned a population of 72,817, being considerably less than the sanguine expectations of many led them to hope for. The State was duly apportioned anew at the special session of January, 1826, with reference to the distri-
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bution of population, in accordance with the call of Gov. Hubbard. The question was also mooted at this session of repeal- ing the Curenit Court system, not that the court did not subserve a great public need, but that the politicians in their disappoint- ment in obtaining office the winter preceding, sought to redress their grievances first by de- priving the Circuit Judges altogether of of- fice, and next by loading the Supreme Judges with additional labors by remanding them to circuit duty. The latter being life mem. bers, could not be otherwise reached as objects of their vengeance, wherefore they were charged with having too easy a life as a court of appeals for a State so embarrassed as was Illinois. The house, however, struck out of the bill to repeal all after the enacting clause, and as a piece of pleasantry inserted a section to repeal the wolf-scalp law, in which the Senate did not concur.
In March, succeeding this special session of Hubbard's legislature, within five miles of where this body sat, a five-year old child of Daniel Huffman, which had wandered from home into the woods a mile or so, was at- tacked and killed by a wolf. The animal was seen leaving its mangled and partly con- sumed body, by the neighbors in search of it on the following day.
In the race for Governor of the State in 1826, the candidates were A. F. Hubbard, Thomas Sloo and Ninian Edwards. The first named had just been Lieutenant Governor and he supposed it was a matter of course he would be elected Governor. It turned out however, that the real contest lay between Sloo and Edwards. Sloo had been a member of the General Assembly for years, from Gallatin County, and possessed a wide and favorable acquaintance over the State, that lie attracted to him by his agreeable manners and irreproachable character. He was a
merchaut, and was not accustomed to public speaking, while Edwards was a fine talker, polished and courtly in manners, vain and gifted. The vote was close between the last mentioned two, but Edwards was elected, and Hubbard's faith in the people was pro- bably much impaired.
Gov. Hubbard was a better lawyer than politician. He was a genial, open-hearted and generous companion and friend. Very liberal in money matters, and altogether warm- hearted and impulsive, and generally im- pecunious. The latter arising from his in- attention to financial matters and his open- handed liberality. An instance related by Judge George, throws much light on his characteristics in this respect. Mr. George had gone to Shawneetown on his way to Ken- tucky, and for expense money, depended upon collecting a due-bill which he held on a prominent business man of Shawneetown. Upon arriving there and telling his wants to his friends, the fact came out that the debtor did not have the money, and after making several efforts, had failed to raise it, and the disappointment of the two men was very great. After repeated failures Mr. George had concluded to return home to Fairfield, and await a while before making the Ken- tucky trip. The two men were bewailing their fate when Gov. Hubbard came in, and when he learned the situation of affairs, he was much concerned, and finally run his hand in his pocket and jingling the ten or twelve silver dollars he possessed remarked, I've got some money, and I wish I could loan it to you. I would do so in a minute, but the fact is, I owe this and at least fifteen hundred times more, and I must pay my creditors some or they will begin to get uneasy. His auditors knew he was telling the truth and they warmly thanked him and took the will for the deed.
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To complete the story of Mr. George's finan- cial trouble we will say that while they were thus talking and bewailing the bad luck all around, a man rode up, called out the debtor and paid over just 825, that he owed him, and, as in the move all were made happy, and the Judge did not have to retrace his long ride to Fairfield in vain. Judge George informs us that Gov. Hubbard was a great snuff-taker, especially when deeply engaged in the court room, and he was constantly tak- ing snuff or else getting rid of it, and that he could blow the loudest nasal blasts that were ever heard in a court room.
Gov. Hubbard came to Illinois about 1809, and fixed his permanent abode in Gallatin County. He was intimately known to all the early settlers in Wayne County, at one time owning an extensive stock farm here, which he would from year to year lease out to some citizen on the shares.
