" [Footnote: Quincy's _Reports_, p. 474.] While so sound a man,
otherwise, as John Adams wrote, in 1776, to Mr. Justice Cushing: "You have
my hearty concurrence in telling the jury the nullity of acts of
Parliament.... I am determined to die of that opinion, let the _jus
gladii_ say what it will." [Footnote: _Works of J. Adams_, ix. 390.]
On looking back at Massachusetts as she was in the year 1700, permeated
with the evil theocratic traditions, without judges, teachers, or books,
the mind can hardly fail to be impressed with the unconquerable energy
which produced great jurists from such a soil; and yet in 1725 Jeremiah
Gridley graduated from Harvard, who may fairly be said to have been the
progenitor of a famous race; for long before the Revolution, men like
Prat, Otis, and John Adams could well have held their own before any court
of Common Law that ever sat. Such powerful counsel naturally felt a
contempt for the ignorant politicians who for the most part presided over
them, which they took little pains to hide. Ruggles one day had an aged
female witness who could find no chair and complained to him of
exhaustion. He told her to go and sit on the bench. His honor, in some
irritation, calling him to account, he replied: "I really thought that
place was made for old women." Hutchinson says of himself: "It was an
eyesore to some of the bar to have a person at the head of the law who had
not been bred to it.
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