156 court of appeals of maryland

"Patriot", of December 6, 1859, in approving an
offer of the position of Judge of the Superior
Court of Baltimore City to Arthur W. Machen,
then thirty-two years of age, said:

Everybody remembers the astonishment which Governor
Thomas' appointment of Judge LeGrand created in this city.
Nearly the whole bar were as much opposed to him as Mr.
Webster was to Judge Story. They assembled to hear his first
decision, expecting something even worse than a failure. They
left the court room convinced of the fallacy of human judg-
ment in the absence of correct and sufficient data.²

Mr. Machen's case was not similar, for his suc-
cess as a judge could not have caused surprise;
even then he was well known as a lawyer of
unusual learning and success. He was too suc-
cessful a practitioner to accept the place. Judge
LeGrand is described as a man of prodigious
memory, and one of wide miscellaneous reading.
When, therefore, he became a candidate for the
Court of Appeals under the new constitution, he
had the seven years' experience behind him, and
the approval of the bar with it. Judge Eccleston,
on the Eastern Shore, had been an associate judge
in his district since 1832, and so came with an
abundance of experience. John Thomson Mason
and William H. Tuck had both been successful
lawyers. They were all looked upon as good men,
and as men of ability; and, generally, the bad re-
sults which could logically be predicted to follow
from the filling of judicial offices by popular elec-
tion did not at least follow at once.

Richard W. Gill, the clerk, died in 1852, less
than two months after the new judges took up
the work, and he left unfinished his last reports

2. Letters of Arthur W. Machen, Privately printed, Baltimore, 1917
218.