GEN. HENRY EDWIN TREMAIN.

27

hand, in a struggle which, having once gone to the Court of Appeals on demurrer, culminated before Dr. Dwight in final hearings on the merits.

The battles raged with increasing bitterness as they progressed through upwards of one hundred and fifty hearings; and attracted the attention of financial, legal, and journalistic circles throughout the country. Even the camps of the respective contestants were rife with dissensions. Proceedings in diverse jurisdictions and involving numerous parties nominal and actual had to be investigated and balanced; and ultimately the fundamental agreement sued upon was vitally assailed as within the Statute of Frauds.

It was after, if not in consequence of, the exhaustive and unanswerable opinion of Dr. Dwight on this topic-an opinion which practically terminated the defence-that an assault was made which a less learned and courageous referee might have deemed humiliating.

His affability and patience were treated as timidity and doubt, while his liberalities were perverted by those favored through them into legal offences. The attempt on these grounds to remove him as referee, however, ignominiously failed. An alternative Writ of Prohibition against him was then secured; but the motion to make this writ absolute was never decided. The death of the defendant Garrison occurred, and this resulted in a settlement of all the litigations involved.

The opinion of Dr. Dwight is in itself a treatise upon the Statute of Frauds.

The judicial repose, pungent reasoning, and fearless conclusions exhibited by him in his treatment of the issues in this notable cause, and the relentless application through a web of legal intricacies of the fundamental principles of law and equity, help to make up a severe standard of judicial industry and of learning, that may fairly be contrasted rather than compared with many of the lazy compilations currently reported in the books to-day as "opinions.

The methodical attacks which were fruitlessly made on Dr. Dwight in connection with his rulings in this case, have served to intensify his fame as a jurist; and justify this allusion to a brief space in his professional career that was not without its tribulations and triumphs.

Thirty years ago the writer was under the tuition of Dr. (then Professor) Dwight in the third class which had entered the Columbia College Law School;-a school which, it is no discredit to others to say, Professor Dwight had then by his own personality already firmly established. The shock of war had been felt before the second class had been graduated; and Columbia Law School experienced its fair share of consequent personal losses.

Earnest and abiding as were Professor Dwight's political convictions in those perilous years of national excitement, his collegiate discourses traversed the constitutional, historical, and political topics naturally belonging to the equipment of an American lawyer, with the serene composure and scientific poise that characterized all his work in the classroom. In the domain of what is now recognized as Political Science, he associated with himself its leading American writer of that day, Dr. Francis Lieber; and both men taught and inspired the study of the true political philosophy of the United States and their laws, as no two men have since united in doing. It is not too much to say that not since the days of the old "King's College" and its inspirations to and through Alexander Hamilton the student, as well as through Alexander Hamilton the publicist and statesman, has there been a purer well of political thought, flowing abundantly into the great arteries of American public life, and silently accomplishing results which even victorious armies need not to have anticipated.

No man probably since the time of Story has been so potential in guiding the inquiries and in furnishing the historical logic, by which practical publicists have solved American problems. Not that all such problems are already solved; nor that all solutions thus far have been made by Columbia graduates; but that the salutary influences and exceptional intensity cast out through the daily teachings and writings of this remarkable man to his peculiar and extensive constituencies, comprise a feature exceeding the limits of a career exclusively professional;—a career measurable only in common with other events in the history of the generation to which it belongs.

The personality which has created and sustained his large constituency is too valuable to become obscured by resignation from the active duties of daily instruction in the Law School.

A score of years after his greatest victories Von Moltke impressed himself upon a new generation of his own people, and constructed a new army for the empire. England's most renowned living statesman heeds not a ripe old age, but yields his accepted service and sagacious counsel to a grateful public. So then may the few Columbia men who are privileged to express themselves here, earnestly hope that for yet many long years the Empire State and the people of this country may avail themselves of the great learning, experience, wisdom, and example of the affectionate teacher, the sound lawyer, the great man. May Dr. Theodore W. Dwight live many years for this purpose; and meanwhile accept the grateful homage and cordial regard of every student who ever reported to him.

NEW YORK, May 4, 1891.

CHARLES W. DAYTON.

