They could not, however, get along without him in Massachusetts, and forgave perforce his occasional derelictions. He was several times their candidate for Governor, narrowly missing success, until in 1807 he was elected, and again in 1808 was re-elected, dying in that year before his term of office had expired. Democrat though he was, he had lived handsomely, and was opposed in the gubernatorial campaign, as Gore was soon afterward, on the ground that he was too much of an aristocrat. The personal charges brought against him in the canvass were very discreditable to his opponents, but are now in a certain sense agreeable reading, as showing that falsehood and calumny were at least as freely used in political warfare in those days as in our own. Few men, near the close of so long and active a life, could have been found so invulnerable to just reproach as was Governor Sullivan. Theophilus Parsons was a student in the office of Judge Trowbridge. When admitted to practice at the bar he opened his office in Newburyport, and there did a thriving business for the merchants and ship-captains who then gave an air of liveliness and enterprise

to the streets of that now tranquil and sleepy

old town. He became a master of prize

TheopParsons

and admiralty law, then a lucrative branch of practice, and divided the business in these departments with John Lowell and Governor Sullivan. Clients who are making money fast are usually welcome to the lawyer's office, and such were the kind who came to Parsons. One of them, a master of a privateer, one day threw into the lap of Mrs. Parsons as she sat, after the simple, pleasant fashion of the day, in her husband's office — a dozen heavy silver-gilt spoons, with the remark that "the squire had not charged him half enough." Another, one day, said that in praying the Lord to make him rich he believed he must have prayed too hard, for it seemed that now the Almighty "meant to drown him out." Parsons came to Boston in 1806 with a high reputation. It was remarked that he never used a brief, trusting with perfect confidence to a memory of extraordinary tenacity. He addressed jurors and judges alike with brevity, simplicity, and force, and achieved brilliant successes. Chief-Justice Parker has left a description of him in argument: "He put one foot on his chair, and, with an elbow on his knee, leaned over and began to talk about the case as a man might talk to a neighbor at his fireside." A juror once said of him: "He is not much of a lawyer, and he don't talk or look as if he would ever be one; but he seems a real good sort of a man." He had an eccentric habit of declining ever to take a fee from a widow or a clergyman.

Parsons was appointed by Governor Strong to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Chief-Justice Dana. The promotion was made over the head, as it were, of the senior Associate Justice, Theodore Sedgwick, at the private intercession of Judges Isaac Parker and Samuel E. Sewall. The truth was, that Sedgwick was a courteous and amiable gentleman, who could not be expected to make any reform in the extreme and mischievous laxity which then disfigured the administration of justice; but Parsons was a man of

VOL. IV. -75.

different temper. No sooner had he taken his seat upon the bench than the whole air of the court-room seemed charged with a terrible energy. No excuse was listened to, no delay was admitted. Counsel might try in their turn, or they must submit to the inexorable non-suit or default. The dropsical dockets rapidly shrunk when gashed by the unsparing lancet of the new Chief. The lawyers at first grumbled much; but suitors were better pleased, and the great improvement effected soon reconciled all persons to the new system. Yet it cannot be denied that Parsons often carried his autocratic spirit too far. It was not only that his manners were rough; but he was too apt to take the case into his own hands, to lead or drive the jury according to his own notions, and not unfrequently even to refuse to hear the arguments of counsel. In spite of his perfect honesty and his shrewd intelligence, this was over-doing the judicial authority. Samuel Dexter, once smarting beneath one of these arbitrary interruptions, said with some temper, “Your honor did not argue your own cases in the way you require of us." "Certainly not," replied Parsons; "but that was the judge's fault, not mine." He had a quick and trenchant tongue, and was almost as proud of his reputation for wit as of his standing as a lawyer; so that it was dangerous for counsel to tilt with him, especially when he had the authority of office at his back. Yet sometimes he got as good as he gave. For example, once, when he was in Hampshire on circuit, Elijah H. Mills, afterward a distinguished lawyer and politician of Northampton, then very young at the bar, was compelled to take charge of the cases of an old lawyer who had been taken suddenly ill. Mills called upon the chief justice with a letter of introduction, stated the embarrassing position in which he found himself, and asked for advice as to whom he should employ as senior counsel in the emergency. "I think on the whole," said Parsons, "that you had better employ nobody; you and I can do the business about as well as any one." It was hardly to be wondered at that these allies made a brilliant campaign through the session. At its close, one of the old country lawyers visited the chief-justice, and, as he rose to take leave, Parsons said to him, "Well, Mr.- —, I shall expect to see you at the next term.” "I'm not so sure of that, judge," retorted the other; "I think some of sending my office-boy with my papers; you and he together will do the business full as well as I can."

