SAMUEL DICKSON. XXI 



Bar membership during the hfe time of Mr. Dickson, and empha- 

 sized not only the relative significance of his leadership, but the 

 circumstance that to the vast majority of the present Bar he must 

 have appeared as a venerable man. In truth, it is the prolonged life 

 of a great leader that binds the generations and centuries of lawyers 

 together. Just as Horace Binney bound his own generation of Ser- 

 geants and Chaunceys to that of William Lewis, Edward Tilghman 

 and Jared Ingersoll — the leaders of the Old Bar, as Mr. Binney 

 called them in his classic brochure of that title — and just as Mr. 

 Wm. M. Meredith bound that of John M. Read, George Stroud, 

 Eli K. Price and John Cadwalader to that of Mr. Binney, so Samuel 

 Dickson has bound his own generation to that of George Sharswood, 

 William Strong, R. C. McMurtrie, George W. Biddle, Furman Shep- 

 pard and Theodore Cuyler. It is curious to note how long some of 

 these overlapping lives have been, for while more than half a gen- 

 eration younger than Mr. Dickson, I can distinctly recall not only 

 the forms and the features, but even the voices of Horace Binney, 

 who was admitted to the Bar in 1800; of James J. Barclay and 

 Henry J. Williams, who were admitted in 1815; of David Paul 

 Brown, who was admitted in 1816; of William M. Meredith, who 

 was admitted in 181 7; and of Eli K. Price, who was admitted in 

 1822. Yet each man stood in his day and generation for certain 

 distinct phases of legal principles which cannot be confounded with 

 those of a later time. 



The law, while fixed and stable, undergoes successive changes, 

 due to the development of society and to the multiplication of busi- 

 ness issues which vary from generation to generation. Mr. Dick- 

 son's career is a striking illustration of this. While Mr. McMurtrie 

 and his contemporaries relied upon the law of Lord Tenterden, 

 Chief Justice Gibson and Baron Parke, and upon the equity of Lord 

 Eldon and Chief Justice Tilghman, Mr. Dickson, while thoroughly 

 familiar with the older precedents, espoused and enforced in argu- 

 ment the law of Baron Bramwell, Lord Blackburn and Mr. Ben- 

 jamin and the equity of Sir George Jessel, Lord Esher and Lord 

 Cairns. His arguments in the Supreme Court of the United States 

 are proofs of this, notably in Norrington vs. Wright (115 U. S. 

 188), and Meehan vs. Valentine (145 U. S. 611), in the first of 



