willing to have me leave, and he endeavored to satisfy me that there was neither illegality nor impropriety in my continuing until the meeting of Congress. I did not agree to his view of the law, and moreover, Congress had so changed the law that the commissioner was required to give bonds. In presence of that requirement I should have left the place. By the same act a cashier was authorized, and thus it happened that when the commissioner was actually in receipt of the moneys the Government had no security and yet security was required when he was deprived of the power to touch one cent of the receipts. I remained at Washington from March 3 to August, engaged in the preparation of a work upon the Revenue System. This volume contains the rulings and decisions by me most of which have been sustained by the courts or justified by experience.[1]
- ↑
In the early sixties I was associated in the profession with a man
eight years my junior, John Quincy Adams Griffin. He was a man of
infinite jest, but lacking in fancy. His letters and other writings would
make a volume of no mean quality. His death came too early for an
extended and lasting reputation. In his sallies he did not spare his
friends, and he wounded his opponents. On one occasion as we were
upon the street I was induced to buy a paper by a boy’s cry “Great
battle!” When I opened the paper the sheet was blank. I said:
“What do you suppose will become of that wretch?”
Alluding to the fact that I was about forty years of age when I was admitted to the bar, Griffin said:
“I think he will study law and enter the profession rather late in life.”
His last letter to me was as solemn as death itself, but he could not omit an instance of his habit:
“The doctors tell me that I have water around my heart, but I know it isn’t so, for I have drank nothing but beer for six months.”
This paragraph was commenced for the purpose of citing another instance of his quality. In our office was a volume of my treatise on the Excise and Internal Revenue Laws of the United States. Many years after Griffin’s death I found this entry on the fly-leaf of the volume:
“DEDICATION.
To the memory of Cæsar Augustus in whose reign there went forth the decree that all the world should be taxed, this book is respectfully dedicated by theAUTHOR.”
