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EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES 
 
 OF 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD 
 
 ; 
 7 El. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Adjournment of New York Legislature, April 13, 
 1894, out of respect to the memory of David 
 
 Dudley Field 17 
 
 Address of Mr. Field, at a banquet given to mem 
 bers of the Universal Peace Congress, July, 
 
 1890 61 
 
 Abbott, Mr. Austin. On the work of Mr. Field. . 79 
 Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure completed 
 
 in 1850 11 
 
 Dillon, Hon. John F. Paper on the True Profes 
 sional Ideal, illustrating in the career of Mr. 
 
 Field several phases of that character 64 
 
 Field, David Dudley 
 
 His remarkable career 7 
 
 Admitted to the bar as attorney in 1828 and 
 
 as counsellor in 1830 9 
 
 His personality 41 
 
 His unobtrusive generosity 57 
 
 Poem by him at eighty-seven 47 
 
 Last tribute. Funeral services at Calvary Church, 
 
 April 15, 1894 48 
 
 Letter of Mr. John E. Parsons, on Mr. Field s love 
 
 of children 55 
 
 Letter of Rev. Dr. Henry van Dyke, the compan 
 ion of Mr. Field on his last voyage 56 
 
 Letter of Hon. John Randolph Tucker, on Mr. 
 Field s movement for international arbitrament. 61 
 
Page. 
 
 Minute of a meeting of the Faculty of Washington 
 and Lee University, held May 14, 1894, on the 
 
 death of Mr. Field 62 
 
 Political career of Mr. Field 34 
 
 Proceedings on the death of Mr. Field, May 3, 1894, 
 by the Association for the Reform and Codifica 
 tion of the Law of Nations 59 
 
 Resolution on the death of Mr. Field, May 3, 1894, 
 by the International Arbitration and Peace As 
 sociation 60 
 
 The New York World on the death of Mr. Field. . 18 
 The New York Evangelist on the life and character 
 
 of Mr. Field 41 
 
 The writer of the New York codes of law , 38 
 
 Words of the pouugest brother of Mr. Field in The 
 Evangelist, April 26, 1894 49 
 
EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES 
 
 OF 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
 
 [From the New York Times of April 14, 1894.] 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, the eminent jurist, died at his 
 residence, 22 Gramercy Park, at 3.30 o clock yesterday 
 morning, April 13. 
 
 Mr. Field was ill only a few hours. His end was 
 painless and peaceful. 
 
 He returned from Europe Tuesday, April 11, on the 
 steamship Columbia. He went abroad to visit his only 
 surviving child, Lady Musgrave, widow of Sir Anthony 
 Musgrave, who at the time of his death was Governor 
 of Queensland, Australia. Lady Musgrave lives in 
 Sussex County, England. After his visit to her, Mr. 
 Field went to Italy, whence he came home. It is sup 
 posed that he caught cold while crossing the ocean, 
 but there were no signs of illness when he landed. 
 He was hale and hearty and looked as if he might live 
 many years longer. 
 
 Thursday afternoon a slight cough began to trouble 
 him, and late in the afternoon his family deemed it 
 serious enough to call in a physician. 
 
 Dr. Stephen Burt was summoned, and said that Mr. 
 
Field had a congestive chill with symptoms of pneu 
 monia. He grew worse so rapidly that Dr. Francis 
 Delafield, an authority on diseases of the lungs and 
 throat, was called in to consult with Dr. Burt. 
 
 At 6 o clock Dr. Delafield left the house. Mr. Field 
 appeared to be improving, and Dr. Delafield gave it as 
 his opinion that he would recover. 
 
 Although Dr. Burt remained with Mr. Field there 
 seemed to be nothing to do to add to his comfort. The 
 progress of the disease was apparently checked. The 
 patient rested quietly, and slept most of the time. 
 
 But at 3 o clock in the morning it was seen that a 
 change was coming over Mr. Field, and the household 
 was aroused and gathered in his room. 
 
 Besides Dr. Burt there were present his daughter-in- 
 law, Mrs. Dudley Field, Jr.; his niece, Miss Clara Field, 
 and several of the family servants. 
 
 Restoratives were applied in vain, and at 3.30 o clock 
 Mr. Field passed quietly away. 
 
 When Mr. Field arrived from Europe, the Eev. Henry 
 M. Field sent this telegram to Justice Field at Wash 
 ington : 
 
 " Dudley arrived this morning in splendid condition." 
 
 In answer he received a letter from Justice Field in 
 viting the two brothers to Washington for a visit. 
 The reply to this letter was this dispatch sent yester- 
 
 " Our brother passed away early this morning." 
 
 Justice Field arrived from Washington last night. 
 The funeral will be held Sunday afternoon at Calvary 
 
Church, Fourth avenue and Twentieth street. The 
 body will be taken to Stockbridge, Mass., for burial. 
 Mr. Field s father and mother were buried there. 
 
 The pall-bearers are : Chief Justice Fuller of the 
 United States Supreme Court, John Bigelow, Joseph 
 PI. Choate, William M. Evarts, Abram S. Hewitt, ex- 
 Judge Charles A. Peabody, Chancellor MacCracken, 
 Eobert E. Deyo, Kobert M. Gallaway, Charles Butler, 
 Judge Charles Andrews, Judge A. E. Lawrence, and 
 H. H. Anderson. 
 
 When the news of Mr. Field s death became known 
 throughout the city, expressions of regret were heard 
 on every hand. Mayor Gilroy ordered the flags on the 
 City Hall displayed at half-mast, and the flag over the 
 Lawyers Club, in the Equitable Building, was also at 
 half-mast. 
 
 Judge Pryor, sitting in Part I. of the Court of Com 
 mon Pleas ; Judge Bookstaver, holding a Special Term 
 of the Court of Common Pleas, and Judge Giegerich, 
 in Part III. of the Court of Common Pleas, adjourned 
 court when they heard of Mr. Field s death. 
 
 The journals of the day were filled with notices of 
 Mr. Field s life and career. Some of them are here 
 reprinted at the suggestion of friends. 
 
 ME. FIELD S EEMAEKABLE CAEEEE. 
 
 ONE OF FOUR BROTHERS, EACH OF WHOM ATTAINED DIS 
 TINCTION. 
 
 When four such brothers as David Dudley, Stephen 
 J., Cyrus W., and Henry M. Field are born into one 
 
8 
 
 family, unusual interest attaches to the stock from 
 which they sprang. In a republic which recognizes 
 the aristocracy of achievement as ranking the preten 
 sions of wealth and family, lineage is certainly not 
 overvalued, at least in the case of men. But in the 
 case of the Field brothers there is conspicuous rein 
 forcement and illustration of what Dr. Holmes has 
 termed the dynamic force of New England s Brahmin 
 blood. 
 
 The Kev. Dr. David Dudley Field, the father of the 
 famous brothers, was the son of Captain Timothy Field 
 of Guilford, Conn., a soldier in the war of the Kevolu- 
 tion. He settled at Haddam, Conn., after being edu 
 cated at Yale College, where he was the room-mate of 
 Jeremiah Evarts, father of William M. Evarts. He 
 received his doctorate from Williams College. Both 
 father and mother lived until their first child, David, 
 who was born February 13, 1805, was well past fifty 
 years of age. In their declining years they reaped an 
 ample reward of comfort and pride for their early 
 labors. Coming from this clerical and military stock, 
 there should be no surprise at the brains and spirit 
 which ranked David Dudley Field among the first law 
 yers of his time. 
 
 In 1819 his father removed from Haddam, Conn., 
 and became pastor of the church in Stockbridge, Mass., 
 where his eldest son was educated at the academy 
 along with Mark Hopkins, afterwards President of 
 Williams College, and his brother Albert, professor of 
 astronomy, all of whom entered the college, and their 
 personal relations remained through life of the most 
 affectionate character. Leaving college in 1825, he 
 began the study of law in the office of Harm anus 
 
9 
 
 Bleecker, at Albany. After a few months he aspired to 
 a wider sphere, and came to New York. He travelled 
 by river, as there were then no railroads. He boarded 
 at 80 Canal street, having for his companions William 
 Cullen Bryant and his wife. His new law teachers 
 were Henry and Kobert Sedgwick, who hailed from 
 Stockbridge. In 1828 he was admitted to the bar as 
 an attorney, as was then the custom, and in 1830 as 
 counsellor. He was almost immediately admitted to 
 partnership with the Sedgwicks, and was at once in the 
 full tide of a practice which scarcely slackened for half 
 a century. Within a half dozen years he had conceived 
 in all its scope and symmetry the idea upon which his 
 fame will rest. If his career is nearly unique for its 
 mere length, it is no less remarkable that his first work 
 was also both the ripest and soundest he ever did, and 
 was left incomplete probably never to be completed 
 by his death. 
 
 It is no proper part or province of an obituary rec 
 ord to discuss the merits of codification of the common 
 law. That is a boundless field, full of controversy, and 
 with weighty authority on both sides. Moreover, it is 
 scarcely a popular subject, being fitter for professional 
 journals. But no account of Mr. Field s life would be 
 complete without an attempt to indicate to unprofes 
 sional readers the scope of his labors as a codifier and 
 reformer of the common law. Caligula published his 
 laws by inscribing them in small 1 tters at the top of a 
 high pillar. But whoever broke the law was never 
 excused because he could not read it. The common law 
 so far improved upon this precedent that it was wholly 
 " unwritten." The only way authoritatively to discover 
 it was to take the opinion of a judge upon an actual 
 
10 
 
 case. " Do you know how judges make the common 
 law ? " indignantly asked Jeremy Bentham, and answered 
 himself : " Just as a man makes laws for his dog. When 
 your dog does anything you want to break him of, you 
 wait till he does it and then beat him for it. And this 
 is the way the judges make law for you and me." 
 
 In the course of centuries unnumbered thousands of 
 such decisions, taken together, composed the body of 
 the common law. In one volume of New York Re 
 ports 5,037 cases were cited by counsel in arguing one 
 hundred and twenty-three cases in a period of only two 
 months. None of those lawyers could know the law 
 until the judge had spoken, and as for clients, they ex 
 perienced the working of Jeremy Bentham s remark, 
 even though they never heard of it. The task with 
 which David Dudley Field associated himself was to go 
 through thousands of volumes containing 
 
 That codeless myriad of precedents, 
 That wilderness of single instances, 
 
 and reduce them to form and order. By extracting 
 principles, by rejecting superfluous cases, by reconcil 
 ing, condensing, and rejecting, Mr. Field contended 
 that the law could be compressed into a single book, 
 where any man could go for himself and read his rights 
 and duties according to the natural measure of his in 
 telligence. The most acute and industrious master of 
 literature, Macaulay, after personal experience as mem 
 ber of the Supreme Council of India, declared codify 
 ing the law to be " among the most difficult tasks upon 
 which the human mind can be employed." Mr. Field s 
 opponents went beyond this. They contended that the 
 task was impossible, and that if it were done, it would 
 
11 
 
 be harmful by introducing inflexible monarchical 
 methods into a community which preferred to make its 
 law from day to day, as cases arose. 
 
 Seldom, if ever, was there such a legal battle. Mr. 
 Field s first formal proposal was outlined in a letter to 
 Senator G. C. Verplanck in 1839. From that day for 
 half a century he was ready to fight in its behalf at any 
 provocation, and he was kept busy most of the time. 
 The bar almost as one man protested that he was an 
 impracticable visionary. The Bar Association formally 
 resolved against him, and retracted the resolution after 
 argument in its own halls. But it sent committee after 
 committee to appear against him before the Legislature s 
 committees, and the field was threshed over almost 
 yearly. Sometimes the bill would pass one house, 
 sometimes the other, and twice it passed both, only to 
 be vetoed and recur again in later years. 
 
 His elaborate " Codes of Civil and Criminal Pro 
 cedure " were completed in 1850, and were later adopted 
 by the State Legislature. In 1857 Mr. Field was ap 
 pointed head of a commission to prepare a political 
 and civil code for the State of New York. They were 
 completed in 1865. The State only adopted the Penal 
 Code. 
 
 Now Mr. Field has gone, leaving the substantive 
 common law of New York codified, indeed, but not en 
 acted. But the criminal law has been both codified 
 and enacted, and so has the law of both civil and crimi 
 nal procedure. If this were all, it would be very much ; 
 but while his own State was hard-hearted toward the 
 codifier and reformer, other States and nations wel 
 comed his work with flattering enthusiasm. His entire 
 work has been adopted in two States ; the Code of 
 
12 
 
 Civil Procedure has been adopted to some degree in a 
 majority of the States, while seventeen States have 
 enacted the Criminal Code. 
 
 Nor is this all. His labors have been effective liter- 
 erally around the world. In India and Japan and in 
 many British colonies the scheme of law which New 
 York rejected at the hands of its own citizen was adopted 
 by them from the hands of an alien, and the principles 
 he first formulated to remedy century-old abuses now 
 enter into the legal system of every English-speaking 
 people. 
 
 It was in 1866 that he brought before the British As 
 sociation for the Promotion of Social Science a propo 
 sal for a general revision and reform of the law of all 
 nations similar to that which he had before undertaken 
 
 of the civil and criminal law. A committee of eminent 
 
 
 
 jurists of different countries was appointed to draw up an 
 international code, which it was hoped would receive the 
 approval of, and be adopted by, the Governments rep 
 resented as the recognized law of nations. The mem 
 bers of the committee found it impossible to agree, and 
 Mr. Field took upon his own shoulders the whole work. 
 His " Outlines of an International Code," the result of 
 seven years hard work, attracted the attention of the 
 whole world, and was translated into French and Italian. 
 An international association was formed, including in 
 its membership jurists, economists, legislators, and pol 
 iticians, the object of which was the reform and codi 
 fication of the law of nations and the substitution of 
 arbitration for war in the settlement of disputes be 
 tween nations. 
 
 It is not intended in the least to ignore or belittle the 
 labors of Mr. Field s coadjutors, Messrs. Loomis, Gra- 
 
13 
 
 ham, A. W. Bradford, Noyes, and others. They were 
 good assistants, it is true, but no one of them wishes 
 to rank with him in this matter. Mr. Field s similar 
 scheme for the codification of the law of nations made 
 good progress and rests in able hands, being the special 
 charge of an international organization of lawyers, of 
 which he was president. How far it will proceed re 
 mains to be seen. Mr. Field was the incarnation of 
 the idea that " the way to codify is to codify." If his 
 survivors are likeminded, something may be done in an 
 urgent field . But even though he left his tasks unfinished 
 he did enough to rank him among the foremost philo 
 sophical lawyers, not of his State and nation merely, 
 but of his generation. 
 
 In 1884 Messrs. Appleton published two volumes of 
 his miscellaneous addresses and arguments which gave 
 an excellent idea of the quality of his genius and the 
 range of his work.* Prominent among them were his 
 argument against military tribunals for civilians, in 
 which the friend, admirer, and counselor of Lincoln 
 and Stanton checked, nevertheless, their assumption of 
 power over human life. In the Cummings case he made 
 test oaths odious ; in the McArdle case, although in 
 advance of popular sentiment during the trying period 
 of reconstruction, he paved the way for abolishing mili 
 tary government of the State by establishing its uncon 
 stitutionally. The Cruikshank case in 1875, argued 
 when he was past the Biblical limit of age, would have 
 done credit to a constitutional lawyer in his prime for 
 its exposition of the true constitutional theory of State 
 rights. 
 
 * A third volume has since been published, and a fourth will be 
 added by his surviving brothers, who are his literary executors. 
 
14: 
 
 Mr. Field s political career calls for scant remark. 
 He was first a lawyer, and only accidentally an aspirant 
 for public office in order to serve his leading aim. Tims 
 he sought to enter the new York Legislature in 1837 to 
 advance his codification schemes, but he was defeated 
 through the opposition of Bishop Hughes on the edu 
 cational issue which still vexes politicians. In 1877 he 
 sat in Congress for about two months, being elected to 
 fill Smith Ely s unexpired term. He was a Democrat 
 of the very rare anti-slavery type. In the former ca 
 pacity he helped nominate Van Buren upon a platform 
 of no more territory for the ownership of human flesh 
 and blood. Even as early as 1847 he cast into the 
 Syracuse Convention his " fire-brand-of-freedom " res 
 olution, which was adopted as the cry of the Free Soil 
 Party, and was long kept standing in the Barnburner 
 newspapers. He is credited or debited with devis 
 ing the scheme of the Electoral Commission, which, if 
 it saved the country bloodshed, did so at the cost of the 
 Democratic party and to the nation of the loss of the 
 services as President of S. J. Tilden. Whatever view 
 be taken of this episode politically, the legal portion 
 of it well sustains Mr. Field s repute for the successful 
 novelty of his ideas. 
 
 Mr. Tilden had 8,000 majority of the popular vote 
 in Louisiana. The Kepublicans, however, claimed the 
 electoral vote. The decision of the question which 
 then arose was complicated by the fact that the United 
 States Senate was Republican and the House of Rep 
 resentatives Democratic. A law was then enacted, at 
 Mr. Field s suggestion, creating an " Electoral Commis 
 sion " of fifteen members five Judges of the Supreme 
 Court, five members of the Senate, and five members of 
 
15 
 
 the House to decide the case. Mr. Field was one of 
 the counsel for the Democratic party before the Com 
 mission. Mr. Hayes was declared elected by a majority 
 of one vote of the Commission. Mr. Field always pro 
 tested that Mr. Tilden was wrongfully kept out of the 
 White House. 
 