Parsons was a sound Federalist; but unlike his rivals of that political creed, he was far from being an aristocrat in manners or appearance. He was slouching in figure, and careless to the point of being actually slatternly and unclean in his dress and person. Once when he was going on circuit, his wife put six clean shirts in his valise, with strict injunctions that he should be sure to put on a fresh shirt every day. On his return at the end of the week, no shirt was to be found in his valise; he vowed solemnly that he could not account for it, that he had put on a fresh shirt every morning. It turned out that he had indeed done so; but he had never taken off a shirt during the time: he had put one on over another to the end of the supply!

He died in 1813, at the age of sixty-three, of some trouble in the head. As his mind wandered towards the end, his last words were: "Gentlemen of the jury, the case is closed, and in your hands; you will please retire, and agree upon your verdict." 1

annum.

In casting about to determine which law office in Boston he should enter, Daniel Webster found none so well suited to his taste as that of Governor Gore. It was with no small diffidence that the lad from the country, unknown and unfriended, ventured to approach the famous and aristocratic lawyer whose office then was in "Scollay's Building," where now stands the statue of Winthrop. But Mr. Gore received him with great kindliness, and readily gave him all the opportunities which he wished. A warm friendship grew up and endured between them during the remaining years of the ex-governor's life, and Webster always held his memory, both as a man and as a lawyer, in great veneration. It was while in Mr. Gore's office that Mr. Webster had the offer of the clerkship of a court of common pleas in New Hampshire, with a salary of one thousand five hundred dollars per It seems astonishing now to think that his first impulse was to accept this position, and it is curious to speculate upon what would have been his career had he done so. Fortunately, however, Mr. Gore threw his influence so vigorously and authoritatively into the opposite scale that Webster changed his mind, refused the office, to the extreme disappointment of his aged father, and was saved to his country and his profession. Soon afterward, in 1805, in the Court of Common Pleas in Boston, Mr. Gore moved the admission of Mr. Webster to the Bar, and according to the custom of the day he made a short speech concerning his pupil. "It is a well-known tradition," says Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, "that on this occasion Mr. Gore predicted the future eminence of his young friend. What he said has not been preserved; but that he said what Mr. Webster never forgot, that it was distinctly a prediction, and that it excited in him a resolve that it should not go unfulfilled, we have upon his own authority, although he appears to have been unwilling to repeat the words of Mr. Gore's address." After this ceremony Mr. Webster returned to New Hampshire; but a principle of gravitation too strong to be resisted drew him back towards Boston, of which place he became permanently a citizen in August, 1816. There he not only found congenial friends and devoted admirers, but was often able to make more money in a single case than he had been able to gather in twelve

[We fortunately have a filial record of Judge Parsons's life in a Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, by his son of the same name, written over fifty years after the judge's death, and when but a small portion of his manuscripts remained in the family hands. An unfinished portrait by Stuart, painted after Judge Parsons's death, but regarded as an admirable likeness," is prefixed to the volume. It is said in Mason's Stuart, p. 236, that the artist Alexander painted in the eyes in the unfinished picture, before it was engraved.

