USA > Wisconsin > History of the bench and bar of Wisconsin, Vol. I > Part 19
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*Judge Cole, on the occasion referred to in a previous note, said that in his inter- course with the chief justice "conversation more than once has turned upon the sub- ject of the profound mystery which shrouds man's future destiny, and we have con- sidered together some of the arguments drawn from the analogies of nature, which are usually relied on to prove the immortality of the soul. I well remember that on one occasion he put an end to our conversation on these intensely interesting questions, by uttering with great solemnity of manner substantially this language: 'As for myself,' he said, 'I know I possess a soul-an intellectual and moral part which is immortal. · I believe that I shall have a conscious personal existence after death; that I shall meet beyond the grave friends and those I loved here, that I shall know them and they will know me. All this I as firmly believe as I believe that I shall see the sunlight to- morrow if I live.' "
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quence till the episode closed, when he resumed the argument of some stupid points in the dry case before him.
The moral character of the chief justice was pure and unsullied by the breath of suspicion. He had, as we have already shown, a profound reverence for the Deity, and possessed that spirit of humility and devo- tion to religious duty which has ever characterized the lives of the truly great.
The following incidents connected with the life of Mr. Ryan and ex- tracts from his writings are from the pen of J. H. Kennedy, and are borrowed (with permission) from vol. 6 of the Magazine of Western History. From an appreciative article published by an acquaintance soon after his death we learn that he was severely exact in the fulfill- ment of minor things. Once, when a young man, an eminent lawyer of New York gave him a letter with an injunction to deliver it only into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed. Going to the house of that gentleman, the boy found that he was absent at a club dinner, and not likely to soon return. Noentreaty or argument of the wife could win the document from his possession, and he remained in waiting until three o'clock in the morning, and delivered it into the proper hands. The same authority remarks: "Perhaps his most marked characteristic was strict adherence to all the rules of politeness. I have always con- sidered him incapable of deliberate discourtesy, and am certain that he never forgave a breach of politeness. He had a horror of what is termed bluntness, and said: 'The most insulting boor always prefaces his impertinence with such expressions as to be candid with you, or, if I must speak the truth to you.' I have seen him exceedingly anxious to learn where a client was educated, and, though the person had several long interviews with him, he never found out. He would not ask a question he deemed impertinent. I was once requested to write a com- munication upon a public question. I consented on condition that Mr. Ryan correct it. The article was written and placed in his hands. He walked to my place the next day, fully a mile, in the hot sun, and drawing the manuscript from his pocket said, 'I have carefully read this article and approve of it, excepting one correction, which you only can
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properly make.' Thinking he had found a grave error in the article, I asked him what was the correction suggested, when he pointed out the omission of the word 'and' in a sentence which, no doubt any compositor would supply, but which his keen sense of courtesy would not allow him to add. I interlined the exasperating conjunction, when he carefully took the manuscript and returned."
Another characteristic anecdote has been thus related: The quaint wisdom of the bench has never been more wittingly uttered than by the late Chief Justice Ryan of Wisconsin, in deciding that a lawyer appointed to try a case in place of a prejudiced judge had no authority, for the reason that the constitution of the state vested all judicial power in certain courts, and these could not delegate their authority. He cited a case from Hobart in point, which says: All kingdoms in this constitu- tion are with the power of justice, both according to the rule of law and equity; both of which being in the king as sovereign were after settled in several courts, as the light being first made by God was after settled in the great bodies of the sun and the moon.
After questioning the accuracy of Hobart's "constitutional law, both celestial and terrestrial," Judge Ryan said: Taking the sun and moon according to the common acceptation and following Hobart's metaphor, the circuit judge might be likened to the sun of his court, in this cause, and Mr. Cole (the lawyer who tried the case) to the moon, after the fashion of a juridical depute in Scots' law, shining with delegated juris- diction. But the constitution mars the comparison. For by the astro- nomical constitution the sun appears to take power to delegate his func- tions of lighting the world, while the state constitution tolerates no such delegation and appoints a sun only, without any moon, as luminary of the circuit court, whose "gladsome light of jurisprudence" must be sunshine, not moonshine.