 Although a Democrat, he was so far from being a 
 Copperhead that so good a judge as Henry J. Raymond 
 allotted to him a share in the nomination of Abraham 
 Lincoln by helping to defeat Seward in the convention 
 of 1860. After Lincoln s election he strove to avert 
 war by heading New York s delegation to the Peace 
 Congress at Washington, but after Sumter was fired 
 on, he was as ready to fight it out on that line as even 
 the great General himself. 
 
 Mr. Field was over six feet in height, not stout, and 
 yet he weighed 200 pounds. In some moods there was 
 a suggestion of the martial sternness which character 
 izes some of the pictures of the burly Bismarck. His 
 personal manner was agreeable ; but his professional 
 manner was rather easy and cool than elegant. He 
 lacked the charm of Depew, or the eloquence of Choate ; 
 but there was no lack of conviction, or of convincing 
 quality, in the cold but robust manner in which diffi 
 culties were not evaded or slurred, but fairly conquered 
 by great learning and pitiless logic. He was a maker 
 of precedents rather than a respecter of them, and liked 
 nothing better than to triumph by establishing sound 
 principle against apparent authority. It would be easy 
 to recall instances both of something like truculence 
 against arbitrary power and of very contrary and much 
 more amiable traits. Thus, when Chief Justice Noah 
 Davis fined such lawyers as Graham, Fullerton, and 
 
16 
 
 Bartlett who will scarcely be recognized as weaklings 
 they submitted. But when Mr. Field returned from 
 the absence which saved him from being their associate 
 in judicial censure, instead of doing nothing as he 
 very well might he published a contemptuously- 
 phrased avowal of equal fault, and challenged the in 
 fliction of a like penalty, by which the right and justice 
 of the punishment might be tried before the highest 
 tribunal. On the other hand, hearing that T. G. Shear 
 man, without personal acquaintance, but upon obser 
 vation of the facts, had defended him in a company 
 where his fidelity to slippery clients was made a re 
 proach to his own character, Mr. Field sent for Mr. 
 Shearman, and proffered him the rich reward of a part 
 nership. 
 
 Although so hard a worker and fighter, and although 
 of so large frame, Mr. Field was not in vigorous health 
 in early life. Like many others, he almost lost his 
 health before he learned to preserve it. As a young 
 man, he was not athletic, although with some fondness 
 for water sports, and in early manhood he saw signs of 
 breaking vigor in severe headaches. The worthlessness 
 of gymnasium work and machine exercise was soon ap 
 parent, and thereafter he was accustomed to walk to 
 and from his residence in Gramercy Park, and after 
 wards from Park Avenue, a mile further up town, to 
 his office in lower Broadway, a distance of six or seven 
 miles, daily. He also rode horseback a great deal, and 
 was temperate in eating, using a little wine and no 
 tobacco. Mr. Field was thrice widowed, his first wife 
 dying as early as 1836. His son and partner died in 
 1880, inflicting a severe blow to a fond and appreciative 
 father. His daughter married Sir Anthony Musgrave, 
 
17 
 
 then Governor of British Columbia, who died a few 
 years since while Governor of Queensland. She is now 
 living in Sussex County, England. Mr. Field was a 
 great traveler. His European journeys were frequent, 
 giving him an acquaintance abroad equal to that at 
 home. Once he journeyed around the world, and it is 
 well within the mark to say that his foreign acquaint 
 ance and repute were second to those of no other 
 American lawyer. 
 
 HOUSE AND SENATE ADJOUBN. 
 
 ALBANY, April 13. Both House and Senate adjourned 
 this morning out of respect to the memory of David 
 Dudley Field. In the House, Mr. Sulzer made the an 
 nouncement of Mr. Field s death, and moved that the 
 House adjourn, and that the Speaker appoint a com 
 mittee of nine to take suitable action to show the regard 
 in which it held Mr. Field. Adjournment was ordered 
 until 8.30 o clock Monday night, and the chair appointed 
 as the Memorial Committee, Messrs. Fish, Sulzer, Bush, 
 Howe, Friday, Kneeland, Foley, Thornton, and Dow- 
 ling. 
 
 The announcement to the Senate of Mr. Field s death 
 was made by Mr. Coggeshall, who said he voiced the 
 universal feeling of the people when he said that the 
 news of the death of this great man wakened a feeling 
 of profound regret. Mr. Field was a ripe scholar and 
 a distinguished lawyer, who died crowned with honor. 
 His life was a lesson and an inspiration. 
 
 Senator Saxton made a brief speech of eulogy, refer- 
 
18 
 
 ring to Mr. Field s services in codifying and simplifying 
 the rules of legal procedure, and saying that up to the 
 day of his death he took an interest in good legislation. 
 
 [From The World of New York of April 14, 1894.] 
 
 At 3.30 A. M. yesterday, while the last fitful gusts and 
 mutterings of the storm that killed him were still sound 
 ing around the house, DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, in his 
 ninetieth year, died as calmly and peacefully as a little 
 child falls asleep. He had come back to his native 
 country only two days before, a hale, hearty, vigorous 
 old gentleman, to whom death was only a remote pos 
 sibility. But the American shore that he greeted with 
 so much joy and love gave him an icy welcome, and 
 almost his first breath of his native air brought death. 
 He died of pneumonia, brought on by the great storm, 
 in the height of which he arrived from the glowing 
 warmth of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 Now that he, the oldest, has followed his famous 
 brother, Cyrus West Field, only two of the four great 
 brothers who made the name of Field a noble and cher 
 ished one are left Stephen Johnson Field, now seventy- 
 seven years old, who has been on the bench of the Su 
 preme Court of the United States for over thirty-one 
 years, and the Kev. Dr. Henry Martyn Field, now sev 
 enty-two years old. 
 
 It was this gentle-faced, kindly, white-haired old 
 preacher, who, sitting sadly yesterday in the quiet parlor 
 of the big house at No. 22 Gramercy Park, with David 
 Dudley Field s silent form lying in the room above him, 
 told, with an exceeding great love and tenderness, of the 
 
19 
 
 last hours of the brother of whom he had been so proud. 
 He began with an account of the tour abroad, from 
 which David Dudley had returned on Wednesday morn 
 ing, and, after telling how he had missed meeting his 
 brother on the Hamburg line pier, he said : 
 
 " So I drove back to the house here as fast as I could 
 go. And when I got in, why, there he was ahead of 
 me, the fine, big, dear fellow." The old preacher re 
 moved his spectacles and wiped them furtively. He 
 had to do it many times. " I heard his ringing, cheery 
 voice shouting, How are you, brother Henry ? and I 
 found him warming his hands before the big fire, and 
 looking wonderfully tall and strong. I never saw the 
 dear old man s face shine as it did then. He was full 
 of life, and the improvement in his appearance over 
 what it was when he went away was delightful to see. 
 We went upstairs, and spent an hour or two conversing, 
 and it was amazing to find how much he was interested 
 in everything that had happened since he went away. 
 He spoke, too, of foreign affairs and of the friends and 
 others whom he had met abroad, with all the vigor of 
 a young man. That indomitable energy had always 
 been a feature of his. He was fond of early rising, 
 like our whole family, and until a few years ago there 
 was no more familiar figure on the avenue than my 
 brother Dudley. He preserved his intellectual activity 
 to the end. 
 
 "After we had talked for a long time, I left him, but 
 came again in the afternoon, when he was still feeling 
 well. But about 3 o clock in the morning he awoke in 
 a chill and, ringing the electric bell, called his valet, 
 Watson, who had been with him for years, and is so 
 well trained and experienced that he is competent to 
 act as nurse and almost as doctor, and he did every 
 thing for my brother until the doctor came." 
 
 Dr. Stephen S. Burt, of No. 37 West Thirty-second 
 street, the physician of the Field family, then told how 
 
20 
 
 he had come early Thursday morning and found Mr. 
 Field suffering from a bad chill, together with a fever, 
 and showing all signs of a rapid collapse. His old 
 heart trouble, from which Dr. Burt said Mr. Field has 
 probably not been entirely free any time during the 
 last twenty or twenty-five years, naturally asserted itself, 
 and the patient grew worse hour after hour. The valet 
 told the doctor that there had been some delay at the 
 pier after the ship reached it, and that Mr. Field went 
 suddenly from a very hot place into the cold air on the 
 dock. This, with the excitement consequent on getting 
 home, made him, as Dr. Burt expressed it, go all to 
 pieces. Before noon Thursday his condition was so 
 low that his death was looked for hourly ; but under 
 the action of powerful stimulants he rallied and seemed 
 to recover. At 7 p. M. Dr. Burt returned to the house 
 with Dr. Francis Delafield, of No. 12 West Thirty- 
 second street, an expert on heart and lung troubles. 
 
 They found Mr. Field s condition improved. He 
 seemed to breathe more freely. But by 10 p. M. his 
 breath came in fits and starts, and a warning rattle 
 came into his throat. He was apparently unconscious, 
 save at intervals, during which he recognized his daugh 
 ter-in-law, Mrs. Dudley Field. Meanwhile he suffered 
 no pain. At 3. A. M. yesterday the nurse called the 
 doctor, and he saw at once that the great lawyer was 
 going before the greatest Judge. Without a tremor, 
 without a motion or a sigh, he passed away, and within 
 half an hour all was over. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Field had gone home when he heard 
 that the patient s condition was improved, and he did 
 not know that his brother was dead till he came to the 
 house yesterday morning. What the news meant to 
 
21 
 
 him can be known only by those who know how the 
 brothers loved each other. Dr. Field had in his pocket 
 a letter from the other brother, Justice Field, written 
 in Washington Thursday, in which he acknowledged 
 the former s telegram announcing that " Dudley arrived 
 this morning in splendid condition," and asked most 
 affectionately that Dudley visit him in Washington. 
 The writer of this happy letter received the answer by 
 wire : " Our brother passed away early this morning." 
 
 Messages were also sent to Lady Musgrave, Mr. 
 Field s daughter, and to all friends abroad and in this 
 country. Before noon many callers came to the house, 
 Joseph H. Choate being among the first, and there was 
 a steady procession of carriages all day long. 
 
 SIGNS OF PUBLIC KEGRET. 
 
 The flags on the Federal, State, and municipal build 
 ings were half-masted. Both branches of the Legis 
 lature in Albany were adjourned. The courts of rec 
 ord here made minutes in Mr. Field s honor, and 
 Judge Pry or, in adjourning Common Pleas, said : 
 
 " It is eminently proper that this court and every 
 court not only of the State of New York, but in the 
 United States should concurrently, by every species 
 of eulogistic homage, testify their respect to the char 
 acter and services of this very eminent American citi 
 zen. But not only was Mr. Field in his day, while not 
 actively practising, facile princeps at the head of the 
 bar, in learning and ability beyond the province and 
 compass of any other lawyer in America, but he has 
 contributed to promote law reform by imparting to our 
 profession the accuracy and symmetry of a progressive 
 science. Undoubtedly to-day, in all countries of the 
 
22 
 
 globe, Europe, Asia, or Africa, where there is one jot of 
 civilization, if a subject or resident should be asked 
 who is the greatest American lawyer, without hesitation 
 he would say, David Dudley Field. And I therefore 
 direct the minute to be made upon record ; and, in view 
 of the high esteem in which this court holds the mem 
 ory of David Dudley Field and its inexpressible sorrow 
 at his untimely death, instead of being content with 
 this small tribute, I shall direct the court to be ad 
 journed." 
 
 A GEAVEYAKD MADE FAMOUS. 
 
 Mr. Field will be buried in the home of his parents, 
 Stockbridge, Mass., in the village churchyard. There 
 where the chimes ring out every evening from the 
 square tower erected by Mr. Field to mark the site of 
 the first church, lie his father, the Eev. Dr. David Dud 
 ley Field, the country parson who was the father of 
 the four great-hearted brothers ; his wife, whose father, 
 Captain Noah Dickinson, fought under gruff old Gen 
 eral Putnam, and Cyrus West Field, who laid the first 
 Atlantic cable. 
 
 There will be no services other than the Episcopal 
 committal service at the grave, as the formal funeral 
 ceremonies will be held here at 4.30 p. M. to-morrow in 
 Calvary Church, at Fourth avenue and Twenty -first 
 street. 
 
 David Dudley Field was very proud of his daughter, 
 Lady Musgrave, and her three boys, whom he always 
 called his trinity. He never tired of telling what sons 
 of Anak they were. His pride in them was justifiable, 
 for Dudley Field, the eldest, though only twenty-one 
 years old, is now a midshipman in the British navy, at 
 present being at Bombay. Arthur David, nineteen 
 
23 
 
 years old, is captain of a British battery at Shoebury- 
 ness, and the youngest, Herbert, though only seventeen 
 years old, has just passed his examination at Woolwich 
 for the army, standing second among 400 applicants. 
 It is probable that they will receive the bulk, if not all, 
 of Mr. Field s estate. 
 
 The marriage of his daughter to Sir Anthony Mus- 
 grave was a most happy one. He was Governor of 
 Newfoundland at the time of the laying of the Atlantic 
 Cable in 1866, and then became acquainted with Cyrus 
 W. Field, whom he afterwards visited in New York, 
 where he first met Miss Field. He died about three 
 years since, while Governor of Queensland. It was to 
 visit this daughter and to attend the celebration of the 
 twenty-first birthday of the midshipman that Mr. Field 
 went to Europe on November 8. He did it against the 
 advice of his friends, as he had not fully recovered 
 from his severe illness of about four years ago until 
 last summer. He spent Christmas at Lady Musgrave s 
 estate in East Grinsted, Sussex, and on January 8 
 started for Paris. Cannes was the next point visited, 
 and a few days were then spent in Monte Carlo. 
 
 Mentone, Genoa, Naples, and Pompeii were also 
 visited, after which he spent a few weeks in Kome, 
 where he was surrounded by admirers and friends, who 
 were all delighted with the youthfulness of the old gen 
 tleman. It was the same in Florence. He sailed from 
 Genoa, March 29, on the Hamburg-American line steam 
 ship Columbia and arrived here Wednesday morning. 
 Daring the exceedingly rough voyage he and one other 
 man were the only two passengers who were not sea 
 sick or otherwise indisposed. He said then that he 
 expected to spend the summer in the Berkshires, and 
 
24: 
 
 that his one great ambition was to have his law codes 
 adopted all over the world. 
 
 HE STARTED LIFE WITH A BIBLE AND ONLY TEN DOLLARS. 
 
 His brother, Dr. Field, said yesterday : 
 
 " In his life there is a great lesson. When he left home 
 our dear father took him into his stiKty and kneeled by 
 his side and prayed with him. Then he gave him $10 
 and a Bible ! That was all he had when he started in 
 life, $10, a Bible, and his father s prayers ! When he 
 came to New York he met a young man who was earn 
 ing $500 a year, and he has often told me that then to 
 reach that point was his highest ambition. He was 
 an indomitable worker. He would work whole nights 
 through until he had finished the task he had set for 
 himself. What saved him was that the minute his 
 work was done he could lie down, like Napoleon, and 
 fall asleep instantly, and sleep soundly. He had won 
 derful ambition, and his monuments are the great vol 
 umes which contain the results of his earnest work to 
 reform the law. 
 
 " He loved little children dearly. Last summer, at 
 Stockbridge, he used to drive over to a home which a 
 friend had erected to give children the fresh air. When 
 he came they would run to him, screaming with joy, 
 and would climb all over him, hanging round his neck 
 and hugging him, so that it was a delight to see him. 
 Then his kind face, all smiles, was good to look upon." 
 
 The white-haired preacher paused, and wiped his 
 glasses with a hand that trembled just a little, and con 
 cluded, in a low, uncertain voice : "And now and now 
 we shall take him Monday to the Berkshire Hills, that 
 he loved so well, and lay him to sleep in that beautiful 
 valley." 
 
25 
 
 Sixty-six years ago David Dudley Field was ad 
 mitted to the bar, and for half a century he stood in 
 the front rank of lawyers, not only of America, but the 
 world over. For the course of thirty years his fame as 
 a law reformer has been coextensive with the limits of 
 civilization. 
 
 Of the quartet of distinguished brothers, David Dud 
 ley Field is the second to pass away. Of the other 
 who is dead a distinguished statesman once spoke : 
 " Columbus once said, Here is one world, let there be 
 two ; but Cyrus W. Field said, Here are two worlds, 
 let there be one ; and both commands were obeyed." 
 
 Of the brothers who survive, Stephen Johnson Field 
 is one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, and Dr. Henry M. Field sits in the edi 
 torial chair of a great and influential religious journal. 
 The Evangelist. 
 
 The father of these four men, into whose lives, 
 stretching into widely diverging paths, so many honors 
 and achievements have been crowded, was a New Eng 
 land clergyman and a son of a captain in the war of the 
 Revolution. Friendly investigators who have searched 
 the archives of the English Heraldry Office found that 
 the American Fields are sprung from a Norman knight 
 who helped William the Conqueror invade England. 
 But the Field family are content with their well-estab 
 lished descent from the celebrated English astronomer 
 John Field, who was the first to introduce the Coperni- 
 can system into England. 
 
 Zachariah Field, who came to America in 1632 and 
 settled in Northampton, Mass., was a grandson of the 
 astronomer, and from him the ancestral chain of the 
 Fields is unbroken down to the Rev. David Dudley 
 
26 
 
 Field, the minister of a Congregational church in Had- 
 dam, Conn., from 1804 until 1818. To him was born, 
 February 13, 1805, a son to whom he gave his own 
 name, whose long life of honor has just closed, ending 
 the great career of probably the foremost lawyer of the 
 century. 
 