After coming to Boston, he lived for a year on
the southerly side of Bromfield Street, but in
ISO1 he bought a house with a large garden on
the castern side of Pearl Street, and there died.
Judge Parsons's library was for his day a very
large one, between five and six thousand vol-
umes. After his death in 1813, it was sold for
more than its original cost with interest.
"Such

a sale was then without precedent, and has not
occurred since, that I know of," says his son.
Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, p. 263. — ED.]

months in New Hampshire, where his practice, we are told, had never been worth more than two thousand dollars a year, and was scarcely susceptible

of possible increase beyond that paltry sum. Mr. Webster's fame as a statesman far overshadows his reputation as a lawyer; yet in the argument of a

constitutional question he has never had a superior. He can hardly, however, be regarded as peculiarly associated with Boston in his professional career; for though he often practised in the State courts, and had many steady clients in this city, his chief business was in the Supreme Court at Washington, and it was before that tribunal that all his greatest efforts were made. Among his professional achievements, by far the most popularly known are his great speeches in the Knapp cases at Salem. It may be doubted whether a more effective harangue was ever uttered in a court-room, than that famous and familiar speech which contains the now proverbial words: "There was no escape from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession." In the earlier trial Franklin Dexter, who had the arduous task of defending the accused not only against a terrible weight of adverse testimony, but also against the superb eloquence of Webster, complained to

preferred by many was that made by Thomas Ball, upon which, with some changes, that artist moulded the statue which in 1876 was erected in Central Park, New York, when the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop and others delivered addresses. The proceedings of the occasion were issued in a sumptuous quarto, with a large engraving of the statue, and another is given in Harvey's Reminiscences of Webster.

The engraved portraits of Mr. Webster are numerous; but the following will show the grad ual change in his appearance, of which Mr. Everett speaks in his defence of Powers's statue: a miniature, painted at twenty-two, and engraved on the title of Harvey's Reminiscences; by Miss Goodrich, a miniature, painted in 1820, in the Private Correspondence, i.; by Healy, in 1843, in Curtis's Life of Webster, i.; by Chester Harding, engraved by Schoff, in Works, i., and in the Boston Memorial; and another, in 1849, in Curtis's Life, ii., engraved by Jackman after Whipple's daguerreotype; by J. Ames in 1852, with slouched hat and fishing costume, a full length in Harvey's Reminiscences; and a similar head by Ames, in Private Correspondence, ii.

Mr. Webster's fame is so closely connected with the Federalist town and the Whig city, that it may be well to indicate the chief contributions to an understanding of his character and career. The two most authentic accounts of him are the Memoir which Mr. Everett prefixed to Webster's Works, in their author's lifetime, and the extended Life prepared by his executor, George Ticknor Curtis, published in 1869; many of the papers on which it was based are now in the collection of Charles P. Greenough. Esq. Mr. Curtis subsequently, in 1878, issued in explanation of Webster's later political views a little monograph on The Last Years of Webster. Webster's son, Fletcher, published the Private Correspondence in two volumes in 1857, with which was an autobiographical fragment ending with 1817, and some recollections of his school

days by his mates.

Charles Hale gave a paper

on his literary work in college in Old and New, July, 1873. It is noteworthy that Webster's first Latin lesson at Exeter was recited to Joseph Stevens Buckminster, the subsequent Boston pulpit orator. Books dealing more or less with bis personal character are Charles Lanman's Private Life of Daniel Webster, 1856, and Peter Harvey's Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Webster, 1877. March's Reminiscences of Congress deal largely with Webster up to 1835; and the lives of his political contemporaries all throw sidelights. Joel Parker delivered an address treating him as a jurist. Edwin P. Whipple has measured him in his Essays, i. 172, and lately in an Essay presenting Webster as a master of English style in Webster's Great Speeches, 1879. At his death in 1852, the Eulogies in Congress were printed in a volume; George S. Hillard delivered an oration before the Government of Boston, which, with other memorials, made up a commemorative volume issued by the city. Other addresses of a like character were delivered by Mr. Everett (in his Works); and another, by Rufus Choate, was spoken at Dartmouth, the alma mater of both, and the manuscript of this is now in the Public Library, as well as other interesting memorials, — namely, the short-hand report made by Joseph Gales of Webster's reply to Hayne, Jan. 26, 1830, and the copy which the author prepared from it for the press, and the silver vase given to him in 1835 by various Boston gentlemen. It should be remembered that the city also owns Healy's large picture of Webster replying to Hayne, which hangs in Faneuil Hall. Party feeling, or that judgment which came from such as kept aloof from his admirers, sometimes took issue with the estimates commonly made of him; and some of these antagonistic views can be found in Theodore Parker's Historic Americans, James Parton's Famous Americans, and in Wendell Phillips's Speeches.-ED.]