That two such determined and vehement men as Judge Ryan and Senator Carpenter could long live together in the close and mutually dependent relations of a law partnership, without friction, is what might be safely called a natural impossibility; and yet their connection pro- duced fewer thunderstorms than their associates of the bar expected.
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One incident involved in these close business relations is told with great gusto by the lawyers of Milwaukee, but has never, so far as I can learn, seen the light of print. There was employed in their office a gentle- man of good natural and mental qualities, but to whom Judge Ryan, by one of those unaccountable freaks of his temper, had taken so intense a dislike that he could not bear to see him enter the room. The clerk was more especially under the direction of Mr. Carpenter, and on one occasion, while the last named was absent in court at Beloit, he en- tered Judge Ryan's room, and asked him if he had any instructions to give concerning the office work.
"Yes, sir, I have," was the answer, as Judge Ryan turned to his desk and hastily wrote a few lines. Sealing the note and addressing it, he handed it to the clerk and said, "Take that to your master as soon as you can." The clerk seized his hat and coat, and, rushing to the depot, made his train just as it was moving away from the platform. Reaching Beloit in due season he rushed into the court room where Senator Carpenter was engaged in a case, and handed him the note with the explanation that it was a matter of immediate importance. Breaking the seal Mr. Carpenter read:
Milwaukee. -, 18 -.
Matt. H. Carpenter.
Dear Sir: I want you to keep your lackey out of my office. Yours respectfully, E. G. RYAN.
When engaged in the preparation of legal briefs or opinions Judge Ryan would walk about the room, slowly dictating each sentence, and seldom changing a word or phrase when once uttered. He was as careful in the dictation of his punctuation as his language, and so much importance did he attach to the construction of sentences, that he often said he was never satisfied of the correctness of his opinion on any legal question "until he had reduced it to the test of accurate language."
For his profession, its dignity, its honorable position in the regard of the people, its share in the administration of justice, and its claim for
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due recognition on part of the other learned professions, he had the highest regard and care; and nothing would so deeply stir his wrath as á flippant or ungenerous attack upon it.
This regard held by Judge Ryan for the almost sacred commission of the law-as it appeared to him-was set forth fully in the address de- livered by him before the law class of the university, on June 22, 1880 .* The power and eloquent logic of that effort can hardly be conceived by those who have not perused it. It can, in some respects, be regarded as the finest specimen ever given of his wonderful command of words, and of the riches that lay in the deep recesses of his thought. It is not merely an address for lawyers, but for all who have love of justice or a desire for truth-for all who care to hear what a master of his profession can find to say in its honor and defense. It is regretted that only a few ran- dom quotations can be given, rather than the address in full. To the young men before him he said:
I welcome you to no tranquil life, no cultured ease. I welcome you to a calling of incessant labor, high duty, and grave responsibility. If our profession be, as I believe, the most honorable, it is also the most arduous, of all secular professions. Duty is the condition of all dignity. Law in its highest sense is the will of God. There is no incompleteness, no insufficiency, no casus omissus in the divine law. It needs no revision, no office of construction. From the beginning, it is always the same, with no variableness, neither shadow of turning. It is adequate to all conditions, all changes. It is all-sufficient for the government of human society. The problems of society and its troubles spring, not from insufficiency of law, but from disregard of the law. The law is adequate to all the exigencies of society, all its chances and changes; but obedience to the law is essential to the order of society.
As man has labored and failed and erred in his compre- hension of divine law, so has he therefore labored and blundered and miscarried his legislation. Perhaps in no other aspect in life has he more plainly manifested his slow and uncertain progress in civilization,
*The address was originally delivered to the graduating class of the college of law June 16, 1873; it was re-delivered on the date given in the text. It has been printed twice in pamphlet form, and there is yet a demand for copies of it.
