USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > An address, delivered in the new court house, in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts, at the dedication of the same, April 28, 1874 : containing sketches of the early history of the old county of Hampshire and the county of Hampden, and of the members of the bar in those counties, with an appendix > Part 1
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Compliments of- James R. Wells
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AN
ADDRESS,
DELIVERED IN THE
NEW COURT HOUSE, IN SPRINGFIELD,
HAMPDEN COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS,
AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SAME, APRIL 28, 1874,
CONTAINING SKETCHES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE OLD COUNTY OF HAMPSHIRE AND THE COUNTY OF HAMPDEN, AND OF THE MEMBERS OF THE BAR IN THOSE COUNTIES, WITH AN APPENDIX.
BY
WILLIAM G. BATES.
PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE BAR,
BY THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS.
SPRINGFIELD, MASS .: CLARK W. BRYAN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. I 874.
LENOX
THENEYI
ASTE TILL _
TEX
NEW HAMPDEN COUNTY COURT HOUSE, ELM STREET, SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
AN
ADDRESS,
DELIVERED IN THE
NEW COURT HOUSE, IN SPRINGFIELD,
HAMPDEN COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS,
AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SAME, APRIL 28, 1874, CONTAINING
SKETCHES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE OLD COUNTY OF HAMPSHIRE AND THE COUNTY OF HAMPDEN, AND OF THE MEMBERS OF TIIE BAR IN THOSE COUNTIES, WITH AN APPENDIX.
BY
WILLIAM G. BATES.
PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE BAR, BY THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS.
SPRINGFIELD, MASS., CLARK W. BRYAN & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1874.
A.S.
BDG. No. 1 3 3 0 '01
CLARK
PRINTERS
N & CO.
SPRINGF
ELD.MASS.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 178550
ASTOR, L'HOX AND TILDEN FONDATIONS
SPRINGFIELD, APRIL 28, 1874.
HION. WM. G. BATES :
My Dear Sir,-I have the honor to inform you that at a meeting of the Hampden Bar Association, held this afternoon, it was unanimously voted, that the thanks of the Association be presented to you for the very able, instructive and delightful address delivered by you, upon the occasion of the dedication of our new County Court House, and that a copy of the same be requested for publication.
In behalf of the committee, to whom that duty was assigned, I take pleasure in communicating that vote to you, with the earnest solicitation that you will comply with the request of your brethren of the Bar.
Very sincerely, EDWARD B. GILLETT.
WESTFIELD, JUNE 15, 1874.
IION. EDWARD B. GILLETT, OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE HAMPDEN BAR ASSO- CIATION :
My Dear Sir,-I have received your notice of the unanimous vote of the Associa- tion, expressing their approbation of the address, which was prepared at their request, and delivered at the dedication of the new Court House ; and I am pleased at the expression of their wish, that it is deemed worthy of being preserved as a portion of the history of the times. The men who have lived in the old County of Hampshire, during the last half-century, certainly were remarkable men, and deserving of an abler chronicler ; but such commendation as my acquaintance with, and my observation of them, has enabled me to make, is cheerfully submitted to your disposal.
With my thanks to the members of the Bar for their long kindness and courtesy to me, and especially for this last expression of their regard, I am their and your friend and brother,
WILLIAM G. BATES.
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
BY HON, WILLIAM G. BATES OF WESTFIELD.
Fellow Citizens, Gentlemen, Ladies,
And my Brethren of the Bar:
I FEEL grateful to you, my brethren, for this opportunity of professional and social speech. It is now almost one-half of a century,-good heavens ! can it be so long ?- since, as man and boy, I became connected with the legal profession. During that time, I have been almost a constant attendant at the sit- tings of the judicial courts in this County ; and, although for a few years past I have been compelled to abstain partially from my accustomed participation in your forensic trials, and have been rather a "looker on here in Vienna" than an actor, I feel complimented by the assurance that your appointment gives, that you still regard me as one of your number ; as one who has not yet passed away, out of sight, out of thought, adown behind the western hills of life ; but, who is still with you, and of you, sym- pathizing with you in your toils, your anxieties, and in your efforts to render the profession of the law an honorable profes- sion, in the estimation of all men.
