"The Welfare of the Republic, the Supreme Law," address before the Grafton and Coös Bar Association at Lancaster, Jan. 31, 1896.

"The Relations of Woman to the Progressive Civilization of the Age," an address before the Grafton and Coös Bar Association at Plymouth, Jan. 29, 1897.

"The Influence of Religion on Human Progress," address before the New Hampshire Historical Society, June 8, 1897.

"The Annexation of Hawaii; a Right and Duty," address before the Grafton and Coös Bar Association at Woodsville, Jan. 28, 1898.

These essays invite and challenge the most critical examination and analysis. They are already familiar to a limited circle of students and readers and to those who happened to be in attendance upon the occasions of their delivery by the author. The circumstances of this occasion do not permit a further review of the products of Mr. Bingham's labors in the domain of history, social science, education, religious progress, international relations, constitutional law and the science of government, but they will be accorded deserved recognition as a notable series of studies on great subjects, and, in the more serious discussions of the dominant questions of our time, as an invaluable deliverance of a master mind.

HON. HENRY W. BLAIR OF MANCHESTER.

Members of the Bar:

I had thought to remain silent longer, until those who in recent years have been more closely connected with Brother Bingham should have paid their tribute to his memory. But as there is a pause I will say the few words that occur to me at this time. I was unaware of these contemplated proceedings until within a few hours, and am consequently unable to appear before you at this time with matured thought or formal expression. Really one ought not to speak of Judge Bingham without some preparation. He was too unusual a man, too great a man; one cannot approach him casually, his real character and his life-work, and in a few unpremeditated phrases do him justice at all. It seems to me very much, your honor, like trying to analyze and explain

the Pyramids, to portray Harry Bingham, as he stood among his fellow men. Brother Aldrich has come nearer to what I would have been glad to have said myself, had I been able to do it, than any portrayal of his character that I have heard or read, but I will say that from my knowledge of him for more than forty years, I most thoroughly approve of these resolutions. They are just to him. They add nothing beyond what is his due, as I have known him, and I am glad to state now as my deliberate belief that in my life in many respects I have known no really greater man than Harry Bingham. I first recollect him in the year 1857 or 1858, when I was a student in the office of William Leverett of Plymouth. With his brother, George Bingham, who was also a great man, he came to Plymouth at that time to try the case of Page v. Parkers, for the defense. That case was the ruin of everybody connected with it but the lawyers. It lasted some ten or fifteen years. The Binghams were for the defense, and that other great firm of western Grafton County, the Rands, were for the plaintiff. As a student I attended the trial; not interested otherwise than as a student, but I got great benefit from listening to the gigantic forensic debates of that trial. Judge Bingham was then a man perhaps 38 or 40 years of age. To my youthful eyes he was one of the maturer members of the profession. He was then already eminent, at a time when the bar was certainly great, that of Grafton and Coös counties, the inferior to the bar of no portion of the state,-I think the superior of any other part of New Hampshire in its great lawyers at that time. In a few years he became proudly preeminent, not only among the lawyers of the north but of the entire commonwealth as I remember them,-all now passed away with but one or two exceptions. The only exception that I recollect, residing in our county, is Mr. Fling of Bristol, a most excellent lawyer himself and one of the keenest wits that ever graced the bar of any state or any country.

At that time in the same town was the Hon. N. B. Byrant, retired from practice at the present time, but I have never heard his superior before a jury, and I have heard Rufus Choate. I wouldn't say that he was as great a man as Choate in all respects, but I would allow Napoleon B. Bryant to face Rufus Choate before any New Hampshire or New England jury, and

I would risk my own cause with Mr. Bryant as readily as with that great man. Then at Plymouth was Mr. Burrows. Many of you will remember him. He was a learned lawyer, the student of Chancellor Hobbs of Carroll County, a strong, vigorous man who once was well known throughout the state. Mr. Leverett, with whom I was a student, was a descendant of the great lexicographer. He was a man of great natural powers of mind, a very careful and thorough student, not so laborious in the practice of his profession as some, but no discredit to the great lawyers of Grafton County at that time. He was the brother-inlaw of Chief Justice Perley. Just then was passing away from New Hampshire Mr. William C. Thompson, a son of Thomas W. Thompson, one of the earlier senators of our state, and a man in whose office Daniel Webster was a long-time student. Josiah Quincy was then at the bar in Rumney, a man of very great executive ability and the most successful man of his time before juries. The way Josiah Quincy would put the strong points of a case to a jury was remarkable, and very seldom did he fail in securing his verdict. That time Judge Sargent, with whom Mr. Fling had studied, was still located at Wentworth. I had heard him in still earlier life, while a boy, living a few miles from the court room, in the great murder trial of Dudley at Plymouth in 1848 or 1849. He had been a very active practitioner, but at this time was just appointed to the bench. He was still well known as a practitioner and essentially was still a member of the bar. There was Mr. Weeks of Canaan, a relative of Judge Doe by marriage, and a great man, though not a showy lawyer. There was Mr. Blaisdell of Hanover, one of the courtliest gentlemen who ever appeared before courts or juries. There were great men at Haverhill. There was Lawyer Felton, who had no superior in his knowledge of the common law, and especially of real estate. Going further north there were great lawyers at Bath. There was Harry Hibbard, probably the best belle lettre scholar that ever belonged to the New Hampshire bar. There have been no exceptions so far as I have known personally, unless it might be his compeer, Chief Justice Carpenter, who so recently left us. Both were remarkable men in their general scholarship. Judge Carpenter I often met at his lodging while attending court at Plymouth or at Haverhill, after midnight,

