Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell | Page 8

custom of the judges of the Court of Appeals to put up at the Swan,

where they might easily consult with Pendleton, their chief, whose
injured limb prevented him for the last thirty years of his life from
going abroad. It was at the Swan the judges kept their black cloth suits
during the recess of the courts; for in those days there were no public
conveyances; and all the judges, except Pendleton, who drove into
Richmond from Caroline in a slow lumbering vehicle, nicknamed, after
the wild driver of the coursers of the sun, a Phaeton, came into town on
horseback, and were often clad in the cloth of their own looms. I
mention these details of the early times of Mr. Tazewell, as they may
serve to explain that stern simplicity of manners, of taste, and of
general living, to which he resolutely adhered through life. Although
fond of agriculture, and the owner of large landed estates, as he did not
reside on them he did not require vehicles for the use of his family; and,
at his residence in Norfolk, I think I may say that, for the last forty
years at least, he never kept a carriage above the dignity of a gig, and I
have doubts whether during that time he even kept a gig. The last time I
saw him riding, some ten or twelve years ago, he was on horseback,
accompanied by his son. I well remember when to take a drive in a
carriage, or to use an umbrella, was deemed effeminate by some of the
wealthiest planters in Virginia.
It was on the 14th day of May, 1796, that he received his license to
practice law. The license, written in a bold hand on paper, was signed
by judges Peter Lyons, Edmund Winston, and Joseph Jones, and is
preserved by his children as a family relic. His first fee was derived
from a warrant trying, in which a Mr. Taliaferro, who was his landlord,
was a party, and was fifteen shillings, which helped to pay the rent of
his office. His first important criminal case was the defence of a man
on a charge of murder. Whether his client was innocent or guilty, I
know not; but Tazewell got him clear of the law; and the man was so
thankful for his services, that half a century afterwards he confessed his
gratitude to a daughter of Mr. Tazewell, whom he chanced to see in the
streets of a neighboring town.
The keen eye of John Marshall saw at once the caste of Tazewell's
mind, and pronounced him an extraordinary young man. And I may say
here, that the subdued manner and tone in which Mr. Tazewell spoke of

Judge Marshall would convey a stronger impression of the character of
the judge than any mere words of eulogy could well do. For his person
and abilities he cherished the most profound respect and admiration.
Even of the Life of Washington, which it was the fashion of the young
democrats of my day to laugh at for the grammatical blunders and
inverted English that marred the first edition of that work, Tazewell,
who, though never eminent in elegant composition, always wrote good
English, and saw all the faults of the work, still put a high value upon it
as I certainly now do myself; and within a year of his death, when he
was told an author was about to publish a history of the administration
of Washington, he observed: "What can he tell that Judge Marshall has
not told a great deal better already?" Yet, from the beginning of Mr.
Tazewell's career to its close, they differed from each other on most of
the great constitutional questions of their times. Candor compels me to
say, however, that the decisions of the judge in the case of Maculloch
against the Bank of Maryland, and in the case of Cohens against the
State of Virginia, greatly disappointed him; and after their
promulgation, though he still entertained feelings of high respect for his
abilities, he would hardly have offered in honor of the judge that
famous sentiment which he proposed at the Decatur dinner, and which
elicited so much remark at the time.
But it was probably in his association with Chancellor Wythe, who
loved and petted the promising boy, the son of his old neighbor in
Williamsburg, whom he had taken from the dying bedside of another
old neighbor, that Tazewell formed his taste for profound research, and
his determination to master the law as a science. Wythe, above all our
early statesmen, was deeply learned in the law, had traced all its
doctrines to their fountain-heads, delighted in the year-books from
doomsday down; had Glanville, Bracton, Britton, and Fleta bound in
collects; had all the