I am gratified, also, in the audience, which the occasion has called together. Not only you, yourselves, are present, whose peculiar theater this place hereafter is to be, and where you are to labor and struggle in the intellectual contests of professional life ; not only the learned jurist who has relinquished a remu- nerating professional practice to hold the scales of justice with a hand that does not tremble as he holds it, and whose un- clouded eye watches its slightest preponderance ; not only those who, having with you one passion, one interest, and cne honor,
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are here with you, with their hopes and sympathies ; but a large delegation of the staunch and solid men of the County, which bears the honored name of the great and fearless champion of the constitutional laws of England, have assembled with us, to manifest their respect for an institution upon which rest the pillars of every well-organized and stable government.
The occasion itself, also, is one of unmixed gratification. We are here to dedicate a magnificent structure to one of the most useful and magnificent of purposes. Having erected a temple to the administration of the law, we are here to consecrate it, as the forum where the law is to be meted out with Rhadaman- thine impartiality. And with what more solemn earthly purpose could we come together ? Next to the consecration of a temple to the worship of Almighty God, what is there that can so impera- tively command our reverence, as the accessories of an institu- tion that He has founded, and that has been handed down to us through the hoary ages of the world ? And if we give but a little reflection to the subject, we shall realize, that we do but follow in the wake of all those hoary ages, in the respectful ceremoni- als of this day. We only show forth, by these evidences of our reverence, our concurrence in the sentiments of the people who have preceded us in the long annals of time.
The historical books of the Old Testament disclose the rev- crence of the peoples, whose histories are there recorded, for the immutability, the impartiality, and the wisdom of their laws. The trial of St. Paul, in the midst of a mob, clamoring for his blood, reveals to us how suddenly the words of the apostle, " I appeal unto Cæsar!" hushed the violence of the maddened pop- ulace, changed the venue, and transferred the jurisdiction of his case, whose life they sought, from Jerusalem to Rome.
When Demetrius had stirred up the whole people of Ephesus to violence and tumult by an exciting appeal, not merely to their passions, but to their pecuniary interests, and the voice of reason was drowned in the absorbing cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," how suddenly did the speech of the town clerk to the infuriated mob, announcing to them that " the law is open," and " if Demetrius and the craftsmen which are with him have a matter against any man, there are deputies : let them implead one another,"-how soon, I say, did this reference to the law appease the tumult and disperse the assembly. If we were to
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go, to-day, to those cities of Italy, which, for nearly twenty cen- turies, have been buried beneath the lava of Vesuvius, and gaze upon those ruins that modern enterprise has unveiled to the eye of the astonished beholder, among the numerous examples, ex- hibiting the depraved tastes of those luxurious and sensual peo- ples, we shall still see that the ruins of the Forum are the most noble relics of their reverence and regard.
If we visit the ruins of imperial Rome, although the interest of the traveler at once draws him to that magnificent cathedral, whose incomprehensible attractions fill up, with a constantly growing admiration, the impressions of its vastness and its beauty, yet his steps most fondly and most frequently turn to the Forum, where Hortensius, Varro and Cicero spoke, and there they often- est and longest linger among its mouldering and mournful ruins. Upon the whole, I think it may safely be said, that the respect and regard of the different nations of antiquity for the laws of their country, will be found to correspond with the character of those public monuments, which their genius has reared, and which the tooth of time has yet spared to us.
The history of our race reveals to us no nation in which a respect for the law has not been handed down by its traditions, or manifested by its memorials; and the universal evidence upon this point has induced the conclusion, in the minds of many persons, that the laws which have existed, as the institu- tions for the governance of society, were revealed to the race by the special inspiration of the Deity. But if this conclusion is not warranted by facts, it seems that a respect for law is so deeply implanted in the very nature of man, as to become a part of his being, inscribed upon his conscience, and modifying the whole conduct of his life. It is so ever-present with us, above us, beneath us and around us ; it moves along so quietly, so silently, and withal, with such a tremendous energy ; we feel that its invisible shield, " by night or noon," is always before us, and its protecting sword is being brandished continually around us ; we lie down to sleep with such an assurance of its guar- dian security, and we go abroad with so confiding a reliance upon its accompanying care ; we look to it with so confiding a trust, that there are in its provisions the protection of every right, and the remedy for every wrong ; that there is, even in its very inaction, a strength as omnipotent as in its active
.
