BOOK REVIEWS 185 ton. He often argued before legislative committees. He was coimsel for many corporations who procured toll franchises during the time when bridges and roads often received them. He drew the bill of complaint in the famous case of Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (6 Pick. 76; 7 Pick. 144; 11 Peters, 420); but Webster argued the case at Washington. This was the last great litigation in which Lemuel Shaw's name appears as counsel. Although his practice became lucrative, his professional fees did not approximate the present inflated standard. Shaw's retainers were not often over ten or twenty dollars. His charge for an argiunent before the full bench of the Supreme Judicial Court seems usually to have been one hundred dollars. Nevertheless, he accumu- lated a competence during his twenty-six years of practice as a lawyer. Daniel Webster is authority for the statement that Shaw's professional income in his last years at the bar yielded him annually from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. Indeed, it seems altogether probable, that, when he went on the bench, his net property, at his own valuation, was not far from $100,000 in net value. It must be remembered, however, that this sum was considered ample wealth in those days. His salary as Chief Justice never exceeded $3,500, and he hardly could have accumulated much during his long life on the bench. When he became Chief Justice, the Massachusetts Reports covered only twenty- six volumes — a number not too large to be carefully read and digested. In- deed, Caleb Cushing did exactly that thing when he was made judge. That great lawyer himself told the writer that, as soon as he had received his own appointment, he went into retirement in order to read, and actually did digest carefully, every case in every volume of the then existing Massachusetts Re- ports. This proceeding explains his extraordinary acceptance as a presiding judge among the leaders of the bar at that time; and his short term of service was much deplored. Lemuel Shaw received his commission as Chief Justice on August 30, 1830, taking his seat at the September term at Lenox in Berkshire County. Gover- nor Lincoln, who appointed him, had resigned from the same bench to become governor. He knew the quality of the man he appointed and broke the prece- dent of promoting the senior associate justice, and took Shaw directly from the bar, because he had personal knowledge of Shaw's peculiar fitness. After thirty years as Chief Justice Shaw disclosed, in June, i860, to his colleagues Lis intention of resigning, and on the 21st of August, i860, he resigned. Seven months later, on March 30, 1861, he breathed his last. To analyze his decisions is impossible at this time. They run through fifty- six volumes. They cover the thirty years of history which preceded the Civil War, — a period of most rapid development, not only in national life, but in the great changes in the modes and inventions of actual living, and substan- tially the entire development of the world's commerce by steamship on the ocean. When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, nearly all American vessels had their home-port in the single harbor of Salem and Beverly. Con- sequently during the next half-century, Salem almost monopolized East-In- dian, Asiatic and Pacific commerce in American bottoms. During the Revo- lution, every other important Atlantic port had been in the hands of the Brit- ish. Beginning with the siege of Boston, the British held successively for about eight years New York, Portland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston and Savannah as merely British ports. Almost every New England ship had been swept from the seas, excepting only the two or three hundred privateers whose home-port was Salem. Wooden vessels at that time were built so as to be seaworthy, and to last and to sail the seas for not less than fifty years. The owners of these privateers, which hailed from Salem, had sudderdy to convert their swift-sailing clippers into peaceful work. But New England ingenuity was equal to the emergency. The great merchant-families of that day very natiurally started in Salem. Maritime interests and insurers settled their legal
