Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 42

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Burr went happily back to his law. His reputation steadily grew. He was rapidly forging to the forefront of the legal profession in the State and probably in the United States. It did not take long for him to become, together with Hamilton, an acknowledged leader of the Bar. Clients poured in, fees waxed large, other lawyers employed him as counsel or requested his opinions on moot points in writing.

The Docket of his cases in the Mayor’s Court of New York City for the years 1784 to 1788 discloses him as an extremely busy trial attorney, handling matters as various as the conversion of horses that had strayed from their owners, trespass on land, protested notes, assault and battery, and contracts for the sale of merchandise. In short, the usual grist that goes through the legal mill.^[155]

The amounts ranged from a few pounds, New York money, to much more substantial sums, and the fees charged were in proportion. This should dispose, once and for all, of that much repeated legend that Burr refused to handle any matter under a minimum fee of £40. This legend is based on a false reading of a statement of his, which has been used time and again to charge him with mercenary qualities, usually in unfavorable contrast to the admitted modesty of Hamilton’s fees.

The statement is contained in a letter he wrote to Peter van Schaack. He says: “I have never undertaken the management of a Cause of any moment in error under £40.”^[156] There are two distinct limitations to be noted in this assertion. First, that it relates only to matters on appeal (Causes in error); second, that the cause be one of moment—in other words, substantial in character and in the amount involved. When it is further considered that appeals were argued before the Supreme Court in Albany, involving a long, tedious journey of days, Burr’s avowal becomes considerably more modest, and would be applicable to any practicing attorney of the time.

His clientele was large and varied. It included his old Colonel, William Malcolm, now once more a prosperous New York merchant; he managed large landed properties in Maine for remote English clients;^[157] he represented the famous De Peyster family,^[158] and was for years general counsel for the even more famous tribe of Livingstons, the most powerful family in the State. His bill, rendered the Estate of Robert G. Livingston in 1789, on a running account of six or seven years, discloses a total of over £10,000, New York money!^[159]

It has been estimated that his annual earnings exceeded $10,000 a year, a huge sum in those days, and it is claimed that he received as much as that for a single fee.^[160] No one in his day exceeded him in legal income. His first partner was William T. Broome, the son of the Treasurer of the New York Chamber of Commerce. He had several thereafter, notably William Coleman, who later was to edit the New York Chronicle and defend his former partner vigorously, though opposed to him in politics.

The restrictions against Tory lawyers were lifted in 1786, but the raising of the ban did not affect Burr’s prestige or success at the Bar. It was said at the time that in all his life Burr never lost a case that he personally conducted. The obvious retort to such an assertion is, as all lawyers are aware, that the successful one’s practice was either severely limited or that he chose his cases with care. Burr chose his cases with care. He refused to appear in court on a matter of whose eventual success he was not fairly confident.

More important, he prepared his cases thoroughly. He was indefatigable in research, he marshaled his facts and precedents with telling precision and irresistible force. He obtained every scrap of available evidence; he “pursued [says a legal friend] the opposite party with notices, and motions, and applications, and appeals, and rearguments, never despairing himself, nor allowing to his adversary confidence, nor comfort, nor repose. Always vigilant and always urgent, until a proposition for compromise or a negotiation between the parties ensued. ‘Now move slow’ (he would say); ‘never negotiate in a hurry.’”^[161]

Another lawyer avowed that Burr had defined law as “whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained” and that he acted accordingly. This anonymous informant went on further to say “that Colonel Burr was not a deep-read lawyer; that he showed himself abundantly conversant with the general knowledge of the profession, and that he was skilful in suggesting doubts and questions; but that he exhibited no indications of a fondness for the science, nor of researches into its abstruse doctrines; that he seemed, indeed, to hold it and its administration in slight estimation.”^[162]

It is difficult to appraise adequately the legal talents of the great lawyers of the past. The learning and ability of judges may be determined from their reported opinions, but there is no such test for the intangible things that go into the making of a great and successful lawyer. His work is essentially ephemeral, transmitted only through the colored and prejudiced impressions of others. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the few briefs and opinions that have been preserved leads to conclusions somewhat similar to those just quoted.

Burr’s mind was agile and active; he seized the essential points of an argument with unerring insight, and possessed the faculty of reducing an elaborate, difficult discussion to a single luminous point. He was always a strict practitioner, addicted to every legal technicality, never soliciting his opponent’s favor nor indulgent in overlooking the errors of others, but courteous to his adversary and eminently polite. Yet it is true, from the available evidence, that he did not penetrate into the inner philosophy of the law, the broad consideration of its abstract principles, of fundamental justice. Nor did he object, when the occasion offered, to the use of technical arguments to gloss over matters in which equity and justice seemed to rule otherwise. This, however, cannot be considered as an indictment. Such has been the uniform custom of lawyers and judges of whatever time or clime. It is inherent in the very structure of the law.

In court as well as in the office, Burr was irresistible. He valued oratory but little. He pleaded his cause in a conversational tone, never declaiming, never diffuse, compacting his argument in small compass, covering the essential points thoroughly and concisely. “I have not the talent of making long harangues,” he told the court.^[163] His argument was prepared to the last detail before he entered the courtroom. He was quietly sarcastic, yet immensely impressive. His manner was courtly, despite his small stature, and his air one of dignity and perfect breeding.

A contemporary described the contrast between Burr and Hamilton, the two acknowledged leaders of the Bar, in action. Hamilton would exhaust a case, and his hearers, with a wealth of elaborate detail on every point, on every possible objection. He would speak for two or three hours, fluent, loftily eloquent, orotund. Burr would then arise in rebuttal, select with uncanny care two or three vulnerable, yet vital points in Hamilton’s argument, and quietly demolish them in a few cogent words. Then he would sit down, leaving all the rest of his adversary’s elaboration untouched. But in twenty minutes he had completely destroyed the effect of Hamilton’s hours of effort.^[164]

General Erastus Root, himself one of the best lawyers of the day, remarked that the two rivals were equal in reasoning powers and scholarship, but that Burr would say as much in half an hour as Hamilton in two. “They were,” he continued, “much the greatest men in this State, and perhaps the greatest men in the United States.”^[165]

An Englishman, traveling in America, averred that “his [Burr’s] distinguished abilities attracted so decided a leaning of the Judges in his favour, a deference for his opinions so strongly marked, as to excite in no small degree the jealousy of the bar. So strong was the impression made by the general respect for his opinions, that exclamations of despair were frequently heard to escape the lips of the Counsel whose fortune it was to be opposed by the eloquence of Mr. Burr. I am aware that this language wears the colour of panegyric; but the recollections which the facts must excite in the breasts of his candid rivals, will corroborate its accuracy.”^[166]