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IHISTORICAL ADDRESS.
power ; it impresses itself so strongly upon us, that our impres- sions become a part of ourselves, an instinct of our being, sway- ing us, guiding us, and so influencing us, that we are constrained to do right, almost without a consciousness that we can do wrong. And when we look at its wonderful adaptations, and see how, almost like the precepts of the gospel, it conforms itself, as they successively arise, to the varying and changing cconomies of commercial life, we feel that the language of the author of the Ecclesiastical Polity is not too high an eulogium.
Consider a few of the many instances of its felicitous adapt- ations. The uses of gas, the application of electricity to the telegraphic inter-communication between man and man, State and State, and nation and nation ; the application of steam to the system of navigation, and to the transportation of passen- gers and freight,-these are all the inventions of later years, and almost all of them affecting the property, the security and the lives of mankind. And although, coming down from the early enlightenment of Rome, the civil law, revised by the au- thor of the Justinian code, refined by the reflective considera- tion of Alfred, Edward, and the sages who have lived from the dawn of civilization, through the growing enlightenment of England, it was yet brought over to us in 1620, in the May- flower, with all those provisions which the relations of all those new discoveries require in their innumerable ramifications. Well, then, might that great divine, to whom I have referred, in language that scarcely can be too often repeated, make use of this eloquent panegyric concerning it :
" Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, the greatest as not exempted from her power ; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, admiring her, as the mother of their peace and joy."- Hooker's Works, vol. I, p. 240.
A greater man than Hooker, though less eloquent, in lan- guage distinguished for its quaintness, and more so for its truth, has given a definition, that should be engraven in the memory of every student, who commences the study of the law :
"Reason is the life of the law, nay, the common law itself is
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nothing else but reason ; which is to be understood of an arti- ficial perfection of reason, gotten by long study, observation, and experience, and not of every man's natural reason ; for, Nemo nascitur artifex. This legal reason est summa ratio. And therefore if all the reason that is dispersed into so many several heads, were united into one, yet could he not make such a law as the law of England is ; because by many successions of ages, it hath been fined and refined by an infinite number of grave and learned men, and by long experience grown to such a perfec- tion, for the government of this realm, as the old rule may be verified of it,-Neminem oportet esse sapientiorem legibus ; no man (out of his own private reason) ought to be wiser than the law, which is the perfection of reason."
At an earlier period, centuries antecedent to the age of Coke, a greater man even than he was, speaking, not merely with the comprehensive wisdom of a philosopher, but with a fervid elo- quence, which denoted in him a Christian love and reverence for virtue, has pronounced this sublime eulogium upon the beauty and harmony of this sovereign and immutable law.
" True law is indeed right reason, consistent with nature, shed- ding its influence upon all, constant and immutable. It incites men to the exercise of every moral duty ; it deters them, by its prohibitions, from the commission of fraud. * It is im- pious to change such a law ; neither is it lawful to abate it, nor can it be wholly abrogated. The Senate nor the people cannot discharge us from its obligations. It does not require an ex- pounder or interpreter. It will not be one thing at Rome, and another at Athens ; one law now, and a different one hereafter ; but it is the same eternal and inviolable law that comprehends every nation, throughout all time ; and is, as it were, a common master and ruler, the divinity of all. God is the inventor, the giver, and the judge of this law ; and whoever will not obey its precepts, let him flee, and avoid the companionship of his race."
" Law," said Dr. Johnson, in the language of a terse defini- tion, "is the science, in which the greatest powers of the under- standing are applied to the greatest number of facts ; " and that great statesman, who superadds to the highest eloquence the profoundest philosophy, has defined the law to be, "the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies and errors, is the collected reason
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of ages, combining the principles of original justice, with the infinite variety of human concerns."