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or proved his own insufficiency for himself, his dependence on wisdom and power higher than his own. The history of human legislation is a record of error and presumption. From time to time man has estab- lished code upon code as the perfection of human wisdom; from time to time he has had to modify and to change each; from time to time code upon code has been lost in the revolution or anarchy which surely awaits all systems of legislation not founded on the divine law.
Young gentlemen, this is the profession which you have chosen, to the discharge of whose active duties you are this day called. This ad- dress has been in vain if you have not verified the high, arduous and responsible nature of the duties which you are assuming; if it has not made manifest our profession as the noblest and loftiest of purely human callings. There it stands, the profession of the law, sometimes disgraced by error and sin, which are the common lot of all humanity. There it stands, the profession of the law; subrogated on earth, for the angels who administer God's law in heaven. There it stands charged with the peaceful protection of every public right of the state, of every civil and religious right of the people of the state; charged with the security and order of society. The law is a science. It is no. mere trade. It is not the road to wealth.
Of the true duty and ambition of the lawyer, he had these strong and fruitful ideas:
This is the true ambition of the lawyer: To obey God in the service of society: to fulfill His law in the order of society; to promote His order in the subordination of society to its own law, adopted under His authority: to minister to His justice by the nearest approach to it, under the municipal law, which human intelligence and conscience can ac- complish. To serve man by diligent study and true counsel of the municipal law; to aid in solving the questions and guiding the business of society, according to the law; to fulfill his allotted part in protecting society and its members against wrong; in enforcing all rights and re- dressing all wrongs; and to answer before God and man, according to the scope of his office and duty, for the true and just administration of the municipal law.
It is impossible to give space to even a synopsis of this remarkable address, and only a sentence can be culled here and there from that
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195 which remains-no attempt being made to give connection or due order of arrangement:
In our profession, character without high intellect is a greater power for good than intellect without high character.
The strength of a lawyer is in thorough knowledge of legal truth, in thorough devotion to legal right.
The bench symbolizes on earth the throne of divine justice.
Every good lawyer's office is a court of conciliation.
The bar does not claim to be the communion of saints. It only claims to be a noble organization of fallible men in a fallible society.
Behold the pettifogger, the blackleg of the law. He is, as his name imports, a stirrer-up of small litigation: a wet nurse of trifling griev- ances and quarrels. . He is a fraud upon the profession and the public; a lawyer among clowns and a clown among lawyers.
There is a variety of the animal, known by the classic name of shyster. This is a still lower specimen; the pettifogger pettifogged upon; a troglodyte who penetrates depths of still deeper darkness.
Judicial nepotism strangles the very life of the judicial function, de- poses justice from her own bench, and seats in her place, decked in her robes and masquerading in her semblance, the harlot of profligate family interest; to cozen truth and right, property and honor; to be- tray all that was dear to man, or tends to make life happy or holy; to poison the very bread of life.
In the battle of life we all stumble, we are all maimed. Few, if any, lay down their arms in that battle, without sense of failure or defeat.
True progress rests absolutely in man's obedience to the law ap- pointed for him.
Man, indeed, organized society, but God ordained it.
Without the light of revelation, man, at his best, gropes painfully in the dark, and sees dim and shadowy visions of the divine order; phan- toms of truth, rather than the truth itself.
The deep undercurrent of religious thought running through Judge Ryan's nature is suggested in the above. It is also the predominant feature of a lecture delivered by him on "Heresy," in the early part of which he said:
Heresy belongs not to theology alone. The word is pregnant with
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too shameful and terrible memories of wrong and suffering; the thing has played too potent and terrible a part in profane history, to be ex- clusively ecclesiastical. Its bloody path is tracked by fire and sword and gibbet through many Christian centuries. It has been too powerful an agent in the temporal fortunes of our race to be overlooked or un- considered in that aspect, by priest or layman, Christian or infidel, Jew or Gentile, who tries to read history by the light of philosophy. It is often said that Christianity is the great element of modern civili- zation. It is more. Christianity is civilization. It is the essential distinction between the ancient and modern order.
