Glances at our Colonial Bar.

sequently the study of law. There were no reports of courts during his beginnings at the bar, but Maryland traditions ascribe to him rapid progress as jury advocate. But at the formative period of the Republic every lawyer entered public life as did Pinkney; so that his legal fame is also lost sight of in his political services. President Washington sent him to London as legal commissioner under the Jay treaty. Returned to Balti more, he became attorney-general of Mary land, and its published records show that his legal talents in the office shone con spicuously. And these undoubtedly con tributed to his selection by President Madi son afterwards to the same office in the Federal government. During the naval war, Pinkney was a volunteer officer and was distinguished in the Bladensburg action. Congress soon claimed him, and diplomacy also as minister to St. Petersburg during the stirring Napoleonic times. He died at Washington as Federal senator, after some

/EDANUS BURKE.

267

WILLIAM PlNKNEY.

exhausting co-labors in the supreme court, where he had been incessantly employed in important cases, as the successive volumes of reports of the period show. His briefs and citations therein found attest h»s great ness as a lawyer. He was always a remark ably handsome man, was of distinguished bearing, and his portrait in the Maryland capital suggests personal resemblances to Daniel Webster. Louisiana holds in grateful remembrance the name of Francois Xavier Martin as its greatest lawyer and judge, and in the Con gressional Library at Washington his dozen volumes of reports, mainly of his own deci sions as chief justice, amply attest his learn ing and industry. His first twenty years were passed in his native France, and then leaving the books of Pothier, he came first to North Carolina, then to New Orleans, where he took up the books of the French Provincial legislature. The inhabitants being mainly French, his earlier studies accorded