In 1796 he received a flattering evidence of the public sentiment in his favor, in an unsolicited appointment by Washington, as one of the commissioners for the United States, under the seventh article of Jay's Treaty with Great Britain. He accepted this appointment, but not without reluctance, and embarked for London with his family, where he arrived in July of the same year. In the questions, which arose in the adjustment of the claims under this article of the treaty, his opinions,' says his biographer, were finished models of judicial eloquence, uniting powerful and comprehensive argument with a copious, pure, and energetic diction.' They are collected in the second part of Mr Wheaton's work. He was engaged at the same time, in adjusting the claim of the state of Maryland, to certain stock in the Bank of England, of which he succeeded in making a satisfactory arrangement.

Of his observations on this new theatre, and at a period, too, of great political interest, we find little in the fragments of correspondence collected in the present volume. The extent and perfection of the arts of life, the active industry and splendid wealth, which he found in England, produced on him the usual impression. 'I have seen much,' he says, 'that deserves the attention of him, who would be wise or happy.' He was pressent at the debate in the House of Commons on the rejection of Bonaparte's overtures for peace in 1800, and often mentioned Mr Pitt's speech on that occasion, as the most powerful and eloquent he had ever heard. Of that energetic politician he always spoke as the greatest man he had ever seen, while Fox, he seemed to think, was much overrated. But he doubted the power of the allies to force the ancient dynasty on France; an event, which, though eventually accomplished, was postponed so long, and with such important effects on the condition of Europe, as to justify his doubt, and to beget suspicion of the policy of the memorable statesman, who led the combined force of Europe to the attempt. His strong inclination to his professional pursuits, rendered Mr Pinkney very impatient of the delays of the commission, and anxious to return home; but his wishes in this respect were not gratified till August 1804, when he arrived in America, improved, indeed, in knowledge, but embarrassed in circumstances, and with the dreary prospect,' to use his own words, 'of commencing the world at forty.' Shortly after his return, he removed to Baltimore, and attended, for the first time, the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington. In

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1805 he was appointed attorney general of Maryland, and prosecuted, for a time, the labors of the bar, with unwearied assiduity, till the growing differences of this country with Great Britain, on the subject of neutral trade, brought him again on the theatre of diplomacy. In April, 1806, he was appointed, by Mr Jefferson, Minister Extraordinary to the court of St James, to arrange, if possible, in conjunction with Mr Monroe, the resident minister there, the many important questions then at issue between the two cabinets, or, we should rather say, the two countries, as the interest, which they excited on both sides of the water, was diffused and violent in the highest degree.

The progress, and unfriendly issue of this memorable negotiation, are familiar to most of our readers. That Mr Pinkney shared, in its full extent, the solicitude which was felt in this country, is discernible in the tone of his correspondence, and might be inferred from the perplexing circumstances, in which both the government of the United States, and its agents in France and England, were placed by the conflicting usurpations of these two powers. At this day, when we perceive that a war under such a conjuncture was inevitable, and have gathered from it so many fortunate results to public rights and national reputation, it is perhaps to be regretted that our disputes were not sooner referred to the arbitrement of arms. Many circumstances however, some of which it is not very pleasant to recall, led our maritime enemy into mistakes, both as to the spirit and strength of this country, and no doubt deferred the step which we took in the end. Had it not been for these circumstances, the instructions to our ministers at St James's would have been less conciliatory, for taking the tone of which, in his communications with that cabinet, Mr Pinkney has been sometimes accused of want of firmness and decision. To this subject Mr Madison alludes, in a passage of their correspondence quoted in the work; from which it may be gathered, also, that neither was insensible to the dissatisfaction, which was felt at some parts of Mr Pinkney's intercourse with the British government. Meanwhile our niggard frugality towards our foreign embassies, was adding pecuniary embarrassment to the other cares of his weary and responsible post. His youthful earnings were dissipated, while 'the prime of his life was passing away in barren toil and anxiety.' It is thus that he writes to Mr Madison; and he adds, in another letter, the compensation (as it is oddly called), allotted by the government to the maintenance of its representatives

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abroad, is a pittance which no economy, however rigid, or even mean, can render adequate.' Under these circumstances he solicited his recall; and took his audience of leave at Carlton House, in February, 1811, expressing the regret, which he probably felt with some acuteness, that his efforts to effect a good understanding between the two countries, had proved so unavailing. He arrived at Annapolis the following June, and war was declared a year afterwards.

