aids of family influence or patronage.  He had the advantage, however—­which served him better than wealth or family influence—­of an accomplished education, and careful study and mental discipline.  He brought to the practice of his profession a mind stored with professional learning, and embellished with rare scholarly attainments.  He was distinguished at the bar for his fidelity to his clients, for untiring industry, great care and accuracy in the preparation of his cases, uncommon legal acumen, and extraordinary solidity of judgment.  As an adviser, no man had more the confidence of his clients, for he trusted nothing to chance or accident when certainty could be attained, and felt his way cautiously to his conclusions, which, once reached, rested upon sure foundations, and to which he clung with remarkable pertinacity.  Judges soon learned to repose confidence in his opinions, and he always gave them the strongest proofs of the weight justly due to his conclusions.

“When he came to the bench, from various unavoidable causes the calendar was crowded with cases involving immense interests, the most important questions, and various and peculiar litigation.  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.  To be sure something had been done, but much had yet to be accomplished; and something, too, had to be undone of that which had been done in the feverish and anomalous period that had preceded.  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 or judicial difficulties was ever before presented as has been illustrated in the history of California.  There was no general or common source 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 litigation; and there was the common law for another part, but what that was was to be decided from the conflicting decisions 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 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