The Christian revelation gave to man his great charter of freedom and immortality of the soul. It gave him a dignity and a career far beyond his mere animal being. It redeemed him from being, at his best, a polished brute. Christianity has its temporal as well as its eternal uses. It not only drew the veil from eternal truth; it also revealed to man his own nature and relations in life, and founded the highest temporal philosophy. Philosophy has sometimes mistaken it for an enemy and wrestled with it. But whatever in philosophy found a real antagonist in Christianity has died the death of error.
In this lecture Judge Ryan declared it his purpose to consider his subject "in a purely historical and philosophical view;" which he did with a breadth of vision, depth of thought, and fairness of historical statement that made the address one of the greatest ever delivered from the platform. A companion lecture was that upon "Faith," which was carried along the same line of thought, and was equally re- markable for its deep and sincere recognition of the Christian religion. "Faith," he declared, "is a natural necessity as well as duty of man.
The callous, gloomy, barren egotism of unbelief is not only isolation; it is, even in a purely human sense, depravity. Man does not believe in truth, because he is not true; in worth, because he is not good. The unbelieving heart is a hermit, secluded, not from the vices, but from virtues, of mankind. History often seems a blind disorder of human folly, and passion, and guilt. Faith looks through the darkness, and sees the manifest finger of God, writing his law in man's capricious career. It is a dread mystery how, from that unfettered
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free will for good or evil for which every soul born into time must fearfully account to him who gave it, Providence works out its own unerring ends. Man may violate the law of his being, but he cannot interrupt its operation. In his wildest apostasy, as in his most obedient faith, blindly in both, man's life is all tributary to the will of God."
Granting Judge Ryan's eloquence as a speaker and reputation as a lawyer and judge, it is needless to say that he was in great demand on the lecture platform. The genius of Dickens had scarcely given "Bleak House" to the world, and "Mrs. Jellyby" had hardly had an introduc- tion to the American public, before his quick eye fell upon her, and the suggestion came into his mind that she might be made to pose before the people in the garb of some sharp and instructive truths. He accordingly carefully measured her, and eventually made her the subject of an oft delivered and ever welcome lecture. It was a skillful but earnest and logical reply to many claims put forward in those days by the advocates of woman suffrage. Mrs. Jellyby is used merely as a vehicle. "Her enthusiasm is singularly patient and far-seeing," is a tribute he pays that much-abused woman, in the opening portion of the lecture. "Through all the mortification of abortive missions, amidst all the cares and troubles of the present mission, in the manifold distraction and trial of her bedlam housekeeping, on the sudden disappointment of her daughter's ignoble dejection, even at the ignominious failure of Borrio- boola Gha itself, she wears unruffled the calm, gentle serenity of her mind and manner, and wraps her patient dignity about her as a gar- ment. And there is neither affectation nor effort in this. It is evi- dently constitutional, a manifestation of the general benignity of her character. There is nothing positively bad in Mrs. Jellyby's disposition. Her sins are all sins of omission. She is a woman of conscience, though her conscience be diseased. Think what we may of her life, to her it is a life of duty. To her own views of duty she devotes herself with un- tiring, uncompromising, unselfish energy. In this her portrait is dis- tinguished in a masterly light from the group of philanthropists about her. Her integrity is unsullied by any limit of their selfish vanity. She is always earnest, always truthful. We may condemn her life, we may
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rail at her doctrine; it is impossible to regard her with personal dis- respect. Judged by what she is, distinguished from what she fails to do. Mrs. Jellyby has no mean claim as an amiable and upright woman."
