The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-04-29
THE AMERICAN BAR.
Frederic R. COudeTt One Of the Great
est Living Lawyers.

HOlSOnS the PROCESSION - W omen
Should Be Let In-No Reason Why
Parties Should Not Be Given q
Chance-No Decline of the Art OF
Oratory.
New York, April est is a
very hackneyed anecdote that
about the French troops at Fontenoy, OF
some other continental battlefield, who
said to their foes Gentlemen Of the
guard fire first" Yet it recurs newt
ably and very fifty TO me, looking over
the life of Frederic Rene Coudert. He
comes of French military stock, his
father having been an officer in the
Napoleonic wars, who immigrated to this
city after the restoration of the Bour-
bons. Perhaps it is within the
range of possibilities that his
fathers father was one of that
famous corps who gave their adversaries
the pass in the matter of sudden
death. Paradoxical as it may seem, Mr..
Coudert has been fighting all his life, and
he has practically made no enemies. The
explanation is simple. II is found in that
Gallo strain of invincible courtesy which
says, Gentlemen, it is our duty to kill,
but that is no reason why we should dis
like each other" Instances of this are
readily at hand Mr.. Coudert has been
in the very forefront recently of this his
toric banter against the New York
estate machine" organization of the
party to which he has been de-
voted adherent ever since he took the
stump in the L.incOln-DOuglas campaign.
The battles were, of course, the anti
snapper movement and the Bar AssOcia-
TONS successful opposition to the election
of Judge Maynard. On the heads of most
of his democratic colleagues IN those rev
olutions the walls of regular" wrath
have been emptied. MeSSrs. PeCkham
and Hornblower have been subjected to
the humiliation of rejection by the
Senate of their nominations to the SUI
preme court bench. Messrs. Ander-
son and and Fairchild have been treated
with anything but respect in the writ
ten and spoken utterances of the "regu-
lars But Mr. Coudert has totally missed
his share of the angry determinations
which those movements called out II is
not that he is less prominent in his party
Save for the fact that he has never taken
public Office he is more so than most of
the gentlemen named, inasmuch as
he alone among them possesses a
talent for popular oratOry Of very rare
order. His appearance upon public
platform-where he looks so much
like French parliamentary leader that
you always think of the phrase, mount
ing the tribune'-is always a signal for
ecstatic applause. At the great Cleve-
Iand-Hill meeting in the campaign of 1891,
when both of those "Kings of BrentfOrd
smelled" for one night at least one Flower,
he was the recipient of almost as tumul-
tuous greeting as the two rival leaders
of the democracy.
TO WAR WITH SAD HEART.
His mode of bowling himself into a fight
was never more nicely illustrated than in
the bar associations big anti-Maynard
meeting last autumn in Cooper Institute.
He was nearly the last of battery of
legal great guns who went off that night.
The others, to tell the truth-Messrs.
Peckham and Albert Stickney and James
G. Carter-made sOlemuity of warfare
that would have delighted the heart of
Dugald Dalgetty. 1t was war, but it was
not magnificent 1t sounded like a sue
cession of charges to grand jury. When
Mr.. Coudert at last arose the crowd
did, too, and howled with de-
light. Every man jack of them ex-
pected radiant flight of barbed
arrows of humorous eloquence into the
ranks of the foe, such as a republican au-
dience delights to see launched from the
bow of Joseph H. Choate, or Tammany
was won't to do from that of Bourke Cock
ran. They thought he would play horse
with Hill" They shouted with laughter
In anticipation of the treat Mr. Cou-
dert's first action was to wave his hand
In depreciation of their mirth
Then he broke into a strain of passion
ate sorrow, the refrain of which was that
this was the first battle of his life
One of his services on the public side of
his profession doubtless did not earn for
him the cordial affection of the great iu-
rist just dead David Dudley Field The
main work of Mr.. Fields vast life of
work was his codes. He began drawing
them when he was little more than a
youth. He had hardly ceased urging
their adoption up to the day of his death
Slowly and with intervals of years he
persuaded the legislature to adopt his
Civil and Criminal Procedure and his
Penal Code. There remained the cap
sheaf of all, his Civil Code. 1t was never
adopted Probably it will never be
adopted now that its masterful compiler
has passed away. Its principle is repel-
liant to the whole system of Anglo
Saxon Jurisprudence built up through
centuries by the tireless labor of the
greatest minds of the race. Rarely can a
lawyer be found to favor it, No man but
David Dudley Field could have secured
ed. And it was the cogent reasoning of
MIR. Coudert, the chosen spokesman of the
bar association before the legislative com
mittee that blocked the passage of the
last of the Field codes. 1t is for this rea-
son that Mr.. Coudert's prOnouncement
upon the question in the ''interview'
printed below is at once of the
greatest interest and Importance to the
lawyers and laymen. 1t seems to have
been assumed, at least popularity, of late
that because Mr.. Field was at least the
most ingenious and resourceful if not the
greatest lawyer of his time, and because
his codes were good codes, it must be
right TO disregard the precedeuts of ages
and substitute for the present system of
Jurisprudence that most un-American of
created things, codified law
HIS METHOD OF INTERVIEW.
The word interview" is put in quota
ton marks above for the reason that
which is printed below is interviewing in
the sense of being questions and answers
exactly reported, it is not to be understood
that Mr.. Coudert and the writer sat down
and talked long hour by Shrewsbury
clock. Knowing something of Mr.. Cou-
dert's time-saying methods of expressing
himself for the public prints, / spent the
odd hours of some ten days before my
visit to him in drafting a set of questions
which would cover every point that
could think of of public interest in connec-
ton with the profession of the law. After