 The salary of the Rev. Mr. Field as pastor of the 
 church was only $500 a year, but notwithstanding this 
 he determined to give his son a collegiate education. 
 He himself had been graduated from Yale, where he 
 roomed with Jeremiah Evarts, the father of "William 
 M. Evarts. When the youth was nine years old his 
 father began to teach him Latin, Greek, and math 
 ematics. In 1819 the family removed to Stockbridge, 
 Mass., and there he was sent to the academy, over 
 which a famous teacher, Jared Curtis, presided. 
 
 When .he was sixteen, Dudley, as he was always 
 called by his family and his intimates, entered Wil 
 liams College, upon leaving which, four years later, he 
 went to Albany, where he read law in the office of Har- 
 manus Bleecker, remaining there only three or four 
 months, when he removed to New York City and en 
 tered the office of Henry and Robert Sedgwick, who 
 came from Stockbridge. The Sedgwicks were lawyers 
 of ability, with a large practice, and they took an in 
 terest in the advancement of the young student. 
 
 In 1828, when he was twenty-three years old, he was 
 admitted as an attorney and solicitor, and two years 
 later he was made a counsellor. Shortly afterwards 
 the elder Sedgwick retired from the firm, and the 
 younger brother, Robert, took Mr. Field into partner 
 ship. Up to this time his struggle for existence and 
 education had been rather severe, but after he entered 
 
27 
 
 into partnership with Mr. Sedgwick prosperity came to 
 him, to endure until the day of his death. The firm of 
 Sedgwick & Field lasted until 1835, when Mr. Field 
 began to practise on his own account. Immediately 
 as many clients as he could desire came to him. He 
 was then recognized as one of the ablest young men at 
 the bar, and who had a great future before him. 
 
 One of the things which is remembered in connection 
 with Mr. Field s career was the part he played in the 
 Erie litigations. He was never more severely criticised 
 than he was for acting as counsel for the management 
 of the road. The newspapers inveighed against him 
 for lending the prestige of his name in putting forth 
 his great skill and ability in defence of what they de 
 nounced. 
 
 Mr. Field s defenders, and they were not few, de 
 clared that his idea of professional honor did not per 
 mit him to refuse his counsel in important cases com 
 ing before court. He held that a lawyer had a duty to 
 his clients which he was not at liberty to throw off be 
 cause a case was unpopular. To desert a client when 
 he had incurred public odium, justly or unjustly, would 
 have been an act of cowardice and a professional dis 
 grace. Mr. Field drew a broad and deep line between 
 his duty as a practitioner and as a law reformer. As 
 counsel defending his clients in the Erie suits he used 
 the writ of injunction as it had seldom been used, but 
 when he was called upon to improve and simplify the 
 statutes he condemned the facility with which such a 
 writ could be obtained, and urged its restrictions.* 
 
 * Mr. Field thus speaks of professional ethics in his address to the 
 graduating class of the Albany Law School, March 23, 1855 : " There 
 is no profession, not even the military, which puts in use the senti- 
 
28 
 
 THE CASE OF TWEED. 
 
 A few days ago there died in this city a man who 
 gained great fame by defending William Tweed. John 
 Graham had almost passed beyond the public ken. 
 David Dudley Field had found additional fame in de 
 fending those prosecutions against Tweed, who had 
 been convicted upon twelve counts of the indictment 
 and sentenced by Judge Davis to one year s imprison 
 ment on each of them, making twelve years in all. Mr. 
 Field declared that the judge was wrong in pronouncing 
 this cumulative sentence, as it was called. 
 
 When Tweed had been a year in prison Mr. Field 
 secured a writ of habeas corpus and demanded Tweed s 
 release. It was the first time that a writ of habeas 
 corpus had been invoked for such a purpose. The 
 customary procedure in such a case would have been a 
 writ of error. ^The Supreme Court decided against Mr. 
 
 ment of honor more than our own. There are daily intrusted to us 
 the property, the reputation, the lives of our clients: yet. when have 
 they been betrayed ? The secrets of families are in our keeping, and 
 who will complain of their having been divulged ? So far as the re 
 lations of the lawyer to his client are alone concerned, nothing could 
 be more unexceptional : they are under the safeguard of that honor 
 which has never yet failed to regulate and preserve them. And what 
 I conceive alone to be wanting is to extend the same sentiment be 
 yond the client to the adverse party and his witnesses, and to the 
 court. The fundamental error, on this head. I suppose to arise from 
 forgetting that the profession of a lawyer is a means to an end, and 
 that end the administration of justice. His first duty is undoubtedly 
 to his own client, but that is not the only one : there is also a duty to 
 the court that it shall be assisted by the advocate : a duty to the ad 
 versary not to push an advantage beyond the bounds of equity : a 
 duty to truth and right, whose allegiance no human being can re 
 nounce : and a duty to the State, that it shall not be corrupted by the 
 example of unscrupulous insincerity." 
 
Field, but the Court of Appeals unanimously reversed 
 the decision of the lower court and ordered Tweed 
 released. 
 
 The antagonism between Judge Davis and Mr. Field 
 during the suit was intensely bitter. Tweed s other 
 counsel, Mr. Graham, Mr. Fullerton, and Mr. Bartlett, 
 signed a petition requesting Judge Davis not to preside 
 at a subsequent trial, on the ground that he had already 
 expressed an opinion in the case. Judge Davis called 
 these lawyers before him, reprimanded them severely, 
 and fined them for contempt of court. 
 
 Mr. Field was in Europe at the time. When he re 
 turned he sent an indignant letter to the Albany Law 
 Journal, reaffirming in stronger terms all that was said 
 in the petition, and challenging Judge Davis to punish 
 him for contempt of court. Judge Davis gave no pub 
 lic heed to this letter, but he never sat on the bench in 
 any of the Tweed suits that followed in which Mr. 
 Field appeared.* 
 
 * On this subject the American Law Keview, in its May and June 
 number of 1894, observes : 
 
 " He was subjected to much criticism because of having been coun 
 sel for William M. Tweed ; but we do not understand that in what he 
 did in behalf of Tweed he stepped beyond the bounds of professional 
 propriety. Tweed, though an enormous criminal, had a right to 
 counsel and to be defended ; and it was the duty of Mr. Field, as his 
 counsel, to see that he had his legal rights, and that, if punished, he 
 should be punished only according to law. The right of the criminal 
 to counsel is equal to the right of the innocent, and the criminal has 
 in this right all the rights of the innocent. It cannot be certainly 
 known in advance of a judicial inquiry whether a man accused of 
 crime is guilty or innocent of that of which he stands accused. It is 
 contrary to the genius of our law and unworthy of any civilized com 
 munity, that he hould be punished without the opportunity of mak 
 ing a competent defence ; and the privilege of counsel is one of the 
 means of enabling him to make a competent defence and of making 
 
30 
 
 The reconstruction policy of the Republican party 
 after the war was opposed by Mr. Field, and he was 
 
 the trial an inquisition in which both sides of the controversy are ex 
 hibited to the jury, and not an ex parte proceeding in which the gov 
 ernment alone is heard." 
 
 On this subject Mr. Field, in addressing the jury in the Tweed 
 case, spoke as follows of the rights of parties and the duties of 
 counsel : 
 
 " From the time when this suit was brought last spring, down to 
 the time of trial, we heard nothing but denunciations of the defence 
 for impeding the course of justice. There was, indeed, no real de 
 fence, it was said, and repeated so often that they who said it, at first 
 in ignorance or bad faith, may have come at last to think they had 
 reason to believe it. "We have now reached a decisive trial of the 
 merits, if a first trial of a cause so important can ever be thought 
 decisive, and, after two months of hard labor, what is the result ? 
 Why, that the plaintiffs are already defeated in respect to more than 
 two millions of their claim, a sum worth contesting for, to my think 
 ing, and we are now coming to you, gentlemen, to decide whether the 
 claim shall not be still further reduced or rejected altogether. 
 
 "Above all other things is justice : success is a good thing ; wealth 
 is good also ; honoris better; but justice excels them all. It is this 
 which raises man above the brute, and brings him into communion 
 with his Maker. To be able to stand impartial in judgment, amid 
 circumstances which excite the passions, to maintain your equipoise, 
 however the surging currents may be around you, is to have reached 
 the highest elevation of the intellect and the affections. To have the 
 power of forgetting for the time self, friends, interests, relationship, 
 and to think only of doing right towards another, a stranger, an 
 enemy perhaps, is to have that which man can share only with the 
 angels, and with Him who is above men and angels. 
 
 " The part which you are now called to perform in an official act, 
 designed to be an act of justice, is unhappily beset with difficulties. 
 The just indignation of a betrayed and defrauded people, the abhor 
 rence that every true man feels of robbery, public or private, the cry 
 for redress, the thirst for vengeance, the suspicions which fall alike 
 upon the innocent and the guilty, the corruption of our politics long 
 accumulating, and more and more corrupted by the demoralizations 
 of the war, the malversations in office, which seem to grow day by 
 day, the stories of these wrongs repeated, exaggerated, distorted by 
 
31 
 
 retained in many of the great cases growing out of the 
 legislation of that period, cases which came before the 
 
 a press which lives upon sensatiou, and operating upon a people be 
 coming every year less sedate and more impulsive, until it seems 
 ready to fall under the reproach once cast upon an ancient race, un 
 stable as water, thou shalt not excel all these things have brought 
 us into a condition as frightful as it is abnormal, which would almost 
 justify for once the language which the greatest of English dramatists 
 has used for other turbulent times : Judgment has fled to brutish 
 beasts, and men have lost their reason. 
 
 "It is easy to see what act of each of us would commend us most 
 to the clamorers of the hour. If the learned judge, who has presided 
 with so much dignity and patience, had yesterday announced from 
 the bench that the defence is a miserable subterfuge, unworthy of a 
 moment s serious consideration, instead of ruling as he did, he would 
 have been applauded this morning by half the newspapers of the city 
 as a Daniel come to judgment ; if you, gentlemen of the jury, were 
 to render a verdict for the whole amount claimed, without leaving 
 your seats, you would be greeted with the welcome of good and 
 faithful servants ; and if we, who are conducting the defence, with 
 what fidelity you may judge, were to betray our client, and suffer 
 judgment to pass against him, with only a seeming effort in his behalf, 
 we should have the comfort of being informed in the same newspapers 
 that we had half redeemed ourselves from the disgrace of defending 
 him at all. This might happen to-day. But how would it be ten 
 years hence ? If you should then look back to this court-room and 
 these surroundings, and read the journals which you read this morn 
 ing, and those others which you have read from day to day during 
 the trial, what would you say or think ? Are you sure that you would 
 then regard most of the comments on this trial which you now see 
 printed and spread before your eyes each day as anything better than 
 the babblements of idiots ? 
 
 "How will it be with each of us in our judgment of ourselves? 
 How will it be with a new question ? What you do, what the judge 
 does, what the counsel do, will be thought of for a long time here 
 after. There are many other people than those who now surround 
 us who will observe, criticise, and judge all our acts without partiality 
 and without passion. 
 
 " For myself, personally, this trust has been an occasion of great 
 embarrassment. Severe illness in my family during the whole period 
 
 0*" 
 
 * \ Jf 
 
32 
 
 Supreme Court of the United States. One of these, the 
 Milligan case, commanded special attention among 
 
 has caused me anxiety by day and interrupted sleep by night, which 
 have, in a measure, unfitted me for the discharge of my whole duty 
 to my client. What that duty is, that is to say, what is the duty of an 
 advocate to his client, I have had frequent occasion to explain, and 
 every day s experience and observation have but served to confirm 
 the convictions of my earlier life. The ignorant and the wicked 
 always wish to take the law into their own hands. The wise and the 
 good get the best judges they can, procure as good laws as they are 
 able, and leave the administration of justice to those to whom it is 
 confided and who alone are competent to its due performance. 
 
 " In this country we who rejoice that we are the heirs of all the ages 
 have, in our own conceit, at least, built on broader foundations than 
 our fathers and with stronger walls the defences of human rights, 
 and among them all there is not one of greater significance than this, 
 that no man shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due 
 process of law. The people of our State have placed it in their State 
 constitution, and since the late troublous times the people of the 
 whole country have placed it in the Constitution of the nation. There 
 it stands, and will ever stand, so long as either the nation or the State 
 remains, Manet et manebit. How idle, then, it is to talk of excluding 
 any person whomsoever from defence or opportunity of defence to 
 any churge whatever ! In conformity to this fundamental law, a sum 
 mons is served upon every defendant to answer a written complaint. 
 It is his right to answer. How can he exercise that right without the 
 aid of counsel ? Therefore he, whoever he may be, who denies the 
 right and duty of counsel to defend any man seeking his aid in de 
 fence, denies the right of the man to defend himself, and whoever in 
 this country denies the right of any man to defend himself, must be 
 accounted either a knave or a fool. 
 
 " I am quite indifferent to the reproaches that out of doors have 
 been cast upon me for my defence in this case. When, however, the 
 reproaches come into this court-room, and are made as if they could 
 affect you, I feel bound for that reason alone to take notice of them, 
 so far, and so far only, as to say that I despise them. I prefer the 
 judgment of my brethren of the bar. If the press were unanimous, 
 which it is not, nor anything like it, the bar is stronger than the press. 
 It does not make so much noise, but its influence, though silent, is 
 irresistible. Mr. Willis invented the convenient phrase of the upper 
 
33 
 
 lawyers, as it involved the constitutionality of military 
 commissions for the trial of civilians in States where 
 the courts were open and in full exercise of their juris 
 diction, as the Cummings and Garland cases, both of 
 which he argued, involved the constitutionality of the 
 test oath. The next year, in 1868, he argued the cele 
 brated McArdle case, where the issue was the consti 
 tutionality of the Reconstruction act. He appeared 
 also in the Cruikshank case, in 1875. Chief Justice 
 Chase said of these arguments that they were among 
 the ablest on the subject of military rule and recon 
 struction that he had heard in or outside the court. 
 The State of Georgia against General Grant was another 
 famous case in which Mr. Field appeared. 
 
 ten thousand. Using it here, not in relation to general society, but 
 to the society of lawyers, I venture to say that the opinion of the 
 upper ten thousand of American lawyers will sooner or later become 
 the opinion of the American people. I am well aware that in this 
 State at least some traces of the irritation may yet remain which a 
 lifetime of warfare against legal abuses has engendered. By many of 
 my elder brethren I am regarded as one who has overthrown their 
 idols and brought their false systems into derision. I do not com 
 plain. I have had my reward. The Reformed American System of 
 Procedure, as it is called by one of the best legal writers of our time, 
 opposed and derided as it was at first, has made its triumphant march 
 around the world, and is already written in the laws of half the Eng 
 lish-speaking people, and will yet be written in the laws of them all. 
 Even now, while I yet speak, they are writing it in the law of Austra 
 lasia. But whether any trace of the irritation which this has thus 
 occasioned is remaining or not, I am ready to leave my defence of this 
 case to the vindication of my brethren throughout the country, con 
 fident that they will say I am maintaining, as I have ever maintained 
 through a long life, the dignity, honor, and independence of my pro 
 fession, my order the order of advocates, to which I am proud to 
 belong and in that way, for they are inseparable, the rights of all 
 the people." 
 
34 
 
 HIS POLITICAL CAREER. 
 
 He was never what is known as a politician, bnt he 
 exerted a great influence in the moulding and formation 
 of political forces, the creation of political principles. 
 He refused an appointment to a judgeship of the Su 
 preme Court of New York. He was a member of Con 
 gress for eight weeks, going there for a specific purpose. 
 The only other public office he ever held was that of 
 commissioner to codify the laws of New York, which he 
 held for two years. 
 
 Mr. Field s political faith was grounded on Jefferso- 
 nianism. He made his first political speech more than 
 half a century ago in Tammany Hall, when Robert H. 
 Myers was a candidate for Mayor. When the Demo 
 cratic party soon after began to be used to uphold sla 
 very he revolted, and as far back as 1844 he made a 
 speech against the admission of Texas. That year Mar 
 tin Yan Buren was supplanted by James K. Polk, who 
 was nominated on a platform committing the party to 
 the annexation of Texas and the extension of the area 
 of slavery. Texas came into the Union as a result of 
 the Mexican War, and the anti-slavery sentiment of the 
 North rose to a higher pitch than ever. The Wilmot 
 proviso, adopted by the House, but rejected by the 
 Senate, added fuel to the flame. 
 
 " Jtesolved" it read, " That, as an expressed and 
 fundamental condition to the acquisition of any terri 
 tory from the Republic of Mexico, neither slavery nor 
 involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of the 
 said territory." 
 
 Of this proviso there was no more earnest advocate 
 than David Dudley Field, and his hand wrote the secret 
 
35 
 
 circular and joint letter, the direct object of which was 
 to rally the anti-slavery Democrats of the North against 
 the aggressive pro -slavery of their Southern brethren. 
 In the Syracuse Convention, in 1847, when the Dem 
 ocratic party of the State was split on the slavery ques 
 tion, Mr. Field offered the famous resolution that was 
 afterwards known as the corner-stone, and which anti- 
 slavery newspapers kept standing at the head of their 
 editorial columns. This was the resolution : 
 
 "Resolved, That, while the Democracy of New York 
 represented in this convention will faithfully adhere to 
 all the compromises of the Constitution and maintain 
 all the reserved rights of the States, they declare, since 
 the crisis has arrived when the question must be met, 
 their uncompromising hostility to the extension of slav 
 ery into the territory now free or which may be here 
 after acquired by any action of the Government of the 
 United States." 
 
