HORACE BINNEY. 353 



and his progress. His gains could not have been insignificant during 

 the first ten years of his professional life, since at the end of them, 

 when he was but thirty years old, he was able to build the large and 

 elegant house in Fourth Street, in which he lived for the remaining 

 sixty-five years of his life. Indeed, he had but small reason to com- 

 plain of neglected merit, when, at seven or eight and twenty, he was 

 dividing the best business of Philadelphia with men much his seniors, 

 and who enjoyed a national reputation for eminence in the law. At 

 thirty-five, according to the authentic testimony of Mr. Justice Strong, 

 of the Supreme Court of the United States, given in the Eulogium 

 on the Life and Character of Mr. Binney, delivered last January, — 

 at thirty-five he was " in the possession of all that the profession of 

 the law could give to its professor, whether of reputation or emolu- 

 ment." And, during those years of active practice, he prepared six 

 volumes of Reports, condensing the decisions of the Supreme Court 

 of Pennsylvania, from 1799 to 1814, of which Judge Strong says: 

 "When they came from his hands, they left nothing to be desired. 

 They must always be regarded as the work of an accomplished 

 lawyer." He was a model lawyer in the earnest attention he gave 

 to the business intrusted to him, and in his devotion to the interests 

 of his clients. He was not to be turned aside from his practice at the 

 bar by any of the usual allurements of ambition, not even of promo- 

 tion to the highest distinctions of the law. While yet in the prime of 

 his life, he twice declined offers of a place on the Supreme Bench 

 of his own State, and at least once of one on that of the Supreme 

 Court of the United States. 



Mr. Binney refused to be tempted to leave his profession by the 

 fascinations of political life. A single term in the State Legislature 

 in his youth, and one in Congress towai'ds the close of his active pro- 

 fessional career, were all the deviations he made from his chosen 

 path through life into that enchanted ground. And his consent- 

 ing to serve his city in the twenty-third Congress was induced by 

 the pressure of a great question, the right decision of which should 

 have depended on the judicial voice of law, and not on the passionate 

 outcries of partisan politics. It was at the time of the war declared 

 by President Jackson against the Bank of the United States, which 

 he waged as against a tribe of savages which he was bound to extir- 

 pate iper fas aut nefas. Or, to use his own figure of speech, as against 

 " a monster," of which it was reserved for him, as the appointed 

 champion, to rid the land with whatever weapon came uppermost. 

 Mr. Binney maintained the reputation he had gained at the bar in the 

 VOL. XI. (n. s. III.) 23 