In the face of all those high eulogiums, that have come down to us from the wisdom and the eloquence of Cicero, we hear, occasionally, a flippant witticism about "the law's delay," "the law's imperfection," and " the glorious uncertainty of the law." It would be unjust to apply to these persons the couplet of the witty poct :--
No man e'er felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law.
But, too often some private grief, some misfortune, some mis- take, or some negligence is the source of these stale utterances. They do not distinguish between the principles of the law, the law itself, the glorious old common law of England, in all its wisdom and majesty, and its imperfect administration. Un- happily we are so circumstanced in this world, that with a code of laws made absolutely perfect, and a constitution for the gov- ernment of a nation, designed and perfected by an infinite wis- dom, there would necessarily be a considerable jarring in the operation of its machinery. We have only to look at the con- duct of those who, during the long lapse of ages, have differed, and stumbled, and quarreled, and fought over the precepts of the divine law, to rejoice, that in the administration of the "high- est" reason of men, its provisions have moved on so harmo- niously. But we must consider that there are, in this country alone, half a hundred Legislatures, each member of which is of the opinion that, in some respects, he is capable of suggest- ing an improvement or an amendment. And some such men there are, so unreflective in this consideration, so impressed with the idea of their own ability to provide a remedy for every wrong, and of such a far-seeing sagacity, as to be able to look down through all the complicated relations of human events, and to provide regulations for the government of human conduct, that it is a matter of surprise, that even a shred of the common law should be now visible, or that, like the rules of practice, it should not have been entirely covered up with enactments, or absorbed in codifications. These friends of innovation do not seem to consider that it is better, occasionally, to submit to an inconvenience, or even a
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mischief, on the part of a few persons, than by the change of a well-known and established provision, to introduce uncertainty and doubt, to the prejudice of many. They do not realize, that, day by day, each doubtful provision of the law is receiving con- stant explanations and constructions from the courts, to adapt it more fully to the exigencies of commercial life ; nor still less do they reflect, that each new feature, which is engrafted on the common law, not only discards those mature commenta- ries upon it, that have been the outgrowth of the wisdom of centuries, but is, itself, a new subject requiring future judicial construction. We are told by a learned author, that many years since, the statute of frauds, a statute of a few sections, and of but few lines in a section, had been examined, and an estimate made of the expense that had attended its construc- tion ; and that the amount, at that time, exceeded the sum of several millions of dollars.
In commenting upon the evils of legal changes, one of the most learned and eloquent of the philosophers of England once said, that " no one, who is not a lawyer, would ever know how to act, and no one who is a lawyer would, in many instances, know how to advise, unless the courts were bound by authority, as firmly as the pagan deities were supposed to be bound by the decrees of fate."
Poets are said to be born, and not to be so created. Poeta nascitur non fit. But Shakespeare seems not only to have been born a poet, but born also to that legitima ratio, which is the result of long study, observation and experience. His legal opinion upon this subject i's as sound as his poetry is beautiful :
Bassanio. I besecch you Wrest once the law to your authority ; To do a great right, do a little wrong, And curb this cruel devil of his will.
Portia. It must not be ! there is no power in Venice Can alter a decree established ; 'Twill be recorded for a precedent ; And many an error, by the same example, Will rush into the State. It cannot be.
But a still greater evil, that affects the administration of jus- tice, arises from the constitution of our courts. Of these there are many hundreds . already, in this wide-spread, and rapidly increasing country. All of them are almost in constant opera-
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tion, and continually throwing out their influences, either for good or evil. A most essential part of a judicial tribunal, the jury,-a body derided, jeered at, at times pronounced an excres- cence, and yet a body that, in this country, we cannot do with- out,-is elected by the people. Their names are placed in a box, and they are drawn from it when their services are required. It is for them to hear and decide upon all questions of fact between man and man, and between the State and a citizen,- questions, often, of the most momentous importance. Without referring to other States, is it not the case here, that our most able and intelligent men are left out of the jury box, and placed beyond the power of choice, in the performance of duty ? and are not their places too often supplied by those who are too inexperienced, and too ignorant, to discharge the high and the most important office of a juryman ?