 Mr. Field supported Van Buren and Charles Francis 
 Adams when they were nominated on the platform which 
 declared against the extension of the slavery area. He 
 made speeches for them in New York and in New Eng 
 land. From that time until Fremont was nominated 
 his voice and pen and all the influences he could com 
 mand were on the side of freedom. So great was this 
 influence that he was charged right and left with dis 
 loyalty to Democracy, and this called forth the letter 
 of May, 1856, in which he said : 
 
 " Though I have not hitherto acted with the Kepub- 
 lican party, my sympathies are, of course, with the 
 friends of freedom, wherever they may be found. I 
 despise equally the fraud which uses the name of De- 
 
36 
 
 mocracy to cheat men of their rights, the cowardice 
 which retracts this year what it professed and advo 
 cated the last, and the falsehood which affects to teach 
 the right of a people of a Territory to govern them 
 selves, while it imposes on them Federal Governors 
 and Judges, and indicts them for treason against the 
 Union because they make a constitution and laws which 
 they prefer, and collect forces from the neighboring 
 States and the Federal Army to compel them to sub 
 mission." 
 
 THE NOMINATION OF LINCOLN. 
 
 When the Republican Convention met in Chicago in 
 1860, to nominate a President, Mr. Field, though not a 
 delegate, (for he was not in favor of the New York can 
 didate,) was present and very active in opposing Mr. 
 Seward, whose defeat was ascribed by Henry J. Ray 
 mond, in a letter to the New York Times, largely, if not 
 chiefly, to the determined opposition of Horace Gree- 
 ley and David Dudley Field. 
 
 Mr. James A. Briggs, who was long resident in New 
 York, and well known among the leaders of the Repub 
 lican party, was from Ohio, and as such attended the 
 Chicago Convention to urge the claims of Mr. Chase. 
 He knew all the parties and saw the inside workings of 
 the convention, and was fond of telling how one even 
 ing, when the tide seemed to be turning towards Sew 
 ard, Greeley came into Mr. Field s room and threw 
 himself down in despair, saying that " It was all over, 
 and that Mr. Seward would be nominated on the mor 
 row ; " to which Mr. Field answered : " No, it is not 
 over ; let us up and go to work," and immediately 
 started out on a round of the delegations, which he ad 
 dressed with the utmost earnestness, and came back at 
 midnight, saying, "Lincoln is going to be nominated!" 
 
37 
 
 With all this in mind, Mr. Briggs always said that 
 " Abraham Lincoln owed his nomination to David 
 Dudley Field more than to any other man." 
 
 After Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated and the Southern 
 States began to secede, a Peace Congress was held in 
 Washington to consider the possibility of averting civil 
 war. In this congress Mr. Field was at the head of the 
 New York delegation, and, while anxious for peace, had 
 the courage to declare that he did not believe in the 
 abandonment of principles ; and that he thought it was 
 wiser to fight the conflict out than to postpone it to a 
 future generation. After the war began no man was 
 more determined in its vigorous prosecution. 
 
 COUNSEL FOK TILDEN. 
 
 He voted and acted with the Republican party after 
 the close of the war, but he did not approve the restora 
 tion and reconstruction measures. He voted for Ruth 
 erford B. Hayes, but after the election did not hesitate 
 to declare that he believed Mr. Tilden had honestly 
 won the victory. The election of Smith Ely as Mayor 
 of New York made a vacancy in Congress that year, 
 and Mr. Field filled out the term. He was at once rec 
 ognized by the Democracy all over the country as one 
 of their ablest champions in the election contest. The 
 upholding of Mr. Tilden s interest in the House devolved 
 on him to a greater extent than on any other of the 
 Democratic leaders, and he performed this work with 
 an ability which won for him the admiration of his op 
 ponents. He probed to the very bottom the crooked 
 operations of the Returning Board of Louisiana, and 
 showed conclusively that the members of it had been 
 
38 
 
 engaged in a conspiracy to falsify the returns and give 
 the vote of the State to the candidate for whom it had 
 not been cast. 
 
 In the complication that followed Mr. Field fav 
 ored the Electoral Commission bill, and when that 
 body assembled he argued before it the case of Mr. 
 Tilden with a remarkable degree of ability and skill. 
 He fought every step and resisted to the last the count 
 ing in of Mr. Hayes. Though he submitted to the de 
 cision, he never ceased to maintain that a great fraud 
 had been committed, and that a man who had not been 
 elected was seated in the President s chair by unscrupu 
 lous partisanship. It was after this that Mr. Field re 
 turned to the Democratic fold. 
 
 THE WRITER OF OUR CODES. 
 
 But the great work of Mr. Field was neither in poli 
 tics nor in his regular practice as a lawyer. The great 
 work of his life, and that which gave him the greatest 
 fame, were his splendid services in the cause of law re 
 form. He laid the foundation of the great monument 
 of codification which he erected, more than forty years 
 ago in a letter to Gulian C. Verplanck. 
 
 He was defeated in his effort to become a member of 
 the Constitutional Convention in 1846, but he made 
 himself so effectively heard in it that the convention 
 adopted the novel scheme of abolishing the distinction 
 between courts of law and courts of equity, and substi 
 tuting a code in place of common law practice and 
 pleading, and directed the appointment of commission 
 ers to prepare codes. He was known to be so radical 
 that he was at first refused an appointment on the com- 
 
39 
 
 mission, but he obtained a place before it began its 
 work. From that time until his death he was the un 
 disputed leader of law reform. The great work began 
 timidly and proceeded slowly. The first instalment of 
 the Code of Civil Procedure was reported to the Legis 
 lature in February, 1848, and became the law, with 
 slight alterations, in July following. This was only the 
 beginning. Four different reports, embodying the resi 
 due, were made between that date and January, 1850. 
 
 HIS NEW CIVIL CODE. 
 
 In 1865 Mr. Field submitted three other codes to the 
 Legislature : the Penal Code, the Code of Criminal 
 Procedure, and the Civil Code. The Penal Code was 
 adopted in 1882, and the Code of Civil Procedure the 
 year before. 
 
 The Civil Code, which Mr. Field had first prepared, 
 had been so added to, so changed, that instead of be 
 ing contained in one volume, it made three volumes as 
 large as a Family Bible. Therefore, Mr. Field sub 
 mitted a new Civil Code. It has not yet been adopted. 
 The measure has come up repeatedly in the Legisla 
 ture, and been passed by one House or the other. 
 Twice it passed both Houses, but was vetoed by Gov 
 ernor Robinson and Governor Cornell. 
 
 Meanwhile the general code system of New York has 
 been adopted by twenty-four States and Territories. 
 The Criminal Code has been adopted in eighteen States 
 and Territories. Mr. Field substantially rewrote the Civil 
 Code eight times, and some parts of it as many as eigh 
 teen times. Mr. Field s adopted code work stands as a 
 great monument to him, even though it has taken many 
 
40 
 
 decisions to determine just what some of its sentences 
 really mean, and even though on some points adequate 
 construction has not yet been reached. 
 
 AN INTERNATIONAL CODE. 
 
 At the meeting of the British Association in Man 
 chester in 1866, Mr. Field proposed a revision of the 
 entire body of international law. He was appointed 
 then a member of a committee of jurists from different 
 countries to make a revision that would be acceptable, 
 or that should become the basis of a revision. It was 
 not possible for the committee to act in concert, and 
 Mr. Field took the whole work upon himself. The re 
 sult of his labor was a large volume, which he presented 
 in 1873 to the Social Science Congress. It was en 
 titled " Outlines of an International Code." It at 
 tracted the attention of the most eminent jurists in the 
 world, and has been translated into French and Italian. 
 
 Mr. Field was thrice married. His first wife was 
 Jane Lucinda Hopkins, of Stockbridge, who died in 
 1836, a cousin of Mark Hopkins, President of Williams 
 College ; his second, Mrs. Harriet Davidson, widow of 
 James Davidson, who died in 1864 ; his third, Mrs. 
 Mary Elizabeth Carr, widow of Dr. Samuel J. Carr, who 
 died in 1876. 
 
 Of his three children only one survives him, a daugh 
 ter, who was married in 1870 to Sir Anthony Musgrave, 
 who was successively Governor of Newfoundland, Brit 
 ish Colombia, Natal, South Australia, Jamaica, and 
 Queensland. 
 
 Mr. Field retired from active practice in 1885, but he 
 did not give up the law altogether, still acting as coun 
 sel for several great corporations. His home was at 
 
41 
 
 No. 22 Gramercy Park, where he had a valuable law 
 library. 
 
 HIS PERSONALITY. 
 
 Mr. Field was six feet two inches tall, broad-chested 
 and powerfully made, and walked with an erect figure. 
 His forehead was bald and his hair thin. He enjoyed 
 almost perfect health up to within two years ago, when 
 he began to show signs of failure. Not long ago he 
 was asked to what he attributed his remarkable good 
 health, and he replied : " First a good constitution, and 
 second, hard work." " Hard work," he added, " has 
 never killed any one ; idleness has slain thousands. 
 Then again exercise has helped me. I have never al 
 lowed a day of my life to pass hot, cold, wet, or dry 
 without walking several miles in the open air. Cabs 
 and street cars I cannot abide. As for eating and drink 
 ing, I follow no special rule. I take what I like and 
 let the rest alone. I find that course to agree with me." 
 
 For many years Mr. Field, taking his daily exercise, 
 was a familiar figure. Always sought after socially, he 
 has preferred of late years the quiet and peace of his 
 library. The last public honor bestowed upon him was 
 the gift of a gold medal containing $100 worth of metal. 
 It was one of two struck off in the Philadelphia Mint 
 at the order of the American Bar Association. The 
 other was given to the Earl of Selborne, better known 
 in this country as Sir Eoundell Palmer. 
 
 [From the New York Evangelist, April 19, 1894.] 
 
 The event of the week has been the death of DAVID 
 DUDLEY FIELD. While we are writing they are laying 
 him to rest in that cemetery in the Berkshire Hills, be- 
 
4:2 
 
 side his parents and brothers and the wife of his youth, 
 the mother of his children. The chimes are ringing 
 from the tower that he gave to Stockbridge, his beloved 
 summer home, as a lasting memorial to his honored 
 parents ; note by note those silvery tongues drop down 
 the melody of the hymns he loved so well, the chiming 
 hymns that so lately as last summer he delighted to 
 listen to, floating upward on the air to his home on the 
 hillside, dropping now like angel s tears upon his grave. 
 Only one brother the editor of this paper is with 
 him as they lay him away to rest ; for the other sur 
 viving brother, Justice Stephen J. Field, was not in 
 strength to bear the exposure at this season of the year. 
 His place is filled by nephews and other relatives and 
 by the towns-people of Stockbridge, gathered to pay 
 the last honors to him to whom, as a public-spirited 
 and generous fellow-citizen, they owe so much. 
 
 The news of his death came upon the community- 
 still more upon his family with a terrible shock. 
 Only two days before he had landed from Europe in 
 high health and spirits, " in splendid condition," as 
 Dr. Field telegraphed to Justice Field in Washington. 
 A sudden chill, a brief and almost painless illness, and 
 he had breathed his life away as calmly and sweetly 
 as ever he fell asleep in his mother s arms. It was a 
 lovely ending to a noble life, and well might the city 
 and the State, and even the nation, cease awhile from 
 their activities, in deep respect for such a man. The 
 flags were lowered to half-mast as soon as it was known 
 that he had passed away ; the Courts of Common Pleas 
 adjourned, and both branches of the Legislature at 
 Albany. 
 
 His was a life for which no words of appreciation 
 
43 
 
 can be called too eulogistic, because it was wholly 
 dedicated to a noble purpose. The great powers of 
 his mind, the deep devotion of his heart, were not 
 frittered away upon many minor interests, however im 
 portant ; in this his life was as nearly perfect in unity 
 of purpose and in continuity of effort as it may be 
 given to human life to be. His whole life was a coun 
 sel of perfection. From his early manhood he had 
 before him one high aim, to free the law from techni 
 calities and make justice prevail that divine attribute 
 in which are summed up all the virtues, the tender and 
 merciful no less than the strenuous and stern. And 
 to-day there is not a quarter of the globe that does not 
 feel the influence of this life-long purpose. To quote 
 from an editorial notice in The Sun : 
 
 " His Code of Civil Procedure, originally adopted in 
 New York, was the model of similar codes in a score of 
 other States, and has been copied in British colonies in 
 all parts of the globe. Its essential features are em 
 bodied in the existing system of procedure in the High 
 Court of Justice in England. All over the world, 
 wherever the prevailing jurisprudence has had its 
 origin in the English common law, the form and man 
 ner of conducting litigations and transacting the busi 
 ness of the courts are due largely to the influence of 
 David Dudley Field." 
 
 Civil procedure was not the only department of the 
 law to occupy his attention. Eighteen States and Ter 
 ritories have adopted his criminal code ; while his 
 " Outlines of an International Code," presented to the 
 Social Science Congress in 1873, attracted the atten 
 tion of all jurists, and has been translated into French 
 and Italian. 
 
44 
 
 The ablest minds of England were glad to own the 
 debt they owed to him. Some years ago, as he was on 
 the eve of sailing for America, he was invited to attend 
 a session of an English Commission created for the 
 purpose of revising the laws on the basis of the prin 
 ciple to which his life had been given. He went ; 
 there were present five men who at one time or another 
 had held the office of Lord Chancellor the highest 
 legal position in Great Britain. Through a long even 
 ing they took counsel together, and when at last the 
 session broke up, the then Lord Chancellor thanked 
 Mr. Field in the warmest terms for his services to the 
 cause of justice in the world. Tributes no less intel 
 ligent, if from men less distinguished, it has many a 
 time been his fortune to receive. 
 
 In these days just past such tributes have been many 
 and most appreciative. A few extracts from the daily 
 papers may properly find a place here. The Herald 
 said of him : 
 
 " Xo man ever raised a higher standard of the func 
 tion of a lawyer or aimed more devotedly to reach it. 
 In his own words, * The true function of the lawyer is 
 not alone to guide his clients aright, not alone to gain 
 lawsuits, not alone to win fame or fortune, but to make 
 the law itself better/ On this principle Mr. Field acted 
 from the beginning to the end of his remarkably long 
 career at the bar. ... It may be a long time yet 
 before codification of the law of nations and interna 
 tional arbitration are formally adopted by the leading 
 powers of the world. But when that era in the prog 
 ress of nations is reached, no name will be more glorified 
 than that of David Dudley Field, and no country will 
 be entitled to higher honors than that of which he was 
 a citizen." 
 
45 
 
 From the Brooklyn Eagle come words which might 
 be deemed extravagantly eulogistic, did they not evince 
 so true an apprehension of the noble purpose which 
 raised this life so far above the level of common lives : 
 
 " He was a very great man. His manly greatness was 
 expressed in results which made the world better for his 
 living in it, and which will make the world forever bet 
 ter because he lived in it. He added signal causes to 
 the claim of the nineteenth century to fame, to wonder, 
 to gratitude, and to emulation evermore. He made it 
 the century of law codification. That should be written 
 with steam navigation, telegraphy, the telephone, the 
 phonograph, the locomotive, the policy of arbitration, 
 the emancipation of the serfs and the freedom of Afro- 
 Americans amoag the immortal and invaluable achieve 
 ments of this century. 
 
 " He grew to his work. He began at the beginnings 
 of law reform. He first sought to reconstitute and re 
 organize the judiciary. He found it of less importance 
 how courts were made and graded than what the law 
 itself should be. So he undertook the completion of 
 codes of civil and criminal procedure. . . . 
 
 " It is no matter whether men think his scheme 
 utopian or not. On the scale of its projection it may 
 have been utopian. . . . The benign scheme and 
 purpose David Dudley Field had in view, whether prac 
 ticable or not, should write his name among perhaps 
 that ten of the human race who will be household 
 words around the earth a thousand years from now. 
 Shakespeare, Bacon, Cicero, Gesar, Napoleon, Wash 
 ington, Lincoln, are perhaps seven out of this possible 
 ten. David Dudley Field should, we think, be made 
 the eighth, and, we think, will be. The two others may 
 be left to speculation and to time. 
 
 " To talk with him was a help. To listen to him was 
 instruction. To know him was a liberal education. He 
 suffered a little under the fact of being a man devoted 
 
46 
 
 to one idea, but the idea, whether attainable at the 
 present stage of development or not, was as far reach 
 ing and as uplifting in its purpose and tendency as any 
 ever in the brain and heart of man. . . . David 
 Dudley Field s object was to simplify, harmonize, and 
 universalize justice. Mankind and not bhe Bar was his 
 thought. Humanity and not the Judiciary was his 
 solicitude. The identity of litigation with justice was 
 his desire. He would have made rights so clearly 
 statable that the wrongs infracting them would be as 
 odious as obvious. The much he did was a noble 
 achievement. The more he sought to do was an even 
 nobler dream. If his idea was an error, its spiritual 
 quality made it an error to be revered. If his hope in 
 his time was an illusion, it is an illusion which, we trust, 
 may ere long wrap the world in its angelic form." 
 
