strike his mind as being utterly impossible. The commissioners, however, did not believe that such a construction of the Act was a proper interpretation of the legislative will, but construed it as requiring a Code which should embody the great fundamental principles of our jurisprudence, from whatsoever source derived, together with such legislative enactments of the State as the wants and circumstances of our people had, from to time, shown to be necessary and proper.

The Code thus construed and subsequently adopted has given to this State all the benefits derived from codification, shorn of these disadvantages which were most generally urged against codification.

It is not generally known, perhaps, that the State of Georgia was a pioneer in the matter of codification, and the distinguished ability with which the original Code was prepared, and with which the subsequent Codes have been constructed, are at once a monument to the progressiveness of the legislators of the State, and the industry and ability of her bar.

It is with pleasure that I note the fact that no lawyer of our generation has been more prominently or justly identified with codification than a member of the bar of Macon, who has served as President of the Georgia Bar Association, with distinguished credit to himself and marked advantage to that illustrious body.

If Mr. Cobb had done nothing else, his labors as a codifier would have entitled him to professional immortality, but the recollection of his professional associates now crystallizing into tradition, present him to the bar as the ideal of an almost incomparable lawyer. Profound in learning, sound in judgment, learned in that most essential of all books to the practitioner, the God-written book of human nature; lucid in statement and eloquent in speech, it would be difficult to imagine one who more nearly embodied all the elements of a great lawyer.

When it is remembered that he died at the age of forty, it is difficult to understand how one man could have accomplished so much in so short a period. One great secret of his success was his marvelous and untiring industry. We have been told by one who knew him well that if he had completed the most important labor in the preparation of a case, the writing of an opinion, or any work on which he was engaged, five minutes before his dinner hour, he would not, as is customary with the profession, regard that as a good place to quit and leave his office at once, but he would.

take up some other matter and devote that five minutes to it. Few of us appreciate the large amount of time that is lost by the daily occurring hiatus between one piece of labor completed, and another begun.

The great powers of Mr. Cobb's mind were not obscured by that inevitable grossness which follows dissipation, and the affluence of his energy was not squandered in pleasures dissolute from the very idleness which they produce. Few lawyers-alas, how few!can look back upon their professional career without recalling as much time unemployed as has been actually expended in labor. The difference between the fairly successful practitioner and the great lawyer, to our minds, lies in what one might call "the last half hour." The one, in preparation of his case, has made an extensive examination of authorities, has a general but undigested idea of the principles involved, and being reasonably satisfied that he is as well prepared as his opponent, goes smiling, and possibly a little slip-shod, into court. The other devotes the last half hour to a careful review of his propositions, a sifting of his authorities, patient thought as to the best method of presenting his ideas to the court or jury, and when he enters the temple of justice and lays his gift upon the altar, it compares with that of his less careful opponent as a chiselled statue compares with a foundry-castiron figure.

Mr. Cobb was an earnest and ambitious student from his boy、 hood. When the writer was at the University of Georgia in 1872, it was still the tradition there that Tom Cobb had never failed to make the highest possible mark in every study during every term during which he attended that institution. The force of this assertion will be best appreciated by those who have essayed to follow his example.

Mr. Cobb was a profound student of the law, and being an exceptional linguist, he prosecuted his legal studies, not only in the English and Latin tongue, but in the German and French as well. Had it not have been for his conversance with the French language, that very able portion of our Code which refers to the duties of attorneys had probably not been incorporated in that volume.

When the great issue of slavery was culminating in secession, for the first time in his life Mr. Cobb took an active interest in politics. With a nation quivering in the throes of an approaching. revolution, for the magnificent stage on which to make his politi

cal debut, with a mind stored with the study of a score of years, with brain and tongue well trained by his unrivalled practice at the bar, with a character which had been, not only above reproach, but for years held up as a model to the young of the State, enthused with patriotism, and profoundly stirred by what he deemed the oppression of his people, his first appearance in politics constitutes a chapter in the political history of Georgia, which was never equalled before, and which will probably never be repeated again. It is said by those who heard him at that time that his eloquence was absolutely electrifying, When Georgia had seceded, and the shock of battle came, Mr. Cobb laid down the pen for the sword, and the same pre-eminent ability which had characterized him everywhere, was noticed in his brief career as a soldier. A life of triumph was closed by a death of heroism upon the field of Fredericksburg.

