Chief Justice Sewall--Mr. Hutchinson was stopped in the street by the
first lawyer in the province, Jeremiah Gridley, who assured him that
he, Mr. Hutchinson, must be Mr. Sewall's successor; and it soon appeared
that other principal lawyers, together with the surviving judge of the
Superior Court, were of the same opinion as Mr. Gridley. Although the
place was an attractive one, Mr. Hutchinson distrusted his ability to
discharge competently the duties of a Chief Justice, since he had never
had any systematic training as a lawyer. Besides, as he was aware, James
Otis, Sr., who desired the place and made no secret of the fact that he
had formerly been promised it by Governor Shirley, at once became active
in pressing his claims upon the attention of Governor Bernard. In this
solicitation he was joined by his son, James Otis, Jr. Mr. Hutchinson,
on the contrary, refrained from all solicitation, so he tells us at
least, and even warned Governor Bernard that it would perhaps be wiser
to avoid any trouble which the Otises might be disposed to make in
case they were disappointed. This line of conduct may have been only a
shrewder form of solicitation, the proof of which, to some minds, would
be that Mr. Hutchinson was in fact appointed to be Chief Justice. This
appointment was afterwards recalled as one of Mr. Hutchinson's
many offenses, although at the time it seems to have given general
satisfaction, especially to the lawyers.

The lawyers may well have been pleased, for the new Chief Justice was
a man whose outstanding abilities, even more than his place in society,
marked him for responsible position. Thomas Hutchinson possessed the
efficient mind. No one surpassed him in wide and exact knowledge, always
at command, of the history of the province, of its laws and customs, of
past and present practice in respect to the procedure of administration.
Industrious and systematic in his habits of work, conscientious in the
performance of his duties down to the last jot and tittle of the law,
he was preeminently fitted for the neat and expeditious dispatch of
official business; and his sane and trenchant mind, habituated by long
practice to the easy mastery of details, was prompt to pass upon any
practical matter, however complicated, an intelligent and just judgment.
It was doubtless thought, in an age when the law was not too highly
specialized to be understood by any but the indoctrinated, that
these traits would make him a goo