 Two men of all who have lived in modern times have 
 labored to realize the normal unity of the human race, 
 and these two were brothers. Cyrus W. Field bound 
 the whole round world in one by his submarine tele 
 graph. David Dudley Field sought to make all human 
 hearts beat in true harmony through the realization of 
 that idea of human justice which is in the mind of God. 
 
 In the physical and in the moral sphere no one act, 
 no one thought of man, can do more than these to real 
 ize the prayer we say each day, " Thy kingdom come ; " 
 the prayer of our Saviour breathed in His last hours, 
 " That they may all be one." 
 
 Now, after eighty-nine years of noble service he 
 sleeps well. Two years ago, in the splendid vigor of 
 his eighty-seven years, he wrote a simple poem, pub 
 lished then in The Independent, which we are glad to 
 read again to-day. It tells us what life was to him, as 
 full of simple joys as of noble duties ; it tells us what 
 
47 
 
 death was to him no thing of terror, no messenger of 
 dread, but a true and kindly friend. 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD AT EIGHTY-SEVEN. 
 
 What is it DOW to live ? It is to breathe 
 
 The air of Heaven, behold the pleasant earth, 
 
 The shining rivers, the inconstant sea, 
 
 Sublimity of mountains, wealth of clouds, 
 
 And radiance o er all of countless stars ; 
 
 It is to sit before the cheerful hearth, 
 
 With groups of friends and kindred, store of books, 
 
 Kich heritage from ages past, 
 
 Hold sweet communion, soul with soul, 
 On things now past, or present, or to come, 
 Or muse alone upon my earlier days, 
 
 Unbind the scroll, whereon is writ 
 
 The story of my busy life ; 
 Mistakes too often, but successes more, 
 
 And consciousness of duty done. 
 It is to see with laughing eyes the play 
 
 Of children sporting on the lawn, 
 
 Or mark the eager strife of men 
 
 And nation seeking each and all, 
 
 Belike advantage to obtain 
 
 Above their fellows ; such is man ! 
 It is to feel the pulses quicken, as I hear 
 
 Of great events near or far, 
 
 Whereon may turn perchance 
 The fate of generations ages hence. 
 It is to rest with folded arms betimes, 
 
 And so surrounded, so sustained, 
 
 Ponder on what may yet befall 
 
 In that unknown mysterious realm 
 Which lies beyond the range of mortal ken. 
 Where souls immortal do forever dwell ; 
 Think of the loved ones who await me there. 
 And without murmuring or inward grief, 
 
 With mind unbroken and no fear, 
 Calmly await the coming of the Lord. 
 
THE LAST TRIBUTE. 
 
 The scene in Calvary Church on Sunday afternoon, 
 April 15, was most impressive and most touching. The 
 great church was packed, the whole center aisle being 
 given up to those who especially mourned his loss and 
 delighted to do him honor ; his family, delegates from 
 various learned bodies to which he belonged, and mem 
 bers of the legal profession. So distinguished a body 
 of men is not often seen. Among the pall-bearers 
 walked the Chief Justice of the United States and 
 many men whose names are known wherever distin 
 guished ability is honored ; of the inner circles of those 
 who most nearly feel his loss, his own immediate family, 
 were two other Justices of that most august judicial 
 body in the world, his brother and his nephew. 
 
 There was no funeral sermon, no eulogy of the great 
 man who was gone. Far more seemly, more touching, 
 more soothing, the sublime words of the burial service, 
 the noble resurrection chapter, the sweet processional 
 and recessional hymns from many voices of boys and 
 men, going to meet the coffin as it entered the church, 
 and preceding it to its place in the chancel and again 
 to its temporary resting place when the service was 
 over. 
 
 On Monday morning the last journey was made to 
 the place he loved best on earth, the Stockbridge home, 
 the narrow house in the rural God s Acre. 
 
DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
 
 Words of his youngest brother in The Evangelist, April 26, 1894. 
 
 He is gone to the grave! Neither shall he return to 
 his house any more ! He hath no more a portion for 
 ever in anything that is done under the sun ! 
 
 So quickly has one on whom I have leaned all my 
 life vanished out of my sight that I am stunned by the 
 blow. But more than any other man that I ever knew, 
 he lived while he did live. Even when he had entered 
 his ninetieth year he was so full of life, of such vitality, 
 that continued until within a few hours of the moment 
 when he breathed his last, that I can hardly realize that 
 I shall no more feel the warm grasp of his hand or hear 
 his cheering voice. 
 
 Such a life cannot end without leaving a great void 
 behind it, and it is due both to his memory and to those 
 who survive him that they should know something of 
 his history and of the influences that made him what 
 he was. He was not the child of fortune. He was 
 born under the humble roof of a country minister. 
 The Hartford Courant (by the pen, we presume, of 
 Charles Dudley Warner) says : 
 
 "DAVID DUDLEY FIELD was born in this good old 
 State of Connecticut a little more than eighty-nine 
 years ago. But for the migration of his father from a 
 
50 
 
 Connecticut pastorate to a Massachusetts one, he would 
 doubtless have followed the parental footprints to the 
 doors of Yale ; as it was, Williams had the honor of 
 giving him his sheepskin. That was in 1825. Three 
 years later he hung out his shingle in the city of New 
 York and began the practice of the law. It is worth 
 noting that in one of his first cases he appeared as 
 counsel for a fugitive slave." 
 
 In this city he lived more than sixty-five years, and 
 it is safe to say that there was no man better known by 
 sight, if not from personal acquaintance. For many 
 years it was his custom to take his morning exercise on 
 horseback, and residents up town, who were abroad at 
 an early hour, observed him as he rode out to the Cen 
 tral Park. Still more familiar was his figure on the 
 street. It was his custom to walk from his home in 
 Gramercy Park to his office in lower Broadway, and his 
 tall, erect figure and quick, firm step gave him a mili 
 tary appearance, as he passed on with the stride of a 
 grenadier. Indeed he was once mistaken on the Khine 
 for a Marshal of France ! 
 
 It was early in life that he rose to the front rank of 
 his profession, and for full fifty years it is probable 
 that the business of his office was equal to that of any 
 in the city. 
 
 But his chief distinction was not in the winning of 
 great cases, but in his efforts for the reform of the law, 
 which he found encumbered with technicalities, whereby 
 litigation was so prolonged that many a man felt that 
 it was better to suffer wrong than to attempt to secure 
 justice with an issue so doubtful and so remote. But 
 in this movement for reform he had to fight, not only 
 against old habits and traditions, but against the great 
 
51 
 
 body of his own profession, who were wedded to the 
 old forms, with which they had become familiar. The 
 labor was spread over a long succession of years. It 
 is just fifty -five years ago (in 1839) that he wrote his 
 first letter on the Keform of our Judicial System, and 
 then began the agitation which was to occupy him 
 nearly forty years. In 1851, while in England, he had 
 an interview with Lord Brougham, who commended his 
 efforts for the fusion of law and equity, but doubted if 
 it could ever be effected in England. He soon changed 
 his mind, however ; for a few months after he wrote a 
 letter in which he said that sooner or later fusion was 
 sure to be adopted in England. 
 
 The next year Mr. Field Avas again abroad, and a 
 dinner was given to him in London by the Law Amend 
 ment Society, at which Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord 
 Sherbrooke (who so distinguished himself in Parlia 
 ment, and as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Mr. 
 Gladstone), paid him a tribute such as has seldom been 
 paid to any legislator, living or dead. Among other 
 things he said : 
 
 " He trusted that his honorable friend, Mr. Field, 
 would go down to posterity with this glory that he 
 had not only essentially served one of the greatest 
 States of America, but that he had also provided a 
 cheap and satisfactory code of law for every colony 
 that bore the English name. Mr. Field, indeed, had 
 not squared the circle ; he had not found out any solid 
 which answered to more than three denominations ; he 
 had not discovered any power more subtle than elec 
 tricity, nor one that would bow with more docility to 
 the service of man than steam. But he had done 
 greater things : he had laid the foundation of peace, 
 happiness, and tranquillity, in the establishment of a 
 
52 
 
 system which would make law a blessing instead of a 
 scourge to mankind. He believed that no acquisition 
 of modern times if he rightly understood what had 
 been done in the State of New York he believed that 
 no achievement of the intellect was to be compared to 
 that by which Mr. Field had removed the absurdities 
 and the technicalities under which New York, in com 
 mon with this country and the colonies, had so long 
 groaned. While England was debating upon the pro 
 priety of some small and paltry reforms in the adminis 
 tration of law, a great master in the art of administrative 
 reform had risen there in the person of his distinguished 
 friend, Mr. Field, and had solved the problem which 
 they in England were timidly debating. America had 
 a great future before her in the establishment and diffu 
 sion of the arts of peace. Let them leave to others 
 to absolute governments to have their subjects shot 
 down in the streets, rather than wait even for the head 
 long injustice of a court-martial ; but let it be the lot of 
 England, hand in hand with America, to lead the way 
 in the arts of jurisprudence, as well as in other arts 
 let them aim at being the legislators and the pacificators 
 of the world." 
 
 But that was only the beginning of the herculean task 
 which he undertook, while carrying on a large profes 
 sional practice, and that extended over many years, till 
 one by one appeared five complete Codes : of the Civil 
 Law and the Criminal Law ; and of Civil and Criminal 
 Procedure ; and a Political Code. 
 
 As the work went on it was watched with great in 
 terest in England, where the law was still burdened and 
 confused by the innumerable acts of Parliament passed 
 through many centuries, which led to the appointment 
 of a Parliamentary Committee and of a Crown Com 
 mission to consider the whole subject of law reform. 
 In 1867 Mr. Field was in London, and was invited to 
 
53 
 
 meet there English reformers and explain the features 
 of the law reform which he had inaugurated in America. 
 There were present the most eminent legal authorities 
 of the Kingdom, including five Lord Chancellors Lord 
 Westbury and Lord Cranwortli ; Sir Page Wood, after 
 wards Lord Hatherly ; Sir Hugh Cairns, afterwards 
 Lord Cairns ; and Sir Roundell Palmer, now Lord Sel- 
 borne. The conference lasted till late into the night, and 
 when they arose, Lord Hatherly took him by the hand 
 and said : "Mr. Field, the State of New York ought to 
 build you a monument of gold /" 
 
 These codes were adopted in part in half the States 
 of the Union, and portions of them in England and the 
 British colonies, to the most distant parts of the empire. 
 It was a moment of triumph for Mr. Field when, travel 
 ling round the world, he found under the Southern 
 Cross, at Singapore, and again at Hong Kong, the very 
 enactments that he had prepared thirty years before in 
 America. 
 
 His last great service to civilization was in what he 
 contributed to the peaceful intercourse of nations. At 
 a meeting of the British Association for the Promotion 
 of Social Science in Manchester in 1866, he proposed 
 the appointment of a committee to prepare an Inter 
 national Code a proposal which was accepted with 
 enthusiasm, and a committee appointed of great jurists 
 from England, France, Germany, and the United States ; 
 but, as usual, the burden fell upon him, and the work 
 which appeared some years later was purely his own. 
 He was the most earnest and influential advocate on 
 either side of the ocean of arbitration as the way of 
 settling differences between nations, instead of going to 
 war the wisdom of which has been so splendidly illus- 
 
54 
 
 trated in the settlement of the Alabama Claims and of 
 the question of the Bering Sea. 
 
 All this is matter of history. That to which I turn 
 in this sad hour is the inner life which was revealed 
 only to those who were closest to him. To the world 
 he appeared stern and cold ; a great combatant in the 
 struggles of the bar ; who never asked for favors from 
 any quarter, however formidable ; who took and struck 
 tremendous blows. But there was another side to the 
 man which none knew but those who saw him in his 
 own home a gentleness and sweetness that showed 
 itself in a love for children, of which Mr. John E. 
 Parsons speaks in the letter printed below ; and in in 
 numerable acts of kindness to the humble and the 
 poor ; while in his domestic circle he was the most 
 affectionate of men ; and those who stood nearest to 
 him think, not so much of the great advocate and law 
 giver, as of the warm and tender heart that was hidden 
 under that iron breast. 
 
 All this came over me like a flood, as I followed him 
 to the grave. It was in the old burying ground at 
 Stockbridge, where have been laid to rest so many of 
 the honored as well as the sainted dead for a hundred 
 and fifty years, from the time of John Sargent, the 
 apostle to the Indians, who desired to be buried near 
 him that they might rise with him at the resurrection. 
 There a willow droops over a new-made grave, where 
 we laid him down who had just passed from among us, 
 and turned away with a feeling of loneliness that will 
 remain till we, too, are laid in the same peaceful spot, 
 to sleep till the heavens be no more. H. M. F. 
 
55 
 MR. FIELD AMONG THE CHILDEEN. 
 
 During the summer of last year, which Mr. Field 
 spent in the Berkshire Hills, his favorite drive was to 
 a rural retreat, which had been fitted up for the children 
 who are sent from the city to the country to get a life- 
 giving and health-giving draft of fresh air. So frequent 
 were his visits that all the children knew him, and as 
 he took his seat on the porch, would gather about him 
 like bees. He would take them on his knees and tell 
 them stories, and often pile eight or ten into his large 
 carriage and send them off for a drive over the hills. 
 It was the frequent occurrence of this sight which has 
 called forth the following from Mr. John E. Parsons, 
 the creator of that beautiful charity which bears the 
 name of a beloved daughter: 
 
 NEW YORK, April 15, 1894. 
 DEAR DR. FIELD : 
 
 In a sermon which I heard this morning was told 
 this story of Thomas Guthrie : When near his end it 
 was proposed to sing to him. He was asked to select 
 a hymn. " Sing to me a bairn s song ! " was his reply. 
 
 I have seen your brother Dudley in many of the ex 
 periences of his varied career ; in the heat of the fierce 
 conflicts of the profession of which he was so distin 
 guished a member ; pressing with untiring persistency 
 the reforms with which his name will ever be associated ; 
 defending himself with matchless courage and vigor, 
 and with faith which never wavered against any impu 
 tations that he had not adhered to the highest standards 
 of personal and professional ethics exalting that pro- 
 
56 
 
 fession which he honored and which was honored in 
 him. But it is not thus that I shall recall him, nor 
 even as I have seen him drinking in the invigorating 
 air of his Berkshire home, and gazing upon the Berk 
 shire Hills which he loved with an abiding passion. 
 
 My memory goes back to the past summer and to 
 the daily visits which he made to St. Helen s Home. I 
 can see him now, with two or three little city waifs on 
 each knee, telling them the stories and repeating the 
 verses which he had learned as a little child. Many of 
 them are looking forward to the time this summer when 
 they may again see their friend. Of all the honors 
 which came to him, of all the tributes which will be 
 paid to his memory, I doubt if one would be more 
 valued by himself than the affection which he had in 
 spired in the hearts of these little ones. 
 
 " This is one of the greatest pleasures that I have 
 
 ever known," he said to me one afternoon. In the 
 
 name of his little friends and for them permit me to 
 
 extend sympathy and express sorrow at this great loss. 
 
 Sincerely and respectfully yours, 
 
 JOHN E. PARSONS. 
 
 From Rev. Dr. Henry van E>yke, wlio was Mr. Field s 
 companion on his last voyage. 
 
 Dear Dr. Field : It was a great shock and sor 
 rowful surprise to hear of your brother s death. He 
 was so well on the steamer in which we crossed the 
 Atlantic together, so happy, so energetic, such a cheer 
 ful and inspiring companion, that in spite of his great 
 
57 
 
 age he seemed young, and the thought of death was far 
 from him. 1 am sure those last days of his life were 
 pleasant and profitable ones. He enjoyed them ; and 
 he increased the pleasure of others. I shall be glad 
 always to think that I was a fellow-traveller of his and 
 privileged to listen to much of his wise and cheerful 
 conversation. 
 
 To you, my dear Doctor, in your sorrow and loneli 
 ness, I offer my sincere sympathy. One after another 
 the strong men whom your family has given to 
 the world are called home. I know your heart is 
 heavy with a brother s grief. But you have the best 
 of all consolations, the brightest of all hopes, and your 
 sunny faith of a lifetime will shine brightly still, and 
 God will maintain and increase your strength accord 
 ing to His promise to Christ Jesus our Lord. This is 
 the sincere prayer of 
 
 Yours faithfully, HENRY VAN DYKE. 
 
 HIS UNOBTRUSIVE GENEROSITY. 
 
 Mr. Field gave liberally and largely to persons need 
 ing assistance within his means, and his gifts were 
 various and numerous : to aid young men in their edu 
 cation, to encourage improvement in villages, and 
 in aid of charities for children of the poor, or for the 
 sick or infirm. But of them he never spoke unless in 
 answer to inquiries. He never proclaimed his benefac 
 tions. He also gave twenty -five thousand dollars to 
 Williams College for the professorship of astronomy, 
 and ten thousand dollars for erecting the tower in 
 
58 
 
 Stockbridge on the site of the old church built for the 
 Indians. 
 