and would find him resting himself from the labors of the day by reading the classics in some modern or ancient tongue. He was familiar with the Spanish, the German, the French, and the Italian, and knew Greek and Latin as well almost as he did the English, and he always said that Hibbard was his superior. I have always thought that probably Mr. Hibbard was the superior of Judge Carpenter in the embellishments of education, but as an all-round educated lawyer and general scholar I think we have never had the superior of Judge Carpenter in New Hampshire.

Then there were the two Rands. The most brilliant advocate of Northern New Hampshire, I think, was Mr. Edward Rand. He was exceedingly powerful and vigorous and had a noble voice that resounded through the court room. I can hear it in memory now, as he poured forth the natural eloquence with which his being was subcharged and enforced the various propositions of his case. No one could forget Ned Rand. His brother Charles was a great man, too, not so great in the presentation of causes, but he could cross-examine witnesses most marvelously, and could prepare a case as well as any one. The firm was a very difficult and powerful one with which to compete.

Then we come to Littleton where the Binghams then lived. Harry was undoubtedly the greater, the stronger man of the two. That could be no discredit to his exceedingly able brother, afterwards a very eminent jurist, and who possessed valuable capacities not so marked in Harry, because you can say that of Harry Bingham that you cannot say of any other man who has practised at the bar of New Hampshire in my day, if my judgment can be relied upon. I looked upon Harry Bingham as on the whole the greatest man that I knew at the bar. I have never compared him with Judge Doe because I never knew Judge Doe at the bar. I have come to look upon Judge Doe as the inferior of no jurist whatever who has lived on American soil in native strength and vigor of intellect, in the disposition and determination to be right regardless of precedent, always to be right. I think he was one of the very greatest minds that has been produced upon American soil. As an all-round man, as a great lawyer, as a man who upon the bench would have been a great and a very great judge, I am inclined to think that Harry

Bingham stands and will live in the very first rank of the jurists of New Hampshire, and in the first rank, if it were so that he could be compared with them, of the jurists of America. He was from Vermont. I wish we could claim him as a son of New Hampshire, but we have done something for Vermont. And the two states are sisters. They have given to us a great deal of superior legal ability and of sterling manhood, and among all her contributions to New Hampshire or to both states, and to this jurisprudence, to eminence in legal ability and a high and excellent example to those who are to come after us, I think no man has set a higher standard than Harry Bingham of Vermont and of New Hampshire, of whom both states and the whole country, too, may well be proud. My knowledge of Judge Bingham during these later years has been principally that of one who has been largely himself outside the profession, but still observant of general affairs. Mr. Bingham was larger than his profession. I have known few men who thought more profoundly upon the great topics of the time than Mr. Bingham. He was learned. He went to the root of the matter, and while one might not always agree with him, and he was pertinacious and determined in adhering to his own opinions, one could never fail to respect the sterling integrity, the manliness of the man. I do not believe that Harry Bingham ever laid down a proposition in politics or in law that he did not at the time believe himself. If he might not have believed it under other circumstances, if the exigencies of his cause required that for the interests of his client or of his case a certain line of propositions should be the truth, there was that in his mind which for the time being at least enabled him to believe it, for the benefit of his client if for no other reason; but whenever the adventitious circumstances which affected the immediate cause under consideration were not present, when any great subject was presented to his mind and it was essential that he should come to a correct conclusion, viewing the whole situation, Mr. Bingham then was capable of rising above the exigencies of common affairs and the particular case that might be in question. Then he took a broad, comprehensive and profound view of political philosophy and of human affairs.

It is true that Judge Bingham was not identified with the