he "had been to war and had borne arms." On his replying that he had not witnessed anything of the former, and that the only arms he had borne had been a penknife wherewith to mend his quill pen, his judges deemed his actions too flagrant and his explanation insufficient, and his membership in their body was taken away from him. He continued, nevertheless, to attend meeting all his life, and was buried in its grounds, at Fourth and Arch Streets.

After the death of Jared Ingersoll, in 1822, Mr. Rawle succeeded him as chancellor of the Society of the Associated Members of the Bar, and shortly afterward delivered an address before that body, in which he gave a graphic description of the early bar of Philadelphia as he remembered it, and pen portraits of the most prominent of its members. whom he knew, being the earliest account which we have of the subject.

His devotion to the interests of the library I have already noticed in connection with the catalogue of 1805. On the union of the Law Library Company and the Associated Members of the Bar in the Law Association in 1827 he was elected first chancellor, and re-elected year after year until his death in 1836. At the first meeting thereafter, the secretary was directed in the notice of the event to accompany it with an expression of affectionate regard for his virtues and the kindness and courteousness of his intercourse, and of exalted respect for the learning, eloquence and talent which he exhibited throughout his honorable and extended career.

In 1805 he argued the constitutionality of slavery in Pennsylvania, and for many years was president of the Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery. He was the author of Commentaries on the Constitution, the first and for a long time the leading book on that new and then most difficult subject, as the author of which, says Mr. Francis Wharton, "he will be better known than as the accomplished jurist and powerful advocate." (State Trials of the United States during the Administrations of Washington and Adams.) David Paul Brown mentions other

writings, principally on religious subjects; but I have not been able to ascertain that any of them are in print. But his most enduring and probably the most useful work of all his long and useful life was as one of the three commissioners under the resolution of the legislature of March 23, 1830, to revise the statutes of the State. To this work with unflagging interest and diligence for six years he devoted his talents, learning and experience, with the result that in the acts passed on the recommendation of the commission between 1832 and 1836 we have the most wisely conceived and most clearly expressed statutes in our books, and after nearly three-quarters of a century they are still the law on the most important branches of our civil legislation.

Mr. Brown, who was his student, sums up his character in these words: "There never was a more enlightened and unblemished advocate, or a more conscientious and valuable citizen. It is a remarkable and beautiful indication of the urbanity of his deportment and the affectionate regard entertained for him by members of the bar, that for fifty years, during which time he was engaged in every great and almost in every important cause, he appears never to have had a personal difference or angry dispute with any of his professional brethren. The courtesy and native dignity of his demeanor, while they forbade any invasion of the respect due to others, charmed and subdued those around him, and taught them by example the advantages arising from kindness and unity. Towards the bench he was always conciliatory and respectful, and whatever might be the result of a cause, having faithfully discharged his duty in its management, he was neither elated by success nor dejected by defeat." (Eulogium upon William Rawle.) The fine portrait we have of him by Inman would certainly have brought from Lavater a ready acquiescence in such description.

second chancellor, was He was born June 3,

Peter Stephen du Ponceau, the an exceedingly interesting character. 1760, at St. Martin's, in the Isle of Ré.

His father was an

officer in the French army. He was a natural linguist, and in some biographical notes he has told how, when a little past six years of age, he happened to see an English grammar in a neighbor's house, "and child-like was delighted with the letters K and W, which my eyes had not been accustomed to seeing. I took the book home and began to study the English language. * * * I soon spoke good English. I also wrote English correctly." In this last matter he flattered himself somewhat. While we know from report that he spoke English fluently and in the main correctly, his letters still extant show that he would not have stood at the head of the line at a spelling bee. His father wanted him trained for the army; but his mother wanted him for the priesthood. His nearsightedness seems to have settled the matter, and he was sent to the Benedictine College of St. Jean d'Angely, and very unwillingly became an abbé. In his intercourse with the English families, however, in the garrison town, he had imbibed some distinctly Protestant views, and he soon found his position as an abbé so uncongenial that he abruptly left it. After some months of rather precarious existence in Paris, translating commercial letters from and into English, he was fortunate enough to obtain an appointment as secretary to Baron Steuben, coming with him to this country in 1777. He was commissioned a captain in the army and served with Steuben at Valley Forge and in the campaigns in the South until July, 1781, when his health appearing to be permanently broken, though he was just twenty-one years of age, he resigned, and came to Philadelphia. He was soon after appointed secretary to Robert R. Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In a letter of recommendation for the appointment, Judge Peters says of du Ponceau, "He is a good Latin scholar; French is his native tongue; English he has acquired perfectly, and he understands German, Italian and Spanish. He can translate Danish and low Dutch with the help of a dictionary, and a little application will make him master of these." For a youth of twenty-one, who had

