JUDGE JOSEPH BALDWIN.

 

            FROM the earliest days Judge Baldwin was one of the ablest lawyers in California, one of the ablest of that grand array of lawyers on the Comstock. Then he had distinct attributes of his own. He had a sense of humor that was contagious and enchanting. His "Flush Times in Alabama" had fun enough on every page to build a comic opera up around. It is still a standard work among the old race of men who recall how things were before great wealth came to the country and when men lived on a lower, gentler plane, and with no fame as the owners of vast wealth, had hearts too big for narrow human breasts. But there was no bitterness in his soul, no malice, and deep down he had mastered all life's problems with no worse result than to share the sorrows of his fellow men and to shield, so far as he could, their frailties.

            He was intensely southern ; he believed in his state and section with all the fervor of his genial and generous nature, but he was intellectually honest and his perceptions acute, and with a quick intuition he measured the worth of men, and in judging them forgot where either he or they were born, and estimated only what they were when he met them.

            When he went to the supreme bench of California, there were men who, because they did not understand his nature, had a fear that he did not appreciate the weight of the duties he was undertaking.

            Of the problems which confronted the supreme court of California at the time, we can best get an idea from Judge Baldwin's own words. He said :

            "California was then, as now, in the development of her multiform physical resources. The judges were as much pioneers of law as the people of settlement. It is safe to say that even in the experience of new countries hastily settled by heterogeneous crowds of strangers from all countries, no such example of legal and judicial difficulties was ever before presented as has been illustrated in the history of California. There

18 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

was no general or common course of jurisprudence. Law was to be administered almost without a standard. There was the civil law, as adulterated or modified by Mexican provincialism, usages and habitudes, for a great part of the legislation ; there was the common law for another part, but what that was, was to be decided from the conflicting divisions of any number of courts in America and England, and the various and diverse considerations of policy arising from local and other facts.

            "And then contracts made elsewhere and some of them in semi-civilized countries had to be interpreted here.

            "Besides, to all which may be added that large and important interests peculiar to the state existed mines, ditches, etc. -- for which the courts were compelled to frame the law and make a system out of what was little better than chaos.

            "When, in addition, it is considered that an unprecedented number of contracts, and an amount of business without parallel, had been made and done in hot haste, with the utmost carelessness ; that legislation was accomplished in the same way, and presented the crudest and most incongruous materials for construction ; that the whole scheme and organization of the government and the relation of the government and the relation of the departments to each other, had to be adjusted by judicial construction it may well be conceived what task even the ablest jurist would take upon himself when he assumed office on the supreme bench."

            He wrote the above when he had long filled that office, in which he grew in intellectual stature every day.

            The two crowning glories of his life were first his stainless integrity, then his tireless industry.

            As a sample, there was one case in which a title had come down from a long before Mexican concession. A vast sum hung upon the decision of the case, and the records were so conflicting and incongruous that an hour's study of them was enough to make a lawyer crazy.

            At the time, Judge Baldwin knew at best but a few words of Spanish.

            He pondered over the case a good while. The longer he

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considered it, the more he thought of what a wrong an incorrect decision would be, and finally his mind was made up.

            He set out for the City of Mexico with two purposes in his mind : one was to learn to read Spanish, the other to go to the depths of the case and trace the titles up to a conclusion in which there could be no flaw.

            He accomplished both purposes, and Justice Stephen J. Field, referring to it later, declared that "the opinion of Justice Baldwin in the case was without precedent for the exhaustive learning and research it exhibits upon the points discussed."

            It made clear as nothing else ever did, that the jolly side of Justice Baldwin's nature was but a by-product, that down deep his inner self was profound and as honest as profound, and that over all no higher soul ever controlled a man's life. He was, indeed, the very highest type of man ; whatever his sorrows were, he vexed no one with them ; when popular fury was aroused in the opening days of the great war, it was the cutting off for him of honors which any man might covet, especially if, as with him, he had earned them ; but there was from him no repining, no change in the serenity of his nature ; indeed, he did not forget his natural wit even when he was the victim of it.

            His private life was perfect; his public life was stainless; he grew in men's estimation to the last.

            The brightest of "the native sons of the Golden State" should be delegated to make a study of Judge Baldwin's life, and deliver a eulogy upon it.

            If this should be done, they would realize as never before that "there were giants in those days."

            But that, though prepared with all fidelity, would fail to make a picture of him to compare with the picture that is engraven on the walls of the heart of any old argonaut who knew him, who heard his voice, who looked in his kindly eyes, and realized how high and true was the man every clay of his life; in truth, above fear and above reproach, and a very blessing to all who had the honor of knowing him in the power and the splendor of his life.