of his great industry and accuracy." "Mr. Francis succeeded Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Chew succeeded to Mr. Francis, in the office of Attorney-General, and in professional eminence." Mr. Chew remained at the Bar until 1774, and was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from that time until the former order of things passed away; and although there are a few other names, at the same epoch, to be added to these three, yet the narrowness of the tradition, taken altogether, the constitution of the Provincial Supreme Court, in which the Chief Justice was commonly the only lawyer, the total absence of every note of judicial decision until 1754, and the all but total until after 1776, had caused that Bar to disappear from nearly all memories at the beginning of the present century; and therefore, in the middle of the fourth generation since the Revolution, I have taken the liberty of referring to the earliest Bar under the new order of things, as being the Old Bar of Philadelphia. From that time to the present, the Bar of this City has been an identity, superintended by competent and frequently very able judges, whose proceedings have been vouched by authoritative reports, and having, at all times, among its leaders, men of legal erudition and ability. It is not, however, to ignore the primitive Bar, so much as to give its due precedence to the first Bar of the Commonwealth as a scientific Bar, and as the true ancestry of the present Bar, that I have used the language in the title-page. The description of the subjects of sketch, as the leaders of the Bar, may appear to be too definite; but although definite, it is not meant to be exclusive. It must not imply that there were no others who held the position of leaders. The three in particular were the seniors, by a few years, of all the Bar, and were generally the most prominent in the professional as well as in the public eye. My own freer association with them has induced me to select them from the body, and to pay to them a debt which, though it may have too little dignity to be called a debt to the law, is a debt or duty to their learning and ability in the law. In the new order of things introduced by the American Revolution, these gentlemen largely contributed to establish the reputation of the Bar of this City. Their professional example and learning were of great and extensive use in their day, and ought to be handed down by something better than such fugitive pages as these. A lawyer who has passed his youth and early manhood in the society of such men, is the happier for it through life, and especially in old age. On all occasions of vexation or weariness with things near at hand, he can escape at pleasure into the past of these men, which was full of their influence, full also of judicial independence and dignity, and full of professional honor, with unlimited public respect; from which scene, the few clouds that are to be found in the clearest skies have been absorbed or dispelled by time, and to which the clouds of his own day, if there are any, cannot follow him. PHILADELPHIA, March, 1859. H. B. |