spent four years in active service in the army, this is a truly remarkable list of accomplishments. He was admitted to the bar in 1785, and had an extensive practice for about thirty years, when he gradually withdrew, though he lived to be eighty-four years of age, and died March 1, 1844. In a discourse upon his death, delivered by Dr. Robley Dunglison before the American Philosophical Society, a quotation is made from a letter of du Ponceau in which he gives this pleasant account of his ridings on circuit:

"In the beginning of the present century, during the reign of the embargo, non-intercourse, and other restrictive measures produced by the British orders in council, and the Berlin and Milan decrees, a great number of cases were carried up from this city to the Supreme Court of the United States. The counsel engaged in those causes were in the habit of going together to Washington to argue their causes before that tribunal. These were Mr. Ingersoll, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Edward Tilghman, Mr. Rawle, and myself, who am, alas, the only survivor of that joyous band. We hired a stage to ourselves, in which we proceeded by easy journeys. The court sat then, as it does at present, or did until lately, in the month of February; so that we had to travel in the depth of winter, through bad roads, in the midst of rain, hail and snow, in no very comfortable way. Nevertheless, as soon as we were out of the city, and felt the flush of air, we were like schoolboys in the playground on a holiday; and we began to kill time by all the means that our imaginations could suggest. Flashes of wit shot their coruscations on all sides; puns of the genuine Philadelphia stamp were handed about; old college stories were revived; macaroni Latin was spoken with great purity; songs were sung-even classical songs-among which I recollect the famous Bacchanalian of the Archdeacon of Oxford, 'Mihi est propositum in taberna mori:' in short, we might have been taken for anything but the grave counselors of the celebrated bar of Philadelphia.

"I shall always," he adds, "remember with pleasure

those delightful journeys, in which we all became intimately acquainted with each other; for on such occasions, when free scope is given to the imagination, men appear in their true characters, and no art can prevent them from showing themselves as they really are. Our appearance at the bar of the Supreme Court was always a scene of triumph. We entered the hall together, and Judge Washington was heard to say, 'This is my bar.' Our causes had a preference over all others, in consideration of the distance we had to travel. The greatest liberality was shown to us by the members of the profession who usually attended that court. It was really a proud thing, at that time, to be a Philadelphia lawyer."

He

On the acquisition of Louisiana he was offered the Chief Justiceship of the new territory by President Jefferson, but declined. It is doubtful if he was not always more of a scholar and philosopher than a lawyer; but he took great interest in the science of jurisprudence and in the brotherhood of the bar, especially among the younger men. occupied a very prominent place in the intellectual life of his day, having been first provost of the Law Academy, second chancellor of the Law Association, president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and of the American Philosophical Society. In the discourse of Dr. Dunglison, already mentioned, from which I have taken most of the details of this notice, there is a long list of the literary and scientific institutions to which he belonged, and of his writings and translations on legal, literary and scientific subjects.

In 1845 du Ponceau was succeeded by John Sergeant, in many respects the most distinguished name in the annals of our bar. He was the son of Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, first Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, and was born in Philadelphia in 1779. He graduated from Princeton in 1795; spent two years in a commercial counting house, and then entered the office of Jared Ingersoll. He was admitted to the bar in 1799, before he had quite reached