 A pleasing instance of his unostentatious generosity 
 is related by Mr. Irving Browne in the London Law 
 Journal : 
 
 " Mr. Field, writes Mr. Browne, was very frugal in 
 small matters, but in large matters he was generous. 
 A little more than a year ago he wrote me certainly 
 with no design of having it heralded, at least in his 
 lifetime: It may interest you to know, since I have 
 been charged with parsimony, that in my chagrin at 
 the failure of the bar of the country to keep its promise, 
 made at a meeting in Washington, after the death of 
 Chief Justice Taney, to look after his family, I gave to 
 the clerk of the Supreme Court my personal bond to 
 pay to a daughter of the Chief Justice $500 a year, 
 during her life or mine, I forget which ; and that I 
 paid this annuity from the date of the bond in 1873 
 till the daughter s death in 1891, so that I actually con 
 tributed out of my private funds $9,000 to save the 
 credit of the bar. I had never seen the two daughters, 
 nor the Chief Justice himself, except on the bench, 
 and I loathed his decision in the Dred Scott case. 
 Mr. Field was an intense optimist, and had the most 
 profound religious convictions." 
 
PROCEEDINGS UPON THE DEATH 
 
 OF 
 
 DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
 
 Extract from the Minutes of the Association for the Re 
 form and Codification of the Law of Nations Reso 
 lution of the International Arbitration and Peace As 
 sociation Minute of the Proceedings of the Facidty of 
 Washington and Lee University. 
 
 The Association for the Reform and Codification of the 
 Law of Nations. 
 
 33 Chancery Lane, W. C., 
 
 LONDON, &th May, 1894. 
 To LADY MUSGRAVE. 
 
 My Lady : At the request of the Council of the 
 above Association, I beg to forward you the annexed 
 copy of a resolution which was adopted at its meeting 
 last evening. 
 
 In doing so may I take the liberty of expressing my 
 own personal sympathy, and my regard for your late 
 esteemed and revered father. It was my honour and 
 privilege to be associated with him in the work of the 
 London Peace Congress of 1890, and I could not help 
 being struck with his extraordinary vigor, ability, and 
 force of character which won my warm admiration. 
 I am yours, very sincerely, 
 
 W. EVANS DARBY, 
 
 Hon. Sec. pro tern. 
 
60 
 
 Extract from the Minutes of the Executive Council 
 held on Thursday, 3d May, 1894 : 
 
 " The Executive Council of the Association for the 
 Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations at this, 
 its first meeting since the death of the Hon. David 
 Dudley Field, one of the founders and past President 
 of the Association, and at the time of his death Hon 
 orary Vice-President, desires to express its regret at 
 the loss which the Association and the whole civilized 
 world has thereby sustained, and respectfully tenders 
 its sympathy with his family in their bereavement." 
 
 International Arbitration and Peace Association. 
 Offices : 40 and 41, Outer Temple, Strand, 
 (Opposite the Royal Courts of Justice.) 
 
 LONDON, W. C., 3d May, 1894. 
 
 MADAM : I am desired by the Committee of this As 
 sociation to forward you the enclosed copy of a resolu 
 tion adopted by the Committee with reference to the 
 death of your distinguished father, Mr. David Dudley 
 Field. 
 
 Yours, faithfully, J. FRED K GREEN, 
 
 Secretary. 
 LADY MUSGRAVE. 
 
 Copy of Resolution. 
 DEATH OF DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
 
 Resolved, That this Committee have heard with re 
 gret of the death of Mr. David Dudley Field of New 
 York, and desire to place on record their sense of the 
 great services rendered by him to the cause of interna 
 tional unity, both as a jurist in his " Outlines of an In 
 ternational Code " and other works, and by his lifelong 
 devotion to the principle of International Arbitration. 
 
 The Committee would more especially note the dig- 
 
61 
 
 nity and ability with which Mr. Field, notwithstanding 
 his advanced years, presided over the Second Univer 
 sal Peace Congress, held in London in 1890. 
 
 The Committee feel sure that when the substitution 
 of Law for War in international affairs shall have be 
 come generally established a prospect happily in 
 creasing in probability the name of David Dudley 
 Field will be honored among the most distinguished of 
 the pioneers in promoting the establishment of the 
 juridical status among nations as a practical step to 
 wards the brotherhood and solidarity of men.* 
 
 * In a letter to a brother of the deceased, the Hon. John Randolph 
 Tucker, of Virginia, thus speaks of the movement of Mr. David Dud 
 ley Field : 
 
 " What a wonderful projection into the future he has pushed his 
 inventive and suggestive thought for the international arbitrament in 
 peace of the controversies of nations ! When his ideal is realized, as 
 it must be, the world will lay on his tomb the tribute of its homage 
 as the bold and intrepid pioneer in making the Prince of Peace the 
 arbiter of the international disputes of the world. This, even more 
 than his energy and genius in pressing the code procedure, will be the 
 solid foundation of his fame." 
 
 At a banquet at the Hotel Metropole in London, in July, 1890, given 
 by members of the British Parliament to the members of continental 
 Parliaments and other distinguished persons attending the Universal 
 Peace Congress, the Eight Hon. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre rose and stated 
 that he had been requested to supply the place of Mr. Depew, who, 
 to the regret of all, was absent on account of illness, and he then in 
 troduced one of the guests of the evening. Mr. David Dudley Field, 
 who spoke as follows : 
 
 "My Lords and Gentlemen," began the distinguished American 
 jurist, " I am going to preach you a very short sermon upon the text 
 proposed by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre an international parliamentary move 
 ment. Last week I had the honor of being present at the unofficial 
 congress, composed of private individuals of many nations, earnestly 
 bent on doing what they might to further the cause of international 
 arbitration. To-night I am proud to address a body of parliamentary 
 representatives inspired by the same lofty ideal. I hear people de 
 clare us visionary enthusiasts, dreamers, and unpractical folk chasing 
 after a phantom. 
 
 " But stop a moment! Think a moment! Is it true we are un 
 practical ? What is that prayer we hear Sunday after Sunday, Give 
 peace in our time, O Lord. What does that mean ? It means that 
 we have the consciences of the world with us. Things change as time 
 
WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY, LEXINGTON, 
 VIRGINIA. 
 
 At a meeting of the faculty of "Washington and Lee 
 University, held May 14, 1894, the following minute 
 was adopted : 
 
 The Faculty of Washington and Lee University have 
 heard with deep sensibility of the death of Hon. David 
 Dudley Field, eminent as lawyer, statesman, and pub 
 licist, whose generous gifts to this institution entitle 
 him to the gratitude of all who are interested in its 
 welfare. 
 
 No American has lived in this generation who has 
 taken a more prominent and useful part in the advance 
 ment in jurisprudence, municipal and international. 
 
 rolls 011. Suppose the common people in the time of the Plantagenets 
 and Tudors had claimed the right to manage the affairs of the nation. 
 What would the nobles have said ? And what do the nobles say now ? 
 Things have changed, and things will change, and church bells will 
 finally be heard ringing peace over all the world. 
 
 " IS THAT UNPRACTICAL ? 
 
 " We are called unpractical, but when the German Emperor de 
 mands more battalions for his armies, and a representative of the 
 groaning German people rises in the Reichstag and asks with whose 
 blood and whose money those battalions are to be paid for is that 
 unpractical ? And when the statistician tells you Englishmen that 
 during the whole of this century, for every pound of public money 
 raised 16s. 3%d. have been spent for war is that unpractical ? And 
 when you learn that to-day out of 670 members of the House of Com 
 mons there are 234 ready to vote for an arbitration treaty, and that if 
 only one hundred members more will join us, the problem is solved 
 is that unpractical ? 
 
 " No! we are not unpractical, but the most practical of men, and 
 the task we have set ourselves of arousing public opinion against the 
 ghastly horrors of war is a noble task. 
 
 " I will conclude with an old stanza which used to be very dear to 
 us Americans at the time of our own Civil War : 
 
 For right is right and God is God, 
 
 And right shall surely win ; 
 To doubt v/ould be disloyalty, 
 To falter would be sin. " 
 
 This spirited response called forth enthusiastic applause. 
 
63 
 
 In the science of judicial procedure, in the promotion 
 of peace among nations by making the law between 
 them certain and fixed, and by provision for arbitra 
 ment of all difficulties between them, and in his broad 
 and unsectional sympathy with his whole country in 
 upholding the constitutional principles of the fathers 
 as the supreme law for all the States, Mr. Field has 
 held an advanced position, which makes his name illus 
 trious in our history. 
 
 In grateful memory of his kindness to this University, 
 and of his public services, the Faculty place this min 
 ute upon their record as their testimonial of esteem for 
 his character, of admiration for his career of noble ac 
 tivity for the good of mankind, and of appreciation of 
 the results of his useful, well-spent, and philanthropic 
 life. 
 
 A copy : JOHN L. CAMPBELL, 
 
 Clerk of the Faculty. 
 
64: 
 
 A paper was read before the American Bar Association, at Saratoga, 
 in August, 1894, by Hon. John F. Dillon, on " The True Professional 
 Ideal," with the understanding that it should have some relation to 
 the subject of legal education, in one or more of its aspects. 
 
 In the article Judge Dillon refers to the career of Mr. David Dudley 
 Field, as illustrating several phases of that character. The article was 
 published in the Albany Law Journal, and by his permission it is re 
 produced here entire, with the exception of the synopsis given of the 
 studies pursued at the law school of Harvard University. 
 
 THE TRUE PKOFESSIONAL IDEAL. 
 BY HON. JOHN F. DILLON. 
 
 I have been honored with an invitation to read be 
 fore the Section on Legal Education a paper on " The 
 True Professional Ideal," with the implication, I pre 
 sume, that it should have some relation to the subject 
 of legal education in one or more of its many aspects. 
 
 The time limit fixed of thirty minutes or less will not 
 enable me to do more than to glance hurriedly at one 
 or two of the more important questions that might be 
 fitly considered under the general title of " The True 
 Professional Ideal." It can never, I think, be entirely 
 out of place certainly, in my opinion, it is not out of 
 place at the present time to impress upon the bar and 
 society the essential dignity, worth, nobility, and use 
 fulness of the lawyer s calling. The true conception 
 ideal, if you please of the lawyer is that of one who 
 worthily magnifies the nature and duties of his office, 
 who scorns every form of meanness or disreputable 
 practice, who by unwearied industry masters the vast 
 and complex technical learning and details of his pro- 
 
65 
 
 fession, but who, not satisfied with this, studies the 
 eternal principles of justice as developed and illustrated 
 iii the history of the law and in the jurisprudence of 
 other times and nations so earnestlj that he falls in love 
 with them, and is thenceforward not content unless he 
 is endeavoring by every means in his power to be not 
 only an ornament but a help unto the laws and juris 
 prudence of his State or nation. In his conception, 
 every place where a judge sits although the arena be 
 a contentious one, where debate runs high and warm 
 is yet, over all, a temple where faith, truth, honor, and 
 justice abide, and he is one of its ministers. With what 
 majestic port may not the lawyer approach that temple 
 when he reflects that he enters there not by grace, but 
 of right, craving neither mercy nor favor, but demand 
 ing justice, to which demand the appointed judicial 
 organs of the State must give heed under all circum 
 stances and at all times. 
 
 There is, I fear, some decadence in the lofty ideals 
 that have characterized the profession in former times. 
 There is in our modern life a tendency I have thought 
 at times very strongly marked to assimilate the prac 
 tice of the law to the conduct of commercial business. 
 Between great law firms with their separate depart 
 ments and heads and subordinate bureaus and clerks, 
 with their staff of assistants, there is much resemblance 
 to the business methods of the great mercantile and 
 business establishments, situate close by. The true 
 lawyer not to say the ideal lawyer is he who be 
 grudges no time and toil, however great, needful to the 
 thorough mastery of his case in its facts and legal prin 
 ciples ; who takes the time and gives the labor neces 
 sary to go to its very bottom, and who will not cease 
 
66 
 
 his study until every detail stands distinct and luminous 
 in the intellectual light with which he has surrounded 
 it. The temptations and exigencies of a large practice 
 make this very difficult, and the result too generally is 
 that the case gets only the attention that is convenient 
 instead of that which it truly requires. The head of a 
 great firm in a metropolitan city, a learned and able 
 man, was associated with another in a case of much 
 complexity and moment. He expressed warm admira 
 tion of the printed argument of his associate counsel, 
 which had cost the latter two months of laborious work, 
 adding, however, that he could not have given that 
 much time to it because, commercially regarded, it would 
 not have paid him to do so. 
 
 It is unquestionably the duty of the profession to 
 preserve the traditions of the past to maintain lofty 
 ideals and to this end to guard against what I may 
 perhaps truly describe by calling it the " commercializ 
 ing " spirit of the age. The utterance of Him who spake 
 with an authority greater than any lawyer or judge, 
 " man lives not by bread alone," should never be for 
 gotten or unheeded by the lawyer, and will not be by 
 any who come within the category of what may be 
 termed the " Ideal Lawyer." 
 
 Mr. J. H. Benton, Jr., of the Boston bar, under the 
 conviction that few persons, even among those of the 
 profession, realized the full extent in which the bar has 
 participated in the government of this country and given 
 directions to its policies and public affairs, read before 
 the Southern New Hampshire Bar Association, in Feb 
 ruary of the present year, a most instructive paper on 
 the " Influence of the Bar in Our State and Federal 
 Government," 
 
67 
 
 A few of the facts which he has laboriously ascer 
 tained and stated may be here briefly mentioned as bear 
 ing upon the subject of the present paper. Of the 56 
 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 25 were 
 lawyers, and so were 30 out of 55 members of the con 
 vention which framed the Federal Constitution. Of 
 the 3,122 Senators of the United States since 1787, 
 2,068 have been lawyers ; of the 11,889 Representatives, 
 5,832 have been lawyers. " The average membership 
 of lawyers in both branches of Congress from the begin 
 ning has been 53 per cent." In the present Constitu 
 tional Convention of the State of New York, 133 out of 
 the 175 members are members of the bar. Lawyers 
 constitute, as nearly as can be ascertained, one in every 
 400 of the male population of the United States at the 
 present time. The statistics show, with one exception, 
 that in the legislatures of all the States the legal pro 
 fession has, and always has had, a membership exces 
 sively greater in proportion to its number in the popu 
 lation of the State. 
 
 Not less marked is the influence of the bar in the 
 executive departments of the Federal and State govern 
 ments. Of the 24 Presidents, 19 have been lawyers ; 
 and Mr. Benton states that " of the 1,157 governors of 
 all the States, 578 of the 978 whose occupations I have 
 been able to ascertain have been lawyers." 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to mention the fact that the 
 entire body of the other co-ordinate department of the 
 national and State governments the judiciary have 
 been members of -the profession. And in our polity the 
 judiciary have a power and are clothed with a duty unique 
 in the history of the governments, viz., the power and 
 duty to declare legislative enactments and executive acts 
 
68 
 
 which are in conflict with our written Constitution to be 
 for that reason void and of no effect. In this America 
 has taught the world the greatest lesson in government 
 and law it has ever learned, namely, that law is not 
 binding alone upon the subject, and that the conception 
 of law never reaches its full development until it attains 
 complete supremacy in the form of written constitutions, 
 which are the supreme law of the land, since their pro 
 visions are obligatory both upon the State and upon 
 those subjected to its rule, and equally enforceable 
 against both, and therefore law in the strictest sense of 
 the term. 
 
 Two forces in society are in constant operation and 
 are necessary to its welfare, if not to its very existence : 
 the conservative force, to preserve what is worth pre 
 serving ; the progressive, without which we would have 
 stagnation and death. The character and state of the 
 law, as well as the social condition of any people, is the 
 result of the conflict between these healthful although 
 antagonistic forces. As the ocean keeps itself pure by 
 the constant movement and freedom of its waters, so 
 the like movement and freedom are necessary to pre 
 serve what is good in existing conditions, or to remedy 
 what is either bad or inadequate. 
 
 Changes in the law of any living and progressive 
 society are therefore absolutely necessary in order to 
 make the law answer the current state and necessities 
 of the social organism. So far as law is expressed in 
 written form, whether in constitution or statutes, it is 
 crystallized and almost, although -perhaps never quite, 
 stationary. Owing to the doctrine of judicial prece 
 dent as it exists in our law, this theoretically makes 
 what is adjudged almost, although in practice not quite, 
 
69 
 
 as stationary as law in written form. True wisdom re 
 quires that the law shall with all convenient speed be 
 made to harmonize with existing needs. This makes 
 law amendment or reform a constant continuing and 
 ever existing necessity. 
 
 Nothing is more difficult than the work of law im 
 provement. It requires a knowledge of the law both 
 theoretical and practical ; scientific, so as to know the 
 relation of each department of the law to every other 
 department ; practical, so as to appreciate existing de 
 fects and the needed remedy. Doctrinaires, jurists, and 
 legal scholars may see, indeed are often the first to see, 
 or to suggest and urge the required changes, but are, 
 generally speaking, incapable of wisely effecting them. 
 With the notable exception of the changes wrought in 
 the law of evidence, Bentham s vast labors bore almost 
 no direct fruit. Austin filled for many years a large 
 space in the field of jurisprudence. My own judgment 
 is that his legal theories have proved to have little in 
 trinsic or permanent value. Though feeling con 
 strained to say this, I must also add that in my opin 
 ion the world is much indebted to these eminent men 
 for their bold and free criticisms of our laws and for 
 arousing the attention of the bar to the need of amend 
 ing them, and especially for making some portions at 
 least of the profession in England and this country feel 
 the need of a more scientific jurisprudence. Brougham, 
 Mackintosh, Romilly, and Langdale were, in a way, 
 their disciples, and labored faithfully in the cause of 
 reform in England. But they went about it in the con 
 servative and timid manner so characteristic of the 
 English mind. Their efforts were confined to single, 
 sporadic, specific ameliorations of certain felt griev- 
 
70 
 
 ances, but their labors proceeded upon no scientific 
 plan to effect comprehensive reforms of either substan 
 tive law or of the law of procedure. 
 