Rarely has the bar of any State or of any country such just cause to point with pride to one of its members as the bar of Georgia finds in paying this tribute to Thomas R. R. Cobb. It is not too much to say of him that his career makes us proud, not only that we are lawyers, but also that we are men.

Your committee has in preparation a steel engraving of the distinguished subject of this sketch, taken from a portrait which his family regard as the best likeness of him that has been preserved, and stand ready to give it such publication and distribution among the Bar of the State as your honorable body may suggest.

Since our last annual meeting, death has rudely invaded our ranks and taken from us the beloved and lamented John T. Clarke. Such unworthy eulogy as might come from our pens would be only partial tribute to his high and lofty character. We, therefore, respectfuly report the memorial presented to the supreme court by a committee from its bar as an appropriate memento of his life and services, and recommend its publication in our next annual report.

Respectfully submitted.

R. W. PATTERSON, Chairman.

W. G. BRANTLEY,

A. J. CROVATT,

C. ROWELL,

H. MCWHORTER, Committee.

APPENDIX No. 12.

THE HISTORY OF THE FIRST GEORGIA CODE.

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE GEORGIA BAR ASSOCIATION
BY HON. RICHARD H. CLARK,

AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING AT AUGUSTA, MAY 15, 1890.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Association:

I have been honored by you with an invitation to write and read a paper on the history, execution and enactment of the original Code of Georgia-that called the Code of 1863, but really adopted in 1860. The discharge of my official duties as circuit judge leaves me but little time and thought combined for any other labor; and I have accepted the invitation because, knowing the errors that may creep into history, I deem it important that the facts connected with the making and enactment of the Code should be put upon record; and as I am the only survivor of the three commissioners, it is to be supposed I have more knowledge touching that subject than any living man.

Before entering upon the narrative and the comment it must suggest, I think it will be better understood by some preliminary observations upon the subject of Codes. In this connection it will be useful to begin at the very beginning and to show how the word code originated.

The Law Lexicographers tell us that "Code is from the Latin Coder and means the stock or stem of a tree-a board or tablet of wood smeared with wax, on which the ancients originally wrote;" and beginning that way, it proceeded until Code got to mean " An orderly collection, system or digest of laws; a compilation or collection of laws by public authority; and was first applied to the collection of laws made by Theodosius the Younger, but never attained eminence until the collection made by order of Justinian, which became par excellence The Code. The Theodosian Code was in the year A. D. 438, and the Justinian 533, nearly a century later, so that the Code of Justinian is the one with historical

pre-eminence. At this juncture the laws of Rome had been accumulating for fourteen centuries, and were comprised in two thousand books. Printed in law volumes, such as are now used, they would fill from 300 to 500 volumes. Commissioners were instructed to extract a series of plain and concise laws, in which there should be no two laws contradictory, or alike. Codification being completed, the Emperor decreed that no resort should be had to the earlier writings, nor any comparisons be made with them. Commentators were forbidden to disfigure the new with explanations, and lawyers were forbidden to cite the old. The imperial authority was sufficient to sink into oblivion nearly all the previously existing sources of law, but the new statutes, which the Emperor himself found it necessary to establish in order to explain, complete and amend the laws, rapidly accumulated throughout his long reign."

It will be observed that no authority was granted to the commissioners to change the laws, or make new laws with reference to present exigency, or to provide for the future. Because of this it has been said by eminent law writers that what Justinian did "was not codification, but consolidation, not remoulding but abridging." "By codification," the same writers say, "we understand to be reduction of the whole pre-existing body of laws to a new form, the restating it in a series of propositions, scientifically ordered, which may or may not contain some new substance, but are at any rate new in form. Justinian made extracts from the existing laws, preserving old words and only cutting out repetitions, removing contradictions, retrenching superfluities so as to immensely reduce the bulk of the whole. The matter was old in expression as well as in substance."

The opposites of Code, and which are in such general use as to make code almost an exception, are digests, or revised statutes. These are the statutes just as enacted, with all their errors of expression, superfluity, repetition and contradictions, arranged under their respective heads with more or less system; and there are now empires, kingdoms, and important States of this Union,. which have properly speaking no Code of laws. With many these digests, or revised statutes, are continued, not from mere neglect to make the advance, but purposely, because thought safer and wiser. Law commentators of very modern times say "the feasibility of doing this completely, or even to any great extent, must be deemed an open question, and that it has been discussed with great ability by Bentham, Savigny, Thibaut and others."