Sharswood.l 262 [October. 



Washington, Henry Baldwin, Richard Peters, and Joseph Hopkinson, 

 that his severest professional labors were undergone, and his richest 

 rewards earned. 



In 1815, he was appointed Attorney of the United States for 

 the Eastern District of Pennsylvauia, under the administration of 

 Mr. Madison, and continued to hold that office during the succeeding 

 administrations of Mr. Monroe and Mr. John Quincy Adams, for 

 the space of fourteen years. 



The pages of Report books, however, furnish but scanty and un- 

 satisfactory evidence of the professional career of a lawyer. It 

 often happens that his most remarkable efforts, his most eloquent 

 appeals, as well as his most able and learned arguments live only in 

 the memory of contemporaries, who have had the good fortune to be 

 present on the occasion which called them forth. Those only who 

 have witnessed Mr. Ingersoll in the trial of an important cause, ex- 

 tending, as often happened, through several days — his tact in so 

 opening it as to produce a favorable impression on the jury — the ad- 

 mirable order and arrangement with which the testimony was brought 

 forward — his skill in skirmishing with his antagonist on questions of 

 evidence — and the earnest, faithful and exhaustive summing up of 

 the merits of his client's case — the humor, sarcasm, irony and invec- 

 tive with which he assailed the positions of his adversary, can have 

 any adequate idea of Mr. IngersoU's power as an advocate. The 

 writer of this notice was present on an occasion when, at the con- 

 clusion of one of his most brilliant efforts, a crowded bar could not 

 be restrained by the proprieties of the place from a momentary ex- 

 pression of admiration and applause. 



Mr. IngersoU's attention during all this period was largely de- 

 voted to the politics of the times. A remarkable characteristic of 

 his entire course as a public man was what may be termed intense 

 Americanism. His country, its institutions and men, as they had 

 his warmest affection, naturally commanded with it his full approba- 

 tion and confidence. It was not, however, a mere sentiment. He 

 had seen with his own eyes other countries, observed the working of 

 other systems, and been thrown in personal contact with their most 

 distinguished men. He had scanned and studied the whole field 

 with the pages of history, and the interpretation of Montesquieu, her 

 minister and oracle, open before him. This is his response : " If a 

 republic is small, it is destroyed by foreign enemies; if large, by in- 

 ternal corruption. This double inconvenience infects alike democra- 

 cies and aristocracies, whether good or bad. The evil is in the thing 