 Such, roughly sketched, was the general condition of 
 law reform when the late David Dudley Field entered 
 upon the work of law amendment in this country. It 
 seems to me that the career of Mr. Field illustrates several 
 phases of the subject under discussion. For this rea 
 son, as well as because it is proper that some notice 
 should be taken in this body of the labors of this emi 
 nent man, at one time the president of this associa 
 tion, I shall refer for a few moments to the main work 
 of his life, and endeavor to draw from it the lessons it 
 teaches. In my judgment no mere doctrinaire or closet 
 student of our technical system of law is capable of 
 wise and well-directed efforts to amend it. This must 
 be the work of practical lawyers. Mr. Field had this 
 needed qualification, for he was throughout his long 
 career at the bar a busy and active practitioner. 
 
 When Mr. Field commenced his work of law im 
 provement, the gap between the law as it existed and 
 what the welfare of the community required, especially 
 in the law of procedure, was very wide. The system 
 of pleading and procedure had grown to be so techni 
 cal as to defeat in many cases the cause of justice. 
 This was eminently true of the common law system of 
 pleading and procedure, and even the system of equity 
 was equally open to the reproach of undue technicality 
 and of intolerable delays. The need for a cheaper, 
 simpler, and more expeditious procedure at law and in 
 equity had become a crying want. Mr. Field, if he did 
 not originate the idea, clearly put himself at the head 
 of the movement to remedy the evil. This he did at an 
 
71 
 
 early stage in his professional life, and to this as well 
 as to the codification, looking to improvement in crim 
 inal law and procedure, as well as in substantive law 
 he gave without ceasing, being instant in season and 
 out of season, more than fifty years of his active career, 
 He advocated the principle of codification everywhere. 
 He was a man of strong feelings and passions. Every 
 man of real force is so, almost necessarily. He, there 
 fore, fought for codification ; and he fought with daunt 
 less courage everybody who opposed him. We may 
 think that he unduly estimated the scope, the value, 
 and the beneficence of codification. He may have done 
 so. Effective and true reformers are apt to go too far. 
 But this detracts not the least from the estimation in 
 which he is justly entitled to be held by the bar and 
 public. I do not wish to surround him with a haze of 
 golden panegyric. He does not need it. Look at his 
 public labors in municipal and international law, ex 
 tending from 1839 to 1894, and what lawyer in this 
 country, dead or living, has ever dedicated half as many 
 years as he to conscientious efforts to improve our laws 
 and jurisprudence. In this view he stands without a 
 peer. Consider the success which has crowned his 
 work in this country and in England and in the English 
 colonies, and his career is strikingly distinctive. True, 
 some of his schemes of law amendment failed of adop 
 tion, those more especially relating to the codification 
 of the common law, but he seized upon one principle 
 which he made eminently successful, and which in turn 
 made him famous, and justly so, namely, the simplifica 
 tion of the law of procedure. The New York Code of 
 1848, in substance or principle, Mr. Field lived to see 
 adopted in a large majority of the States and Territories 
 
 rr:^ 
 
 jf 1J 
 
 IVBIU.r? 
 
 "UiTOBSi^ 
 
72 
 
 of the Union and in the Judicature Act of 1873 of the 
 British Parliament. 
 
 Mr Field had lofty professional ideals of the lawyer s 
 duty toward the law. Love of the pecuniary gains of 
 his calling, though he was not insensible to them, was 
 yet ever subordinate in his regard to those public labors 
 which he felt that he owed to his profession and the 
 law. Although in active practice in a great metropol 
 itan center for over sixty years, he accumulated no 
 more than some contemporary men at the English bar, 
 and perhaps some in the same city have done in less 
 than a tenth of the same period. But it may be said 
 that he w r as ambitious, that his ambition was boundless, 
 and that this was his incentive. Be it so. So, doubt 
 less, it was. Exercised for worthy ends, this, so far 
 from being the last infirmity, is the highest quality of 
 noble minds. Nor had official place, either for the 
 conspicuousuess which attracted and was flattered by 
 the public gaze, or for the power which men of lower 
 aims who live only in the present, love to wield, any 
 controlling charms for him. His eye was lifted higher 
 and was fixed chiefly on the generations who should 
 come after him. Of the present he regarded himself, 
 if I may so phrase it, as a tenant for life, but with a 
 reversion in fee in the limitless future. Cheerful in the 
 prolonged autumn of his days, he had for nearly a gen 
 eration seen the "leaves fall over the roots of the tree 
 of life," but this as he looked above only gave to his 
 vision a freer and more unobstructed view of the past 
 and future. With great felicity of expression, Sir 
 Walter Scott makes Kemble, on finally leaving the 
 Edinburgh stage, say he hoped to enjoy 
 
73 
 
 " Some space between the theatre and the grave : 
 That like the Koman in the Capitol, 
 I may adjust my mantle ere I fall." 
 
 Such, too, was Mr. Field s hope, doomed however to 
 disappointment. On his return from Europe, only three 
 or four days before he passed beyond the range of our 
 mortal vision, he was reported to have said, in answer 
 to the question what he intended to do, that he expected 
 to spend the coming summer in the Berkshires at work 
 on his autobiography, and that his one great ambition 
 was to have his codes adopted all over the English- 
 speaking world. All old men live in the past, and to 
 this Mr. Field, who had crossed the Delectable Moun 
 tains arid was already in the country of Beulah, was no 
 exception. It was natural that he should love to sur 
 vey, in the serene evening of his days, the toils and 
 labors which had marked his active life and the suc 
 cesses with which these had been rewarded. But only 
 men of the higher type can turn, as turn he did, to the 
 future, see it spread itself out before their enraptured 
 gaze, feel themselves fanned by its intoxicating breezes, 
 behold its sunlit heights and proudly feel that it, too, 
 is their inheritance. 
 
 With this let us contrast the life and professional 
 career of an eminent English contemporary of Mr. 
 Field s earlier life. I refer to Sir William Follett, who 
 in his day was as distinctly the leader of the bar as was 
 Lord Erskine in his. The picture has been drawn by 
 Sir William s own friend, the accomplished Talfourd, 
 who, in his " Vacation Rambles," tells us that there 
 was brought to him in 1846, when on his journey 
 through Italy, the usual register of visitors, and that, 
 turning over its pages, he was startled by the name of 
 
74 
 
 Sir William Follett written in tremulous characters just 
 before his death, which had occurred but a short time 
 before Talfourd saw his signature. After reviewing 
 Follett s professional career, usually pronounced so 
 brilliant, Talfourd mournfully inquired, "What re 
 mains ? " And he answered, "A name dear to the 
 affections of a few friends ; a waning image of a 
 modest and earnest speaker, though decidedly the head 
 of the common law bar ; and the splendid example of 
 a success embodied in a fortune of 200,000 acquired 
 in ten years, the labors of which hastened the extinc 
 tion of his life ; these," he added, " these are all the 
 world possesses of Sir William Follett. To mankind, 
 to his country, to his profession, he left nothing ; not a 
 measure conceived, not a danger averted, not a prin 
 ciple vindicated ; not a speech intrinsically worth 
 preservation ; not a striking image, nor an affecting 
 sentiment ; in his death the power of mortality is su 
 preme. How strange how sadly strange that a 
 course so splendid should end in darkness so obscure." 
 
 Follett did not discharge the debt he owed to his pro 
 fession, and therefore did not answer to the completest 
 professional ideal of the lawyers. Mr. Field not only 
 paid the debt due to his profession, but overpaid it and 
 thus became its creditor, and in this answered more 
 fully than lawyers like Follett the professional ideal. 
 
 In the report on legal education before mentioned it 
 appears that there are over fifty law schools in the 
 United States, having a membership of more than six 
 thousand students the committee not having the means 
 of ascertaining the number of students who were pur 
 suing their studies in private offices outside of the law 
 schools. I fully concur in the following observations 
 
75 
 
 of the committee. Their soundness will not be ques 
 tioned, I think, by any one who hears me : " The mind 
 of the lawyer is the essential part of the machinery of 
 justice ; no progress or reforms can be made until the 
 lawyers are ready. Their influence at the bar, on the 
 bench, and in legislation is practically omnipotent." 
 
 The following observation seems to me to be specially 
 weighty and important : " The progress of the law 
 means the progress of the lawyer, not of a few talented 
 men who are on the outposts of legal thought, but the 
 great army of the commonplace who contribute the ma 
 jority of every occupation. What the lawyers do not 
 understand, or what they pronounce visionary or im 
 practicable, will not be accepted by the legislatures or 
 courts of the country." 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to offer any observations 
 upon the methods of law instruction, much less upon 
 the different or competing methods of such instruction 
 Doubtless the method of teaching law or how it can 
 best be taught is an important subject, but it is not all 
 important. It is wise to discuss and consider it, but it 
 would not be wise to let it engross our whole or even 
 chief attention. What Pope said of forms of govern 
 ment may, I think, be said with much more justness of 
 methods of teaching : " That which is best administered 
 is best." The man whom nature designed to be a 
 teacher of law will, despite theories, teach it after his 
 own manner. He will impress his own personality upon 
 his work. It is the man, not the method, that tells. 
 The crucial test is whether the teacher can inspire a 
 living interest in the student and get from him the best 
 work that in him lies ; for, after all, the student must 
 himself do the work and the thinking which shall ac- 
 
76 
 
 complish him in the learning of his profession. Vastly 
 more important therefore than the methods of teaching 
 is the course of instruction or the branches to be 
 taught. 
 
 This general subject is very fully, and, I need not say, 
 ably discussed in the report of the committee on legal 
 education of this association, submitted in 1892. After 
 reviewing the course of instruction in the law schools 
 of this country (and it is substantially the same in all 
 of them) the committee say : 
 
 " It is evident that the course of study, with a very 
 few exceptions, is confined to the branches of practi 
 cal private law which a student finds of use in the first 
 years of his practice. It is a technical or philosophic 
 view of the law which is taught. It may be said of all 
 our law schools that the instruction is too technical. 
 It is not elementary enough. The view of the law 
 presented to the student is technical, rather than 
 scientific or philosophical." 
 
 What is meant by the course of instruction being 
 confined to private law which the student will find of 
 practical use in the earlier years of his practice, may be 
 illustrated by the course of instruction in what is justly 
 regarded as one of the very foremost law schools of 
 this country, that of Harvard University. I select it 
 for illustration because of the deserved eminence of 
 the school and because it covers all the students em 
 braced in a three years term. 
 
 The subjects taught and the books used show more 
 clearly than any general description the intensely tech 
 nical and practical character of the course of instruc 
 tion. This may stand, as I think, as the general model 
 or even the highest type of legal instruction in this 
 country. 
 
77 
 
 I agree in the main with the spirit of the criticisms 
 of the committee which I have quoted above, but I 
 would phrase my own views in somewhat different 
 language. I insist, for I believe it to be true, that the 
 stereotyped course of legal instruction in this country 
 is defective, not so much for what it contains as for 
 what it omits. It is defective in that no adequate pro 
 vision is made for instruction in historical and com 
 parative jurisprudence, and in the literature, science, 
 and philosophy of the law in what may perhaps be 
 compendiously expressed as "general jurisprudence." 
 If this is what the committee means by the expression 
 that the course of instruction is too technical, I agree 
 to it. But it is to be remembered that it is of the es 
 sence of our legal systems that they are in their histor 
 ical development and nature technical, and so far as 
 they are so, instruction, to be adequate and thorough, 
 must itself be technical, and in an important sense it 
 is not predicable of it that it is too technical. Having 
 in view the circumstances which surround the subject 
 of legal education in this country, I approve the wis 
 dom of the general course of instruction in our law 
 schools, so far as it gives chief attention to the usual 
 and enumerated branches of practical private law. 
 But I still insist that it is defective in the want of ade 
 quate instruction in the history and the literature of 
 the law and in what I call for short "general jurispru 
 dence." 
 
 Great lawyers like Coke and Blackstone, and Eldon 
 may be made by the current methods ; but the growth 
 of greater lawyers like Hale, Bacon, and Mansfield, 
 who in their day wisely amended and improved the 
 law, and who represent the higher professional ideals, 
 
78 
 
 is not adequately promoted or encouraged by the exist 
 ing course or methods of law instruction in the law 
 schools in this country. 
 
 I fully realize that to set up an impracticable stand 
 ard defeats the object sought. Nevertheless I insist 
 that it is entirely practicable for our law schools to en 
 large and liberalize the scope of their instruction by 
 requiring at least one hundred hours of the course to 
 be given specifically to the subjects which I have above 
 ventured to indicate as essential to any well-ordered 
 course of instruction that makes any just claim to being 
 adequate or complete. 
 
 And this view is the sole practical point of this paper 
 to urge and enforce, to the end that the generations of 
 lawyers who shall come after us may be adorned more 
 abundantly than else had been with examples of the 
 highest and truest professional ideals. And to this end, 
 moreover, I should be glad to see the members of the 
 section on legal education take the initiative by recom 
 mending the American Bar Association to adopt a reso 
 lution in substance that in its judgment adequate in 
 struction in historical, comparative and general juris 
 prudence is an essential part of a thorough course of 
 legal education, and that accordingly it recommends to 
 all of the law schools of the country that such instruc 
 tion should be made a distinct and specific branch of 
 the course of required study therein. 
 
79 
 
 In May, 1894, Mr. Austin Abbott, LL. D., Dean of the Law School 
 of the University of the City of New York, wrote an exceedingly in 
 teresting and appreciative essay on the work of Mr. David Dudley 
 Field. It was published and COPYRIGHTED by the Review of Reviews 
 Co. in the same month. By the courtesy and kindness of Mr. Albert 
 Shaw, the editor of that magazine, permission is given to use the 
 article, and the following is accordingly here reprinted : 
 
 THE WORK OF DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
 
 BY AUSTIN ABBOTT. 
 
 For at least a third of a century David Dudley Field 
 was the most commanding figure at the American bar. 
 Tall, erect, stalwart, alert, and decided in movement, 
 courteous and graceful in bearing, he impressed the 
 observer at once as a man of marked gifts and force. 
 This impression every advance in acquaintance deep 
 ened. Those who knew him intimately saw an imperious 
 nature, equipped with great intellectual power, and re 
 strained by an intuitive appreciation of the amenities of 
 social life. 
 
 Other men at the bar have perhaps had a more pro 
 found knowledge of the technical details of law, but 
 none have seen the law more truly in its immediate re 
 lation to public welfare. Other men have been more 
 devoted to research and gathered richer stores of erudi 
 tion to throw light upon the law, but few, if any, have 
 known so well how to inspire others in research, or 
 with such good judgment to select from its fruits that 
 which was of prime importance to his purpose. There 
 have been other men more given to close and sustained 
 
80 
 
 reasoning, but few able to put such a forceful person 
 ality into the presentation of legal reasoning. There 
 have been other lawyers with more notable gifts of wit, 
 humor, satire, and invective, but few, if any, whose 
 prepossessing presence and keen- minded powers, in a 
 personal controversy, delivered harder blows or sharper 
 thrusts, yet with so much respect for forensic and 
 parliamentary proprieties. Others have been more 
 eloquent to the popular appreciation, but few have had 
 such a vigorous grasp of thought, or such convincing 
 power in forcing hesitating minds to a firm conclusion. 
 
 The public, however, are interested not" only in the 
 professional service of this remarkable man, but also in 
 the greater service which he rendered to the profession, 
 and through the profession to the country at large, in 
 improving the law itself. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the badinage which is expended 
 upon lawj^ers, the obvious truth is unobscured that the 
 administration of justice has been built up by what they 
 have done, and that its maintenance is due to them ; 
 and that all the community enjoys of the security of 
 law and the suppression of social violence and wrong 
 is owing to the success with which the bar and the 
 bench, in their professional functions, maintain that 
 justice which Daniel Webster well said "is the great 
 interest of man upon earth." Mr. Field, in the midst of 
 arduous duties of private practice and antagonisms into 
 which he, to a degree beyond most practitioners, was 
 occasionally drawn, labored persistently for about half 
 a century, and with large success, to improve the con 
 dition of the law itself, and the procedure by which it 
 is applied to the controversies of men. 
 
 At the time Mr. Field commenced his career as a law 
 
81 
 
 reformer many antiquated forms of procedure, handed 
 down to us from the English law, had, in the great ad 
 vance in general intelligence and judicial ability, become 
 useless incumbrances to the prompt and inexpensive 
 
 administration of justice. 
 