From this period commences the most brilliant part of Mr Pinkney's career, and that which was most akin to his own taste, and to his particular endowments of mind. Having availed himself, with singular diligence, of the opportunity which his residence in England afforded him, to become familiar with the forms and practice of its courts, and having consecrated to his favorite study all the leisure, which he could steal from less congenial employments, he returned to our courts fraught with all the resources which, experience, reflection, and intimate converse with the most eminent lawyers and civilians of the time, may be supposed to have added to a vigorous and fertile genius. In the progress of our maritime war, many interesting questions of public law gave scope to his learning and ability; and the aid that he contributed to the erection of the system of Prize Law, which, in the absence of precedent, the Supreme Court was under the necessity of building up, is prominent in the judicial records of the times. In the December succeeding his return, he was appointed, by Mr Madison, Attorney General of the United States, and held the post till January, 1814, when, a bill having been introduced into the House of Representatives, requiring the residence of that officer at the seat of government, he resigned his office as incompatible, under such a restriction, with his other engagements. He had previously been chosen to the Senate of Maryland, and in 1815 he was elected from Baltimore, as its Representative in Congress. During our short but harassing war with Great Britain, he commanded a battalion of militia riflemen, and was severely wounded at the affair of Bladensburg.

In March, 1816, he was once more called to a diplomatic station, being appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia, and charged also with a special mission to Naples, at which city he landed in July, 1816. The business of this mission was completely evaded by the artifices of the Neapolitan court, who hastened his departure by pretences, which they had no diffi

culty to lay aside when he was fairly out of Naples. He proceeded through Rome, and the other principal Italian cities, to Vienna. Some difficulty had arisen at this time with the emperor of Russia, from the arrest of Kosloff, the Russian consul general in this country, in consequence of which Mr Harris, our Chargé d'Affaires at St Petersburg, had been forbidden to appear at court; and Mr Pinkney doubted the propriety, under such circumstances, of presenting himself in Russia as the American minister. But learning at Vienna, that this affair had been arranged, he proceeded, by a long and comfortless winter journey, through Poland to St Petersburg. He remained there about two years, and returned finally to the United States in 1818. In 1820 he was elected a senator in Congress from Maryland, in which post he delivered his celebrated speech on the Missouri Question, and took part in the preliminary discussions on the Bankrupt Bill. Neither had years nor travel diminished the ardor of his professional pursuits. On the contrary, he continued them, if possible, with still greater eagerness, endeavoring, he said, to compensate for the little of life that was left him, by economizing it more.' To this feeling his anxiety to make provision for his family contributed, as much as his unquenchable love of reputation. But death surprised the champion in his vigor.

It is well known that he spared no toil in the study and management of his causes. On the seventeenth of February, 1822, he was attacked by a severe indisposition, in consequence of an effort of this sort. He had over exerted himself in the investigation and arguing of a case in the Supreme Court, in which he felt peculiar interest.

'He mentioned to a friend that he had sat up very late in the night on which he was taken ill, to read the Pirates, which was then just published, and made many remarks respecting it, drawing comparisons between the two heroines, and criticising the narrative and style with his usual confident and decided tone, and in a way which showed that his imagination had been a good deal excited by the perusal. From this period till his death he was a considerable part of the time in a state of delirium. But in his lucid intervals, his mind reverted to his favorite studies and pursuits, on which, whenever the temporary suspension of his bodily sufferings enabled him, he conversed with great freedom and animation. He seems, however, to have anticipated that his illness must have a fatal termination, and to have awaited the

event with patient fortitude. After a course of the most acute suffering he breathed his last on the night of the twentyfifth of February.' pp. 171-172.

Thus terminated the life of William Pinkney, a life so shared between public business and studious labor, that the hasty sketch which we have given, comprises nearly all its prominent incidents.

At his death he had not quite completed his fiftyeighth year, an age at which men begin to regard the termination of life, as an object not very remote. But his person was yet robust, his complexion florid, and his general appearance such, aided as it was by the studied carefulness of his toilet, as to give a strong impression of vigorous health and tenaciousness of life. The force of his faculties too, which were not only unimpaired, but seemed only then to have attained full ripeness; the brilliancy of a career in which, though so long a victor, he was every day winning fresh laurels by fresh exertions; the very keenness of his relish for these gathered fruits of his fame, and for the charms of a life eminently successful; all these, as they appeared to promise a long postponement of the common fate, rendered it more affecting to the imagination, when it thus suddenly arrived. Apparently, however, he did not himself regard the seeds of his fate as so far from their developement. His sanguine temperament, and plethoric habit of body, led him to apprehend a sudden decay of life, or, at least, of his faculties; and he has been heard to speak of the fate of the celebrated Luther Martin in this particular, as not unlikely to be his own. He was spared, however, this worst of the maladies of age. He did not linger through those melancholy displays of imbecility, which are caused by the receding tide of life, but seemed to rush to the termination of his course, as the busy torrent dashes onward to the sea.

His death produced, both in the metropolis and through the country, a deep and remarkable sensation. We call it remarkable, because it is seldom that mere professional renown, disconnected as it is from popular passion, obtains for itself, in so great a degree, this last and melancholy reward of genius. Nor can we impute it, certainly, even in the case of the remarkable individual in question, though he had rendered distinguished services at the bar, in the senate, and in diplomacy, to any fear that the business of either would suffer a pause from his death. The theatre of busy life never wants actors, and few are they, who may flatter themselves, that their exit will produce either