Circuit Courts. - The first Circuit Court ever held in Wayne County, commenced on Monday the 13th day of September, 1819, at the house of Alexander Campbell (between eight and nine miles south of the present city of Fairfield); Judge Thomas C. Browne was the Presiding Judge. Samuel Leech was the Clerk. He had been appointed by Judge William P. Foster, and his commis- sion bore the date of June 19, 1819, and was issued at Kaskaskia. Andrew Kuykendall was the first Sheriff, and on the opening day of the court produced his bond as such offi- cer, with George Borah, Archibald Roberts, John Johnston, Enoch Wilcox, Tirey Robin- son and Alexander Campbell as sureties, which bond was approved and the following grand jury was reported and sworn: Enoch Beach, foreman; William Frazer, Alexander Clark, John Young, Robert Gaston, Andrew Clark, William Clark, Solomon Clark, James Clark, Alfred Hall, Seth Cayson, George
Close, John Turney, William Davis, Andrew Carson, Robert Gray. William Simpson, Thomas Cox, Ephraham Meritt and Caleb Ridgeway. John M. Robinson was Circuit Attorney, and came into court and took the several oaths of office.
Samuel Leach gave bond with Enoch Wil- cox. Archibald Roberts and Andrew Kuyken- dall as sureties; which bond was approved by the court.
The first case entered on the docket was Benjamin Dulany vs. James Brown; in debt. This suit, on motion was dismissed at the cost of the plaintiff. The papers in this and the second case of Cardwall vs. Hooper and Slocumb, are each in the name of A. F. Hubbard. P. Q. Just what kind of an attor - ney that is the writer does not know, but one thing is evident, Mr. Hubbard was, by the papers, a first-class common law pleader, and his papers indicate he was a thorough master of Chitty's pleadings.
The labors of the grand jury at this first term consisted in the finding of a single bill of indictment against Alexander Campbell, for assault and battery. When he was tried at the succeeding term of the Circuit Court he was acquitted.
Daniel I. Wilson was a Constable, and attended upon this court as Deputy Sheriff, and he was made a regular Deputy Circuit Clerk by Samuel Leech.
The second term of the Circuit Court con- vened at the house of Samuel Leech on Mon- day, April 10, 1820. At this court William Wilson was the Presiding Judge. He con- tinued to hold overy Circuit Court in Wayne County until 1824, when Judge James Hall held several terms, and then James O. Wattles held court. and Judge Hall again was pre- siding; and, 1827, Judge William Wilson again appeared as Judge, and for years, until 1835, he presided as Judge at every term of
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the court. At the March term, 1835, Justin Harlan was the Presiding Judge. At the September term, 1835, A. F. Grant was Judge. Then Judge Harlan held the courts until April term, 1841, when Judge William Wilson again was presiding officer. Of all the remarkable jurists of Illinois, Judge Wil- son will take rank as pre-eminent in history. He came to Illinois a very young man, and had nothing of the politicians' tricks about him, and yet at the age of twenty-four years he was elected Associate Justice of the Su- preme Court, and lacked only a few votes of beating Gov. Reynolds for the office of Chief Justice, and in 1825 he was elected over Rey- nolds to that office by an overwhelming ma- jority. He continued to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court until he was legislated out of office, in 1848, by the Constitution of that date. He was an eminent and just Judge, a great man, his grandeur of character at once impressing itself upon all with whom he came in contact. He was a Whig in pol- ities, though never a politician, and the Democrats did a very unwise thing when they legislated him out of office. It was a mis- erable political victory over this great jurist, who for nearly thirty years was Supreme Judge of Illinois, and who was as innocent as a babe of all political intrigne. He had held his place solely by his strength of in- tellect and the purity of his convictions of duty. His education was such as he had ac- quired by dilligent reading and self culture. As a writer, his diction was pure, clear and elegant, as may be seen by reference to his published opinions in the court reports. With a mind of rare analytical power, his judgment as a lawyer was discriminating and sound, and upon the bench his learning and impartiality commanded respect, while his own dignified deportment inspired decorum in others. He was an amiable and accom-
plished gentleman in private life, with man- ners most engaging and friendships strong. He died at his home in Carmi, on the banks of the Little Wabash, in the ripeness of age and the consciousness of a life well spent, April 29, 1857, in his sixty-third year.
At the second term of the court in Wayne County, the grand jury was composed of Anthony B. Turney, foreman; Benjamin Sumpter, John Johnston, David Wright, James Butler, William Simpson, Toliver Simpson, Michael Turney, William Watkins, Robert H. Morris, William Penix, Jacob Boral, James Dickeson, Richard Hall, Wal- ter Owen, Nathan Owen, James Patterson, Daniel Bain, Sr., John Elledge, Joel Elledge, and John Young. This grand jury returned fourteen indictments against nearly every prominent man in the county. All for as sault and battery.
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