 ****### 
 
 There had grown up in the mediaeval history of the 
 law of England two classes of judges, the common law 
 and the chancery. Volumes have been written on the 
 origin of this distinction and the reasons for its per 
 petuation. For the present purpose it may be well 
 characterized as the distinction between routine and 
 discretion. We see to-day essentially the same dis 
 tinction between inflexible rules and a power to dis 
 pense with such rules in almost all organized arrange 
 ments that involve delegation of power. The reason 
 that led the King and the English Parliament to sup 
 port two distinct systems, one of common law judges 
 who were bound to follow the law, another of chancery 
 with power to administer equity beyond the law, and 
 even to restrain any particular person from enforcing 
 the law, when injustice would result, was in its nature 
 the same as that which leads a great railroad company 
 to maintain in its principal passenger station a ticket 
 office where the official has power to sell tickets but no 
 discretion as to their use, and upstairs an official who 
 has no power to sell tickets but a discretion as to their 
 use. If a ticket holder lets the day pass and desires to 
 use his ticket on a later day than the date it bears, the 
 ticket agent must refuse the application. His is the 
 office of routine. lie must enforce the contract. The 
 applicant is sent thence to the superintendent upstairs, 
 where he may state his case and rind a discretionary 
 
82 
 
 power which can interfere with routine and redress the 
 complaint. If a customer of a bank wishing to with 
 draw paper which he has left with the discount clerk, 
 and which has been passed upon by the board, applies 
 to the discount clerk to have it returned and the entry 
 cancelled, he will be turned away from that wicket ; he 
 must make his application over again to the cashier 
 or president or some officer with discretionary powers. 
 For the same reason the common law judges were 
 compelled by penalties and punishments, often inflicted 
 upon them in early times, to adhere to the routine of 
 the law, and administer with all practicable uniformity 
 " the laws and customs of England ; " and yet at the 
 same time, appointed by and responsible to the same 
 government, was the Court of Chancery, standing nearer 
 to the King as the fountain of justice, and acting as his 
 immediate representative, clothed with discretionary 
 power to hear complaints that routine could not enter 
 tain, and to redress unusual grievances even to the ex 
 tent of compelling one who was doing unjustly, in a 
 case where was no law, to make redress, and even to 
 compel one who was using the routine of the law in an 
 unconscionable manner to cease. The details of pro 
 cedure were all arranged to fit this double system. If 
 a suitor prevailed at law, he was entitled absolutely to 
 costs as matter of right. If a suitor prevailed in chan 
 cery, it was in the discretion of the court to make him 
 pay the costs as a condition of obtaining relief, or to 
 impose costs on the defendant as if he had been sued 
 at law. If the debtor concealed his property so that 
 the sheriff could not enforce execution, chancery could 
 compel him to produce and surrender it. If a man 
 preferred to break his contract rather than perform it, 
 
83 
 
 and the law only allowed damages as a redress, chan 
 cery could compel him to perform it or go to prison, 
 instead of allowing him to pay the legal price he pre 
 ferred to pay for the liberty of refusal. And so on 
 through the entire circuit of rights and duties which 
 the conscience of statesmen recognized outside of the 
 old limits which the routine of common law had de 
 nned. 
 
 * * * # * * * 
 
 When our American governments were established a 
 Supreme Court (being a court of common law only) and 
 a Court of Chancery were founded in New York upon 
 the English system, and the same complex double pro 
 cedure continued down to 1846. In the formation of 
 our Federal government powers of the common law 
 courts and powers of a court of chancery were both 
 conferred upon the United States Circuit Court, but to 
 be separately exercised by the same judge, sitting in the 
 same court-room, and he was, therefore, bound by the 
 old rules of routine law in one class of cases, but 
 clothed with the discretionary powers of a chancellor 
 whenever those were invoked by a bill of complaint 
 
 addressed to him as if he were a chancellor. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Mr. Field proposed that the judge having the com 
 mon law jurisdiction be vested with the powers of a 
 chancellor, and might exercise them in a common law 
 case in the simple manner of an order on motion on a 
 few days notice. 
 
 There were other artificial distinctions in procedure 
 besides this duplex system of courts, which had become 
 similarly cumbrous and unnecessary. 
 
 The professional reader and perhaps some others 
 
84 
 
 may be interested in a few words relating to the chief 
 of these. 
 
 It is a principal function of the lawyer to know in 
 what cases an action will lie to redress a wrong, and in 
 what cases it \vill not ; and in the effort to systematize 
 our knowledge upon such a question it is necessary, as 
 it is in every branch of science, to deal with classes of 
 cases, and perceive by a process of generalization what 
 are the elements essential to each class. Of course as 
 the complexity of human relations and transactions 
 giving rise to controversy increased, the classes of cases 
 might be expected to increase. This process of classi 
 fication of rights of action came very early to be of great 
 importance in the administration of justice, because the 
 writ to be issued to bring the defendant before the 
 court was required to state or at least indicate to him 
 what kind of an action he would have to respond to, 
 whether an action to compel him to pay a debt, or to 
 pay damages for breaking a covenant, or to answer for 
 a trespass on land, or a trespass on the person or on 
 personal property, and also in cases of trespass whether 
 it was a direct trespass by force, or a matter of negli 
 gence, and the like. 
 
 Some centuries ago, after the clerks of court had by 
 issuing successive writs in a great many cases developed 
 a considerable number of classes of cases, Parliament, 
 thinking to check the growth of litigation, interposed 
 and forbade the invention of new writs, and allowed 
 them to be issued only in such cases as those in which 
 they had been previously issued, or in like cases. The 
 ingenuity of the bar and of the clerks of court was 
 thereafter exercised with some effect in devising writs 
 for new cases which were not too different from any- 
 
85 
 
 thing previously known to be called " like cases, "but the 
 result of this legislation was to crystallize pre-existing 
 forms, to emphasize the necessity that each new action 
 should be described as within some pre-existing class. 
 Another effect was to increase vastly the number of 
 applications to the chancellor by bills of complaint to 
 get redress in new kinds of grievance where there was 
 no adequate remedy at law, because no allowable writ. 
 The ingenuity of men in doing injustice in new forms 
 went on developing, but Parliament had put a check 
 on the ingenuity of the common lawyers to devise cor 
 responding writs. 
 
 This intervention of the legislative power thus had, 
 in course of time, these two great effects, both probably 
 unanticipated : 1, the arrest of the development of the 
 full adaptation of common law to the needs of society ; 
 and, 2, the acceleration of the development of a more 
 discreet and equitable system of justice through resort 
 to chancery. 
 
 The question at once occurs to the progressive- 
 minded reader of the present day, how could an ar 
 rangement ideally so absurd as two systems of courts 
 and of law for the same people and the same contro 
 versies hold its place for centuries as the means for 
 administering civil justice among so practical people as 
 the English and Americans ? 
 
 Two reasons may be suggested to the reflective reader 
 as we pass this interesting question : 1, the lack of men 
 in the profession fitted to master and administer both 
 kinds of law ; and, 2, the reluctance of lawyers who 
 feel proper responsibility for the interests of clients to 
 accept a new and untried system in place of that which 
 is settled and to which all their clients affairs have been 
 
86 
 
 adjusted. The first of these hindrances perpetuated 
 the double judicial system long after the causes of the 
 division ceased. Just as there are men in the pro 
 fession admirably fitted by temperament or training or 
 both to serve as advocates, but not to serve as judges, 
 and others sure of success and usefulness as judges and 
 of failure as advocates, so there have been many ex 
 cellently equipped for the common law bar or bench, 
 but poor material for chancellors and solicitors. 
 Whether this has been for lack of training I will not 
 undertake to say ; but the profession, even since the 
 merger of the two systems, are every-day observers of 
 the fact that some judges give better satisfaction to the 
 sense of justice of the bar while sitting with a jury in 
 actions for debt or damages, and others uniformly give 
 better satisfaction while sitting to determine according 
 to an equitable discretion controversies which inflexible 
 rules are not so well adapted to settle. Whatever we 
 may think of the cause of the long persistence of this 
 antiquated division of judicial labor, we need not be 
 surprised that the Americans should become ready to 
 abolish it before the English did, nor that among 
 Americans the great State of New York, where enter 
 prise and conservatism combine in the strongest forms 
 for safe progress, should be the jurisdiction in which 
 the experiment was tried. 
 
 Mr. Field was admitted to the New York bar in 1828. 
 He devoted himself to the thorough study of the prac 
 tice both in the common law courts and in chancery. 
 His method of dealing with procedure in his subse 
 quent code shows that his antagonism to the old sys 
 tems did not spring from ignorance of them but from 
 a complete mastery of both, a just appreciation of the 
 
87 
 
 best features of each, and a comparison of them with 
 procedure in other States, especially Massachusetts, 
 which had no chancery, and with continental European 
 systems founded on the civil law. To this technical 
 knowledge of existing methods was joined a statesman 
 like appreciation of the real function of litigation in 
 superseding private controversy, and of the consequent 
 necessity that remedial justice should be expeditious, 
 simple, and inexpensive. 
 
 The then existing system was imbedded beyond legis 
 lative power in the constitution of 1821. Mr. Field 
 commenced in 1839 to agitate the subject of reform. 
 Five years afterward the constitutional convention was 
 held, which formulated the provisions that cleared the 
 way for the reform that Mr. Field desired to carry out. 
 The majority of the Judiciary Committee reported a 
 plan embodying Mr. Field s suggestion of a single court 
 having general jurisdiction both in law and equity. 
 Charles O Conor, the leading member of the convention 
 from the New York bar, proposed a plan different in 
 detail, but if anything more radical than Mr. Field s in 
 this respect, for his proposal did not mention law and 
 equity as if different functions vested in the same court, 
 but simply declared the " judicial power of the State " 
 to be vested in the one court, subject to appeal. 
 
 Mr. Field was not a member of the convention, but 
 was active in suggesting and advocating the change, 
 and his memorial to the succeeding legislature led to 
 the appointment of a commission to prepare an act to 
 simplify the procedure. It is said that he was not at 
 first appointed on this commission because he was re 
 garded as too radical, but upon the occurrence of the 
 first vacancy the legislature appointed him in place of 
 
88 
 
 the retiring member, and he immediately devoted him 
 self to the practical part of the task he had undertaken. 
 
 The genius of Bentham, who had given years of time 
 and volumes of writing to criticising and satirizing 
 English legal institutions, may fairly be said to have 
 been only destructive. The mediaeval absurdities which 
 lingered in the " perfection of human reason " he dis 
 sected with great skill and power ; but his suggestions 
 as to details of what ought to be in place of what was, 
 have never to any considerable degree commended 
 themselves to men concerned with maintaining practical 
 justice. Mr. Field s genius was essentially constructive. 
 He conceived the simple, well proportioned system that 
 the country needed, and his attack on what was, he 
 carried on simply to make way among the old law for 
 the introduction of the new. 
 
 The foundation of the new structure was laid in the 
 declaration that the Supreme Court has general juris 
 diction in law and in equity, and that all the forms of 
 action heretofore existing are abolished. 
 
 The main pillars of the superstructure were the fol 
 lowing regulations : 
 
 1. Pleadings are to state facts, and state them truth 
 fully, as it is proposed to prove them on the trial. 
 
 2. Equitable defences and counter-claims are avail 
 able in all actions, so that one who formerly had to 
 bring a new suit in chancery to enjoin an inequitable 
 use of process at law could now state Jris objection as 
 a defence to the action brought against him. 
 
 3. The power exercised by the chancellor in equity 
 suits to compel parties to testify and to produce their 
 books and papers was conferred on the court for all 
 actions. 
 
89 
 
 4. If the evidence at the trial (which now must be 
 taken there openly in all actions, instead of the secret 
 method of exparte examinations allowed in equity) varies 
 from the pleading, the action should be dismissed only 
 where it made a different case (for then the adverse 
 party could fairly say that he had not received fair 
 warning of what facts he was to try) ; and that any 
 variance short of that might be either disregarded or 
 be cured by amending the pleading, according to the 
 seriousness of the discrepancy, and that the court might 
 allow amendment to supply an omitted allegation. 
 
 The Code of Procedure embodying these principles 
 and carrying them out by readjusting the mechanism 
 of an action accordingly, made in the form first adopted 
 a statute of 371 sections, filling less than seventy pages. 
 
 Then ensued a contest bet ween the conservatives and 
 fossils of the bar on the one hand and the progressives 
 and young men on the other which lasted for years. 
 Before the objurgations against the new procedure died 
 out the code had been adopted in some twenty-four 
 States and Territories, and in other apparently con 
 servative States, where the name of code is not spoken, 
 these four leading principles have been adopted in 
 statutes designated as Practice Acts, &c.; and in some 
 of these instances the terse, vigorous, and untechnical 
 language in which Mr. Field expressed them is copied 
 word for word. The extent of the adoption of the code 
 as such does not measure the influence of his work. It 
 is not too much to say that, with a few local and unim 
 portant exceptions, the main features of the new pro 
 cedure have been accepted throughout the country, and 
 have been accepted in other respects even where the 
 distinctive tribunals and the contrast between suits at 
 law and in equity survive. 
 
90 
 
 Mr. Field s reform of judicial organization and pro 
 cedure was only the first step in a scheme of general 
 improvement in both the form and substance of the 
 law. His conception was noble in its breadth and 
 simplicity, admirable in its clearness. Its feasibility, 
 or the usefulness of any practicable execution of it, is 
 the great question which divides professional opinion 
 to-day. 
 
 His conception was, all law reduced to the form of a 
 statute, so that a man could carry in his hand the printed 
 record of all that the State ordained for the regulation 
 of human conduct. 
 
 The basis of his arrangement of the law was : 1, a 
 Political Code, to contain all that part of the law which 
 public officers and citizens having to do with public 
 officers need to know ; 2, a Civil Code, to contain all of 
 the law that members of the community need to know 
 in regard to their civil rights, duties, and responsibilities 
 in respect both to personal relations, property, and ob 
 ligations ; 3, a Code of Procedure (already spoken of) 
 which should contain all of the law that courts and 
 lawyers engaged in the administration of civil remedies 
 need ; 4, a Code of Criminal Procedure for the courts 
 and bar engaged in criminal cases ; and, 5, a Penal 
 Code, to contain the law of crimes and the correspond 
 ing punishments. 
 
 The success and the finally conceded usefulness of 
 the Code of Procedure led to the adoption after some 
 years of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Penal 
 Code. The great contest not yet concluded has been 
 waged over the Civil Code. The ablest, most experi 
 enced, most learned, and most fit experts in the pro 
 fession are divided in opinion both as to the desira- 
 
91 
 
 bleness of reducing the law to the form of a statute 
 and as to the success of this particular effort in that 
 direction. 
 
 It appears to me probable that the Civil Code would 
 long since have been adopted in the State of New York, 
 as jt already has been in several other States, were it 
 not for two reasons, which, if I am not mistaken, have 
 thus far turned the scale against it. 
 
 In the first place, it contains many new provisions 
 changing the existing law. 
 
 Another cause of the delay to adopt the code I think 
 may be seen in the general want of confidence in legis 
 lation as compared with the work of the courts. If 
 our legislators were as faithful in their public services 
 as our judges, the community would be more ready to 
 accept at their hands a body of law reduced to the form 
 of a statute. But such a code the legislature would be 
 likely to amend every year, as they do other work of 
 their own, according to the pressure brought to bear 
 upon them ; and the distrust of the legislative power 
 which recent times have aroused has been very unfav 
 orable to the progress of codification. 
 
 The last great work undertaken by Mr. Field was the 
 International Code, of which Mr. Abbott says it is the 
 crowning work of his life.* Here, with an energy and 
 
 * It is stated in one of the notices printed above : 
 
 "At the meeting of the British Association in Manchester in 1866, 
 Mr. Field proposed a revision of the entire body of international law. 
 He was appointed then a member of a committee of jurists from dif 
 ferent countries to make a revision that would be acceptable, or that 
 should become the basis of a revision. It was not possible for the 
 committee to act in concert, aud Mr. Field took the whole work upon 
 himself. The result of his labor was a large volume, which he pre 
 sented in 1873 to the Social Science Congress. It was entitled Out 
 lines of an International Code. It attracted the attention of the 
 most eminent jurists in the world, and has been translated into French 
 and Italian." 
 
 >-*- 
 
 TJSITBH 
 
industry which left all the other members of the com 
 mittee behind, he formulated the great principle of the 
 external policy of nations in their relations with each 
 other, in a clear and systematic arrangement. This 
 statement of international law embodies all the rules of 
 general acceptance found in the writings of jurists whose 
 authority is recognized at the present day, and it in 
 cludes also a codification of all the conventional pro 
 visions common to many treaties between different 
 nations, now in force ; so that it may be truly said to 
 embody a consensus of opinion on the whole field of 
 the law between nations. Its close adaptation to ex 
 isting law has made it already an accepted authority 
 often cited by writers on international law, although it 
 has not yet received governmental adoption. 
 
 The admirable qualifications of Mr. Field for the 
 great task which he accomplished would not have been 
 complete without his advanced conception of the law 
 itself. He was not a "case lawyer." He appeared to 
 survey law in the direct relation which the whole and 
 each part bears to public welfare. Without discussing 
 the metaphysics of the subject, he seemed to regard the 
 law as a system of partly developed principles ; a few 
 of which are familiar to all intelligent men ; some of 
 which have been through long discussion reduced to 
 clear and concise statement capable of being under 
 stood by all intelligent men ; and others of which are 
 yet involved in uncertainty and controversial discussion, 
 but which he held must be reduced to the same form. 
 He dealt with the law as a system of principles. I can 
 not remember in our conferences a single instance in 
 which he mentioned a case as an authority, save in con 
 sultations in which he was simply preparing to argue a 
 
93 
 
 case in court. Conflict and confusion in authority were 
 no obstacle. He wished to know if they existed, to 
 take the measure of the doubt, and to clear it up by a 
 statement of the principle. His labors in codification 
 were in the knowledge of the relative value and place 
 of great principles, the discernment of certainty in the 
 midst of others doubt or dissension, the organizing 
 faculty which saw these principles in a scientific rela 
 tion and expressed them systematically as a harmonious 
 whole. 
 
 His work will never be forgotten, because it forms a 
 conspicuous part of the progress of man himself toward 
 that intelligent regulation of life which is the object of 
 all law. 
 
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