did not perish until after he had ceased to exist. The following is the concluding portion of his judgment:

I have from all these considerations formed the opinion that Mrs. Ball survived her husband. The legacies must be disposed of as provided for in the contingency which has happened, of the death of the testator without leaving issue. Such as have lapsed must be distributed. In closing this judgment, continues the chancellor, I cannot sufficiently testify my respect for the honorable disposition manifested by all parties. An appeal to the law was made only because the minority of some of the parties at interest rendered a compromise difficult if not impossible. It is not a case for costs. Let the costs be paid out of the estate before distribution and deducted from the amounts coming to the parties ratably.

The case was appealed by the complainants and before the Appellate Court again argued by Mr. Memminger for the heirs of Mrs. Ball and Mr. Petigru contra.

The unanimous judgment of the Appellate Court sustained the judgment of the chancellor in the court below.

In other forms this case came before the Courts of Equity at several subsequent sittings, but only with the view of determining the equitable rights of the several parties who were claimants under the provisions of the will of Mr. Ball. These several cases will be found fully reported in the Equity Reports of Cheves, Spear and 1st Richardson.

There is no case in which Mr. Memminger appeared as counsel among the many reported in the South Carolina decisions, in which his remarkable facility for stating concisely and with the utmost clearness the propositions involved, is more conspicuously set forth than in the case of The State ex-relatione Shiver and others versus the Comptroller-General, reported at length in the fourth volume of Richardson's Reports, 1872.

This was a petition praying for a writ of mandamus commanding the Comptroller-General to give notice to the auditors of each county in South Carolina of the rate per centum of three mills on the dollar on the assessed value

of all of the taxable property in the State for the redemption of certain treasury certificates, known as the "Blue Ridge Railroad Revenue Bond Script."

Under the provision of an act of the Legislature passed when the negro and "Carpet-bag" government was dominating the State, the Comptroller was authorized to issue one million eight hundred thousand dollars of Treasury certificates to be exchanged for the bonds of the Blue Ridge Railroad Company, held by the financial agent of the State in New York, as collateral security for advances made to the said railroad company. In this cause Mr. Memminger, with Mr. J. D. Pope, Mr. Haskell and Attorney-General Melton, represented the State. The argument of Mr. Memminger, as embraced in the report of the case, is a perfect illustration of all that has been heretofore presented with respect to his peculiar characteristics as a lawyer. I would abstract fully from these and present his clear statement of the law in the case, but do not deem it necessary to dwell longer on this interesting branch of my most interesting subject.

As an advocate Mr. Memminger never attempted the art and mannerism of an orator of the schools. While he was often eloquent, his eloquence was the expression of strong thought, logically conveyed, convincing the mind and demolishing all opposition by the earnest manner in which it was delivered. His diction was always that of unexceptionably good English, but at no time did he revel in the fancies of a mere rhetorician. He dealt in no epigrammatic alliterations, no hyperboles, no tropes or dazzling figures with which to enrapture the sentimental and to obscure his reasoning. He has been thought by some to have been devoid of sentiment, but only by those whose temperaments and mental structure made them more poetic than philosophic. While the drill of his faculties, and

indeed his intellectual endowments, caused Mr. Memminger to take a practical view of life, yet there was a profound sentiment pervading his nature. If this did not find expression in ditties of love and in songs of praise; if it did not come in the form of measured verse or in the well-rounded periods of the rostrum, it nevertheless was moving in his soul, responsive to every touch that reached the chords of a wellstrung harp, whose sweet music brought joy to many a weary pilgrim in life's desert way. His sentiment never took the form of gushing enthusiasm, or was it ever found on a spasmodic parade, but it moved quietly as a great undercurrent in his serene and appreciative nature. His mind was eminently logical. In his orations, or addresses, he always sought to convince his hearers by argument and not to lead them by appeals to their emotions. Those who knew him well, and were long associated with him at the Bar and in the legislative councils of the State, testify that he possessed to a remarkable degree the power of stating his propositions with such clearness, and presenting them with such an earnest manner, that he brought conviction of their truth even before they were supported by an argument.

Mr.

It was this peculiar characteristic that made him so effective before a jury. From his contemporaries I learn that his statement of a case to the jury was always so lucid, so direct and so earnest that there was but little left to be done after it had been made but to support it with evidence. Memminger had no ideal in oratory. He had studied at no particular school the arts or the formulas of a master. Hence in his delivery and in his discourse there was nothing that appeared as a borrowed garb either in his thought or action. As in his composition, so in his elocution there was the constant reflex of the personality of the man, finding expression in simple and therefore forcible terms, and under no circumstances disguised in the toggery of a "greenroom," or by the strut of a stage performance.

In his discourses Mr. Memminger never carried his hearers on an excursion through the air. You might rest secure upon the earth, for he was no intellectual æronaut, and never ventured to risk his own or the comfort of his audience by a voyage among the clouds. He sought to convince their minds, and would build before them a pyramid of reasoning whose finished apex was the conclusive induction of his own lucid mind, warmed into an intense glow by the fervor of his earnest spirit.

Hence it was that Mr. Memminger was so painstaking and careful in laying the foundation of his arguments. His premises were established in the most adroit and skillful manner, bringing with them fact after fact, with no redundant terms or superfluous drapery to arrest the attention of his audience or to weaken the force of their array. He marshaled these as a skillful general would his advanced line of battle, holding as a strong reserve, to be thrown at any weak point, a well-prepared, concise and clear statement of the propositions he desired to sustain. His argument was the energetic advance of his columns in a phalanx of reasoning compact as the legions of Cæsar. In support of this argument he brought forward authorities and cited precedents selected with great care from his large park of legal artillery.

Thus prepared, either for attack or defense, he was invincible before a jury, and was seldom reversed by the courts of last resort.

He was an excellent counsellor. To use the language of the Hon. Joseph D. Pope, a most competent judge:

Mr. Memminger was one of the best of our lawyers in consultation in a law case of any intricacy, in determining what should be put forward and what should be kept back, and hence he was a superb examiner of witnesses.

In a case of purely a business character involving the details of commercial transactions, Mr. Memminger was superior to Mr. Petigru or of any lawyer I have ever known. He was not an orator in the Cicero

nian sense, and yet he was possessed with the power of convincing his hearers to a marvelous extent. Chancellor Johnston once said that when Mr. Memminger had finished the statement of his case there was little need for an argument. It was this peculiar gift that enabled Mr. Memminger to have such power everywhere; in the Cabinet or in the Legislature, before a board of railroad directors, at a bank meeting, or at a meeting of citizens to consider any public enterprise; in the councils of the church or of the bar, he was always a controlling spirit and an irresistible power.

Mr. Petigru's superiority consisted in the manner in which he would discuss the philosophic principles on which the law rested and the eloquence with which he would present these views, particularly if he had any personal feeling in the matter or his sympathies had been appealed to. Mr. Petigru was a great humorist and a remarkable wit. His argument would be at times bristling with glittering shafts of satire, or sparkling with the most pungent witicisms. On the contrary, Mr. Memminger would in the statement of his cases and in the marvelous skill of his analysis, build up his logical arguments so strongly that not even the chaste diction and eloquence of Mr. Petigru or the sparkle of his wit could overcome the impression he had made. If Mr. Memminger had been an English barrister he would have been a great leader in Parliament. The soundness of his judgment and great practical sense, which seems always to have governed the English Parliament, would have given him great prominence there. He would never have governed the House of Commons as did Lord Chatham, but he would have led it like Sir Robert Peel, whom he greatly resembled in many respects.