29

Tribute of Charles W. Dayton.

and

DOCTOR : "I feel thy conceit well; how beit I cannot fully as yet assent unto it; therefore I pray thee give me a sparing therein; and at a better leisure, I shall with good will shew thee farther of my mind therein.

"And now I will ask thee another question."

"Doctor and Student," Chapter XI.

When the invitation came to write of Professor Dwight, my thoughts reverted to the scenes of nearly twenty-five years ago. I pictured the recitation room in Lafayette Place, the dignified Warden, whose kindly face and gentle voice banished fear and conquered timidity, whose learning, though profound, was clear from the simplicity of its expression, whose service to me, to my classmates, and to the hundreds who have graduated under him, was the foundation of a high standard of legal ethics, and the pursuit of knowledge of the law. These memories kindled a desire to render a tribute, however modest, to one whom every alumnus of Columbia College Law School reveres and delights to extol.

To refresh my recollection, I glanced over my notes of lectures, my briefs in moot-court cases, my preparations for recitations, and I brought to mind the method of Professor Dwight in demonstrating the strength and the weakness of the men in my class. Then, as now, it was and is a matter of wonder, how he seemed to know the peculiarities and sensibili ties of each student.

Towards one aggressively confident, the professor was firm and tolerant; towards another waveringly certain, he was encouraging and helpful. In discussion the master brought himself to the level of the pupil, ever preserving perfect discipline and commanding respect.

Always accessible, each student felt at liberty to confer and consult with him. His ready sympathy not infrequently gave hope and courage to men struggling against great odds to secure the benefits of the Law School.

I remember his saying to us, that the profession of the law should be followed as a science, not as a trade, and that we should avoid the “ arts of chicane"; I also remember going to him shortly after I had been admitted to the Bar, with a question which troubled me, involving the

construction of a will. He gave me of his time freely, entered into my difficulty with friendly zeal, and made suggestions which lightened the burden I was bearing. More than ten years elapsed without our meeting, until one day near the court-house he passed and saluted me by my name.

This is my brief. The points submitted are reminiscent. The argument must be made by those who read.

If ten times the space allotted were allowed me, I could but amplify and cumulatively show, that as a teacher of law Professor Dwight has ever been without a contemporary superior; that as a jurist he ranks with any scholar of his day, that as a man he is endeared to all who have come within his environment.

On his retirement from the chair he has so long, so honorably, so eminently, and so successfully filled, he surely will take with him the esteem of Columbia College, the love and gratitude of those who have sat at his feet, and the prayers of all, that to him may be given length of days, health, contentment, and prosperity, until his distinguished, beneficent, and useful life shall close.

NEW YORK, April 25, 1891.

MORRIS M. BUDLONG.

31

Tribute of Morris M. Budlong.

The fame and popularity of Columbia College Law School have long been recognized and the credit assigned to its Warden Dr. Theodore W. Dwight.

His success as an instructor of students in law has not only reflected enduring honors upon himself, but has demonstrated that the method which he has employed, if not largely originated, and to which he has strictly adhered for more than a generation, is the very best ever devised for legal instruction.

The failure of a single student of thirty successive annual classes to discover, after engaging in actual practice, any defect or oversight in his legal training, is a sufficient commentary upon the method employed, and every practical mind must regard the disposition to still cast about for a new method of legal education, as belonging to that Athenian quality of mind whose delight is "to tell or to hear some new thing."

No plan of legal study could be more natural, or more strongly commend itself, than that of private study of a given number of pages of an approved text-book, followed by a daily critical examination thereon by the instructor before the whole class, with amplifications by the instructor of the more obscure parts, and the supplementing by him of any omissions from or brief allusions in the text.

The hour spent by Dr. Dwight in the class-room will be recalled by all of his former pupils as a time when many wrong inferences from private reading were corrected, and errors in reasoning set right; principles which at home seemed arbitrary and artificial became under the Doctor's statement of their history, reasonable, necessary, and just; ancient statutes, whose quaintness seemed to stamp them as entirely obsolete and of value only as antique legal curiosities, were shown to embody both wisdom and justice, and to constitute the very foundation upon which modern jurisprudence rests; and phrases and maxims from the civil law which seemed out of place in the text were found to be epitomes of the law; and have ever since served as guide-boards through the particular field where they were met.