Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1882-01-13
OBTTUAR Y.
Death OF chief Justice PIerpolnt.

in Vergennes at 20 minutes past o'clock
last Saturday afternoon. From a graceful
and appreciative tribute to Judge Pierpoints
memory, published in the Burlington Free
Press, presumably from the pen of L. j..
Phelps, we copy the following:
In the death of John PerpoiDt Chief JUS
tice of Vermont the state loses one who has
| been its most valuable and most widely be-
loved public servant. For more than twenty
four years he has sat in the Supreme Court
for sixteen years its presiding magistrate
until to the present generation of our people,
his familiar and venerable form has become
identified with the administration of Justice
| His life has been singularly unobtrusve. He
| has never said word nor done an act for the
sake of reputation, or in furtherance of am
! biton. Without the least self-asserton, with
an integrity unquestionable, an ability rare,
patience iuexhaustible, kindness as wide
as humanity, and a solidity of judgment that
no excitement could agitate, no camor move,
and no vicisstude overcome, he has pursued
the quiet and even tenor of his judicial way,
| guided by the one single, unsefsh motive of
high sense of duty, never proclaimed, al
ways present But the reputation he did not
run after came to him unsought. Few men
and fewer judges have ever obtained a hold
upon the confidence and respect of the COM
munity so general, and so strong.
The events of such life have been nat
urally simple and few. Its value has been in
its quality rather than in its variety, in its
usefulness more than in its distinction. He
was born in Litohfeld, Conn, September 10,
1905. He was cousin of the late Senator
Phelps, and brother of the late Robert Pier
point of Rutland, who for many years filled
most acceptably a seat upon the bench of
Vermont. The advantages of a college edu-
cation we're not within the slender means of
his parents but he received his legal train
ing at the celebrated law school of Judge
Reeve and Judge Gould at Litchfeld, which
in that day sent forth so many distinguished
lawyers. He came in early manhood to Yer
mont then the land of promise to the young
men of Connecticut, and pursued his studies
with his brother at Rutland. There he was
admitted to the bar, and soon after, in 1882,
he took up his residence at Vergennes, where
his home has ever since been, and where he
entered upon the regular practice of the law.
few years later he married the daughter Of
the late Hon. Vile Lawrence of Vergonnes,
whose son, Hon. Chas. b. Lawrence, was
long Chief Justice of Illinois Mrs. Pierpoint,
with three children, survives what proved a
most felicitous union.
In his professional life he soon acquired
the confidence of all the region round about,
and became the most trusted counsellor of its
people. He was early known at the bar as
an excellent lawyer, singularly terse and clear
as a speaker, and of such uniform candor and
integrity, that what he said always carried
weight
He was elected to the Supreme Court in
1857, with great unanimity of vote and of
public opinion, and in all the successive cleo
tons since then, annual and biennial, no vote
has ever been cast against him. In the Judi
cial station he found his true and natural vo-
cation. He was a born judge. While at the
bar he had probably been more generally re-
sorted to, by agreement of parties, "a referee,
auditor, arbitrator, etc, than any other man
in the state. And his decisions were almost
always accepted on all sides as right. He
united together a strong sense of right and
wrong, an intuitiye faculty of weighing evil
dence, and arriving at controverted truth,
and the power of considering all questions in
their true light, free from excitement, preju-
dice or preconceived opinion, with absolute
fairness, and an all-pervading charity. That
salutary principle of the common law, that
the right in human conduct is always to be
presumed until the wrong is made to appear,
was the natural impulse of his heart.
As lawyer he was completely grounded in
legal principles. The early training of the
Litchfeld law school, which dealt almost ex-
cusively with general principles, had i'm
pressed itself strongly upon his mind. He
was no case lawyer. With that sort of learn
ing he did not attempt to keep pace, which
consists only in triangulating from one case
to another He never travelled through q
labyrinth of learning to absurd or upright
eous conclusions. The logical application of
established legal principles was his resource,
as it was his peculiar strength in dealing with
all questions, however difficult or complicated.
As purely technical lawyer he did not great
ly excel, but on the merits of a case he was
rarely at fault. If wrong at all, it at least
manned to be said, that if his views were not |
law, they ought to be.
His opinions were brief, simple, expressed |
in excellent English, citing few authorities, |
and strictly to the point. They contain no |
dissertations at large but show exactly what |
the court decided in the existing case, and |
upon what grounds the decision proceeded |
They are of the sort that wear well in the |
long run, rather than such as startle by their |
novelty or bewilder by their learning. Some
of his oral opinions, perhaps never reported, |
were among his most felicitous. This is no |
place to refer to cases, but one instance may |
be mentioned. 1t was his e1temporaneous |
opinion in the Supreme Court at Rutland, in |
the matter of the application by the murder
er Phair for a new trial. upon an ingenious |
of newly. discovered or rather, |
newly-manufactured evidence. The clear
ness and completeness, and at the same time |
the perfect fairness with which he dissected |
that evidence, and demonstrated its false
hood, at once satisfied the judgment and at
tracted the admiration of all who heard it, |
He almost never disseuted from the opinion |
of the majority of the court however oppos-
ed to his own. His view was, that dissent |
only weakened the authority of the decision
and invited renewed discussion of the subject |
In this he did not always do himself Justice
He is left to stand as concurring in some de-
cisions to which he probably never assented
OF his personal character il is unnecessary
in this community to speak. For him to re-
frain from ENVY, hatred, malice, and all un-
charitableness" toward his fellow men, was
no merit, because his nature was incapable of
either Always more considerate of others
than of himself, manly, courteous, upright,
and generous, he was gentleman in grain,
in the old fashioned sense of the word He
was passionate lover and close observer of
external nature. He had, indeed, a vein of
poetic feeling, to an extent not generally sus-
pected, because with his calm temperament
and reticent habits it found almost no ex-
preston. His happiness and almost his only
recreation was out of DOORS He was fond of
gardening, and very successful in it, He was
an ardent sportsman and an excellent shot.
Judge Pierpoint was worn out at
last in the public service. He died of no spe-
cihc disease, but simply by the wearing out
of his physical faculties. In his final illness,
his only repining was that he could not be
with his associates at the session at Montpe-
lier, from which he had never before been
absent since he became a member of the
court.
His last judicial service was at the June
term, 1881, of the Addison county court. It
was very protracted and harrassing; the
weather was hot, and the air in the court
house bad. He went through the term, how
ever and completed the business, and then
returned to his home for the last time, un-
able to leave it again. He will be remem-
bered with no ordinary affection by the
bench and bar of the State and by numbers
Of its people. His name win remain among
the treasures of the Judicial history of Yer