Of the judges, who preside over these hundreds of judicial tribunals, some are appointed by the governors of the different States, with the consent of the advising branch of the depart- ment, and others by the nomination of the President of the United States, with the approbation of the Senate. Each one of the judges, so appointed, reflects the political opinions of the appointing power,-for the cases are infrequent when the chief magistrate goes out of the pale of his party, to elevate even a more competent person to that high office, when he could be the means of so great good to the people and the State. If the executive would, in all cases, without fear, favor or affection, select the nominee from the ablest of those within the pale, we should probably possess a more able judiciary, in the different States of the Union.
Sometimes they are selected for their talents and character ; and at times, it must be confessed, as a reward for their politi- cal services ;- services sometimes rendered to the appointing power ; and there is one sorrowful record of the nomination of a person so incompetent, not only in talent, but in character, as to have constrained the conservative voice of the whole people to cry out, and compel the President to withdraw the nomina- tion.
In those cases, where the choice of judges is made directly by the people, there is more frequently an incompetent judi- ciary. The pride of the State, and that regard for the judicial
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honor, integrity and usefulness, that always exists in a large por- tion of every commonwealth, will always prompt the contend- ing parties to strive to put in nomination for judicial office their ablest and wisest men ; but local considerations and private com- binations will sometimes over-ride the conservative efforts of the people. But these honorable endeavors that influence the con- duct of the more intelligent electors, do not come into operation in the nomination of many of the subordinate judicial magistrates. If the highest seats of the judicature are filled by honest and capable men, the people are apt to relax their efforts to secure subordinate judges of virtue and intelligence. They do not seem to consider, that the administration of the law, like the temple of justice, is one harmonious structure, commanding the respect of the world by the magnificence of its proportions, and the perfectness of all its parts. They do not reflect, that by far the greater part of all the varied transactions of life which seek the decision of a legal tribunal are, practically, under the judi- cial cognizance of these subordinate magistrates ; that, for the most part, from their decisions there is, practically, no appeal to the higher courts; and that the conflicting rights of man and man, nay, even the liberty of the subject, his property, and the amount of his punishment are vested in their discretion, and subject to no other human control.
And yet, with how little thought of the vast consequences, are these offices filled ! Sometimes the contest for them de- generates into a scramble. Men seek for them, and strive for them, and employ their paid partisans. Selfish men and power- ful corporations array themselves in a contest for success, hav- ing ulterior objects and interests to subserve ; public associa- tions are formed to defeat one candidate, and to elect another for the purposes of anticipated legal decisions ; money is paid out by the candidate in his electioneering canvass, from his own funds and from the party contributions, collected by a constrained levy ; and the result is, that a good man, nominated by the conservative element of one of the political parties, is defeated, and a time-serving politician, willing to lend himself to the behests of the rabble that elected him, is chosen to a place of honor and responsibility, than which, whether subordi- nate or otherwise, there is none other upon which can more safely rest the nation's hope.
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I do not intimate, that the evils to which I have referred flow only from the system of popular judicial elections. Sometimes they date back to the designs of a foreseeing wickedness. Sometimes a corrupt and scheming politician, with the design of destroying an honest bench that he cannot control, and of creating a tribunal that will subserve his own or his party's ends, arranges an organization, which, by the force of legislative en- actment in abolishing an existing tribunal, and the action of a subservient appointing power, produces results. "if possible, still more deplorable.
But, after all, the misfortune to the people, in the appoint- ment or choice of judges, relates back to their own guilty apathy, in the exercise of the elective franchise. If every man reflected, that the vote which duty required him to cast at every election, was an expression of his own honest opinion, and that the result of the ballot was the true voice of the people ; if he realized that a vote for an unworthy candidate,-for a man whom he thought was not fit for the office, either from want of character or com- petency,-was an acted falsehood,-a sin from which no party Pope could give him absolution, or repair the evil that his ex- ample had sowed, tending to disease public opinion,-we should find that those fraudulent political practices, which seem to be carrying us downward to the tomb of nations, would soon be arrested, and that reverence, veneration, and new hopes would beat again in the national heart. In this Commonwealth the conservatism of the people has thus far preserved us from an ignorant or a corrupt judiciary. There has never been a taint upon the character of any of our judges, or the slightest stain upon the judicial ermine.
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