ORIGINAL. A SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF THE LATE CHIEF JUSTICE PARSONS. THERE is no department of knowledge, no pursuit of intellectual enterprize or industry, which offers in the United States such munificent rewards to those who deserve them, as the science and practice of the law. Wealth, reputation, and power, are the splendid prizes held out to incite the candidate for forensic eminence. We find, accordingly, that the profession of the law has furnished most of the very distinguished men of whom our country can boast. While we had no native poetry of extraordinary excellence, while the muse of history was almost silent, and our general literature confined to the ephemeral columns of gazettes, our jurisprudence and forensic eloquence might vie with those of the most celebrated nations. The person whose portrait is exhibited in our present number, stood high among the illustrious lawyers and judges of America. We present our readers with a brief sketch of his character. It is taken, on the contracted scale to which our limits restrict us, from an address delivered to the grand jury of the county of Suffolk, soon after his death, by his friend and associate, the honourable judge Parker. Chief justice Theophilus Parsons was born in February, A. D. 1750, and received the rudiments of his education at Dummer academy, in his native parish of Byefield, within the ancient town of Newbury. His father was minister of that parish. His youth was so successfully devoted to study, that before he arrived at the age of twenty-one, he had acquired a critical knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, and made considerable progress in logic, metaphysics, and the mathematical sciences. He received the ordinary honours of the university of Cambridge in 1769. He entered upon the study of the law under the late judge Bradbury in Falmouth, now Portland, and kept for some time the grammar school in that town. He practised law there a few years; but in consequence of the destruction of the town by the British, he retired to the house of his father in Newbury, where he met judge Trowbridge, who had sought shelter from the confusion of the times in the same hospitable mansion. This venerable old man, perhaps the most profound common lawyer of New England before the revolution, had pursued his legal studies and disquisitions, long after he had ceased to be actively engaged in the profession, and had employed himself in composing essays upon abstruse and difficult points of law. To have met in a peaceful village, secure from the alarms of war, with such a learned instructor, fraught with the lore of half a century's laborious study, and willing to communicate what he knew, was to Mr. Parsons a most fortunate occurrence. He regarded it as an uncommon blessing, and frequently observed that this early interruption of his business, which seemed to threaten poverty and misfortune, was one of the most useful and happy, events of his life. In about a year from this time he opened his office in Newburyport. Never was fame more early or more just, than that of Parsons as a lawyer. At an age when most of the profession are but beginning to exhibit their talents and to take a fixed rank at the bar, he was confessedly, in point of legal knowledge, among the first of its professors. His professional services were generally sought for. In his native county, and in the neighbouring state of New Hampshire, scarcely a cause of importance was litigated in which he was not an advocate. His fame had spread from the country to the capital, to which he was almost constantly called to to take a share in trials of intricacy and interest. Having entered upon business early in our revolutionary war, when the courts of admiralty jurisdiction were crowded with causes, in the management of which he had a large share, he was led to study with diligence the civil law, the law of nations, and the principles of belligerent and neutral rights. In special pleading, which more than any thing tests the learning of a common lawyer, he had then few competitors. He possessed the happy talent of penetrating through the mass of circumstances which sometimes surround and obscure a cause. His arguments were directed to the understandings of men, seldom to their passions; and yet instances may be recollected, when, in causes which required it, he has assailed the hearts of his hearers with as powerful appeals as were ever made in the cause of humanity. His great talent was that of condensation. He presented his propositions in lucid order, drew his inferences with justness, and enforced his arguments with a simplicity yet fulness which left nothing obscure or misunderstood. He had a quick perception of the cardinal points of a cause, upon which he poured out the whole treasures of his mind, while he rejected all minor facts and principles from his consideration. With this fulness of learning and reputation, having had thirty-five years of extensive practice in the law, and having indeed for the last ten years acted unofficially as judge in many of the most important mercantile disputes which occurred in Boston, he was, on the resignation of chief justice Dana, appointed to preside in the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts; and took his seat accordingly on the first Tuesday of July, 1806. This was the first instance of a departure from the ordinary rule of succession; and, considering the character and talents of some who had been many years on the bench, perhaps no greater proof could be given of his pre-eminent legal endowments, than that this elevation should have been universally approved. Perhaps there never was a period when the regular succession would have been more generally acquiesced in, and yet the departure from it in this instance, was every where gratifying. The imperfect system of judicature, which had prevailed in Massachusetts until about that period, had rendered great legal abilities requisite to the establishment of a course of proceedings, and uniformity of decisions, so necessary to the safe and satisfactory administration of justice. There had been no history of past transactions preserved by a reporter, the sage opinions of departed judges had been lost even from the memory, and precedents were sought for only in the books of a foreign country. The most interesting points of law had been settled in the hurry and confusion of jury trials; and conflicting opinions of judges, arising from pressure of business and want of time to deliberate, were adjusted by that body which is supposed by the constitution and the laws to be competent to try the fact alone. But a new era had arisen. A system of jurisprudence, assimilated to that of England, but with great improvements, had been adopted. Its success however depended much upon those who were to administer it. The appointment of Parsons was therefore hailed by all with the highest approbation. His profound learning, his great experience as a practitioner of the law in the country and in the capital, and his accurate knowledge of forms and practice peculiarly fitted him to take the lead in the new order of things: The public expectation was not disappointed. The regularity of trials, and the promptness and correctness of decisions throughout the commonwealth, soon attested the beneficial effects of a system, which he so much contributed to render popular and permanent. The first six volumes of the reports of the court in which he presided, will long endure as a monument of his accurate juridical reasonings, and his deep and extensive knowledge of the common law, and the constitutions and statutes of his country. But he possessed other important qualities of an upright judge, not exposed to the public eye. He was a patient and diligent inquirer after truth, revolving and revising his own opinions, communicating freely to his brethren his own reasonings, and candidly listening to theirs, suppressing all pride |