Counting Mrs. Jellyby as "a representative woman," and "a type of the strong-minded woman," the speaker declared that "Mrs. Jellyby is no mere myth," and then proceeds with a personal application of her case to that "class of restless women of all grades of intelligence, discon- tented in a greater or less degree, with the position of their sex in society. With more or less dignity and force some of these have writ- ten, some spoken, some acted, and some are now writing, speaking and acting, for a reorganization of society in its relation to woman." With a strong common sense, a careful concession of justice wherever it is demanded, and a humor hinted rather than expressed, Judge Ryan then proceeded to a consideration of the claims of woman as at that day ad- vanced. Toward the close he summed up his conclusions in the man- date that while both sexes must abide the future, woman should be educated "in the hope of that future," as "society wrongs both sexes when it denies equal education to woman." But it was in the home circle that woman's true work was to be found. "The heroes of history are not always the saints of civilization. Men write, somewhat boast- ingly, the biographies of the great. Angels record the lives of women like Esther. With all her sins, the world admires Mrs. Jellyby, but recoils with indignant disgust from her perverted womanhood. The world loves Esther Summerson with reverential love. This the whole- sale moral of our author. These are the uses of Mrs. Jellyby!"*
*Soon after his judicial duties began Judge Ryan wrote the opinion of the court on the application to admit Miss Lavinia Goodell to the bar of the supreme court, she having become a member of the Rock county bar. He said this is the first application for admission of a female to the bar of this court .. "And it is just matter for congratulation that it is made in favor of a lady whose character raises no personal objection: something perhaps not always to be looked for in women who forsake the ways of their sex for the ways of ours." After discussion which led to the conclusion that there was no authority for the admission of females to the bar of any court of the state, the opinion continues: "And, with all the respect and sym- pathy for this lady which all men owe to all good women, we cannot regret that we do not, we cannot but think the common law wise in excluding women from the profession of the law. The profession enters largely in the well being of
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Judge Ryan had also commenced a lecture on "The Reign of Me- diocrity," which never progressed beyond a few pages of manuscript, which are now in existence. With two more extracts from speeches made by him upon important occasions, which illustrate his power upon themes diverse from the above, and from each other, we desist from a line of inquiry that is certainly pleasant and full of rich and abun- dant fruits. In his speech in the prosecution of the Radcliffe murder case in 1852, we find this compact statement of truth:
Life is the gift of God, yet one which any, however weak, may take away, but which not the united power of all men in all countries and of all times can restore. It is not that we crave for the defend- ant's blood that we stand here. We pity him. God knows that we pity him, and those who are connected with him! But we stand here for the blood of the living. It is not for the blood of Ross, but for the blood of everyone in this hall, and in this community; it is for the blood of those yet unborn, and of all who are to live after us; it is that murder may cease, that men may reflect, pause, turn cowards before they strike down their fellow men; it is because the law of God and the law of man, and the safety and existence of society demand it, that we stand here and urge upon you a conviction of the defendant.
society; and, to be honorably filled and safely to society, exacts the devotion of life. The law of nature destines and qualifies the female sex for the bearing and nurture of the children of our race and for the custody of the homes of the world and their maintenance in love and honor. And all life-long callings of women, in- consistent with these radical and sacred duties of their sex, as is the profession of the law, are departures from the order of nature; and when voluntary, treason against it. The cruel chances of life sometimes baffle both sexes, and may leave women free from the peculiar duties of their sex. These may need employment, and should be welcome to any not derogatory to their sex and its proprieties, or incon- sistent with the good order of society. But it is public policy to provide for the sex, not for its superfluous members; and not to tempt women from the proper duties of their sex by opening to them duties peculiar to ours. There are many employments in life not unfit for female character. The profession of the law is surely not one of these. The peculiar qualities of womanhood, its gentle graces, its quick sensibility, its tender susceptibility, its purity, its delicacy, its emotional im- pulses, its subordination of hard reason to sympathetic feeling, are surely not quali- fications for forensic strife. Nature has tempered woman as little for the judicial conflicts of the court room as for the physical conflicts of the battlefield. Woman- hood is moulded for gentler and better things."
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