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WAYNE MACVEAGH, PENNSYLVANIA.

(1833-- -.)

Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the United States to Italy. Born in Phoenixville, Chester county, Pennsylvania, April 19, 1833. He was graduated at Yale in the famous class of 1853, where he attracted attention by his powers as a disputant. He studied law with Joseph J. Lewis at West Chester, Pennsylvania,and was admitted to the bar in 1856,and soon gained the reputation of being a very able lawyer. When the war of the Rebellion broke out, Mr. MacVeagh was appointed major of a cavalry regiment, but was compelled to retire on account of ill-health. In 1863 he was chairman of the Republican central committee for Pennsylvania. President Grant appointed him Minister to Turkey in 1870, and in 1872-3 he was a member of the constitutional convention of his State. President Hayes made him chief member of the "MacVeagh Commission" in 1877 to represent him unofficially in the political entanglements in Louisiana, and bring matters there to an understanding. President Garfield called him to his Cabinet in 1881, as Attorney General, which he resigned, upon the accession of President Arthur, to resume his practice in Philadelphia. President Cleveland sent

him as Minister to Italy, which position he still holds. Mr. MacVeagh has served as special counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad company for many years. He is noted for his great forensic eloquence and wit, sarcasm and irony, quickness at repartee, and for his brightness and ability. He is a powerful stumpspeaker, and has been very active in Presidential campaigns. He is now President of the Civil Service Reform Association, and is an Independent in politics. He has been twice married. His first wife was the daughter of his preceptor, Mr. Lewis, and his present wife, a daughter of the late Senator Simon Cameron, to whom he was long opposed politically. He has enjoyed a very large law practice, having a wide reputation in equity and patent cases. He is small, with the figure of a rail, and has nervousness written in every motion.

The Abuse of Thieves Is Commendable.

"In these days the abuse of thieves is the only decoration in our public life worth the winning, or the wearing, and it is the surest possible passport to the good opinion of honest men."-Said during the Star Route prosecutions: Savidge's Life of B. H. Brewster, p. 116.

LORD MANSFIELD, (WILLIAM MURRAY), ENG

LAND.

(1704-1793.)

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The greatest judge the world ever saw. Born at Scone, Scotland, March 2, 1704, died at Highgate, England, March 20, 1793, aged eighty-nine. cated at Oxford, and called to the bar at twenty-seven, with a brilliant reputation for scholarship and eloquence. For three years he made little progress, but Sergeant Eyre, an associate in a trial, being overcome in a fit, the management fell upon Murray, who made so admirable a speech that clients rushed to him in crowds, so that he used to say he knew no interval between no income and three thousand pounds a year. He was Solicitor General twelve years (1742-54), the longest and most brilliant solicitorship recorded in the annals of Westminster Hall; 1754 he became Attorney General and leader of the House of Commons; 1756 he was made Chief Justice and raised to the peerage as Baron Mansfield. In 1788 he resigned the Chief Justiceship, having held the position thirty-two years, during which time he was repeatedly offered

the Chancellorship. His house was sacked and burned in Bloomsbury Square, 1780, during the Gordon riots, because of his supposed opposition to the liberty of the press. At his death his annual income from his mortgages alone was $150,000.

His reputation rests chiefly upon his character as a jurist, but two of his many thousand decisions ever being reversed. Says Justice Buller: "Certain of his judgments were of such transcendant power that his hearers were lost in admiration at the strength and stretch of the human understanding." Erskine apotheosized him as "the awful form and figure of Justice." He may be said to be the founder and creator of English mercantile law. "His statement of a case," says Lord Campbell, "is of itself worth the argument of any other man." He mastered ethics, Roman civil law, feudal law, and English municipal law, and yet found time for classic culture-translating the English into Latin-and time for oratorical exercises, obtaining the sobriquet of "the silver-tongued Murray," and standing second only to Pitt as an orator and statesman.

Simile.

"There is nothing so unlike as a simile, and nothing more apt to mislead."-Quoted in 2 Wash. Real Estate, 160.

Popularity.

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"I wish popularity; but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after; it is that popularity which, sooner or later, never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong, upon this occasion, to gain the huzzas of thousands or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press. I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery of libels; all that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow." When Lord Chief Justice, June 8th, 1768, on the outlawry of John Wilkes.

Reply to Chatham-Popularity.

"It has been imputed to me by the noble Earl (Chatham) on my left hand, that I, too, am running the race of popularity. If the noble Earl means by popularity the applause bestowed by after ages on good and virtuous actions, I have long been struggling in that race-to what purpose, all-trying time can alone determine; but if he means that mushroom popularity which is raised without merit, and lost without crime, he is much mistaken, I defy the no

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