chief justice of the common pleas court and he was estimated as the superior among his associates upon the bench. Judge Hopkinson was from Lowell, where he had been a favorite of the ruling class in that city. He was a man of moderate ability. The work of the commission continued through several months, and some of its recommendations were adopted by the Legislature.
As the charters of all the banks in the State were to expire in 1850 or 1851, in the latter year, I think, the Legislature authorized the appointment of a board of commissioners for the examination of the banks. The Governor and Council appointed Solomon Lincoln, of Hingham, Joseph S. Cabot of Salem, and myself.
Mr. Lincoln was a kind, capable man of considerable learning, especially in Old Colony history and genealogy. His first question to bank officers often related to them personally, and when he found a man who traced his line to the Old Colony, he pressed him with questions until his whole history was disclosed. Mr. Cabot sometimes anticipated Mr. Lincoln, by saying at once, when we entered a bank, “Is there anybody here from the Old Colony?”
Mr. Cabot was a bachelor of fifty, and his ways were often odd, and occasionally they were disagreeable. He had a custom of never locking his sleeping-room door. Of this he often boasted. When we were at the American House, Worcester, Mr. Cabot said upon his appearance in the morning: “A very queer thing happened to me last night. When I got up my clothes were missing. At last I opened the door, and there they were in the hall. I supposed that I had been robbed. But I am all right,” taking his wallet from his pocket. I said: “Have you looked in your wallet?” He opened it to find that the money had disappeared. We ventured to suggest that for a bank commissioner, he had not shown a great amount of shrewdness.
