Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4
To the honorable the Senate and the honorable the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in General Court assembled February. 1784
Robert Treat Paine asks leave to represent, that at the Winter Sessions of the last General Court, he was induced in duty to his Family & scituation in life to present a Memorial to the honorable Legislative Body praying for an allowance to be made him adequate to his services in the office of Attorney General to January 1783: as yet nothing hath been determined on it, but he understand that the Committee have reported the sum of £1060 as a full compensation, & that this Sum however inadequate it undoubtedly is to the services he has performed, yet labours in the minds of some as being too large.
Your Memorialist relys upon it, that it will not be thought indelicate, much less irregular or unconstitutional, to represent to your Honors the state of his Case, and endeavour to satisfye you that if he is allowed in any proportion to the service he hath done for the Commonwealth a much larger Sum will be granted him.
When he put in his Memorial last year, he stated in general the duration of his Service, without any perticular observations on the nature of it, supposing it would have been taken up & considered in a very different manner from what he fears it is like to be; this makes it necessary for him in compliance with the duty he owes himself to be more perticular & to pray your Honors, to consider the Justice that is due to him in this case.
When yr. Memorialist returned from Congress the beginning of the year 1777 he immediately found himself engaged in business of the most profitable kind in the line of his Profession, and had he kept on with that attention to his own Interest which has been deemed consistent with the most honorable Whiggister, in the common course of Events he might at this day been in very easy circumstances of life as to his past earnings, & profitable ones as to his present run of business, without the disagreable Circumstance of having the worth of his business examined in public & exposed to the observations of inimical and invidious persons: but the honble. General Court at that time were pleased, undesired and even unthought of by him to appoint him to this office, always important in the nature of it and more especially so at that time, he hesitated exceedingly at the Acceptance of it; 287 when he remonstrated the damage it would be to his private Interest and his Family, he was constantly told that the importance of the Service was well known & that he need not fear being suitably rewarded: no person appeared to execute the Office; the Gentlemen of the Profession were so engaged in the profits of their business, that the Office was no object to them; and it was universally said that no person would have accepted it: yr. Memorialist cast his Eyes about and found, that the Enemies of our Cause were most industriously and craftily counterfeiting the Paper Currency of the States and circulating it as an Engine of their destruction; and that it required the same attention to suppress the Enemy that were in the midst of us, as those in the feild; for the sake of rendring service to the cause he had been engaged in from the beginning, he forsook all other veiws, & chearfully undertook the office and exerted himself to the utmost in the execution of it to the total neglect of every kind of business that stood in the way of it, altho’ he was continually told, and could but see that his Brethren were engaged in much more profitable employments; the fatigues & anxieties both of Body & mind which he suffered in prosecuting this business has been greater than he ever experienced in any other kind of business in the line of his Profession, & much beyond what can possibly be described to those who have not been engaged in such anxious & important Exertions; often have been the times when others have been at Rest has he been employ’d in Consultations & Labour in the Execution of his office: very illy would he have executed the reasonable & necessary expectations of Government, if he had considered the duties of the Office as being confined meerly to the prosecuting such offences against the safety of our Government as were brought him; with unremitting ardour in season and out of season did he search out the offence, the offender & the Evidence, and he appeals to the recollection of those good Citizens who have attended to such matters, what numbers of Plotts have been suppressed, what combination of secret Enemies & Villains have been broken up, & dispersed, & their Conspiricies defeated: during this time there was the greatest number of capital Tryals and those of the greatest importance, & also of other crimes of a most destructive nature to the existence & peace of Government that had been known for a very long time before, and for a great number of crimes that required discretion in the prosecution of them; the whole burthen of the Propriety, discretion, conduct & method of prosecution resting wholly on his own Judgment, must needs exceedingly encrease the fatigue: in private causes of any importance two Lawyers, and often more are imployed, but here your Memorialist 288 had no assistant with whom to consult, nor any right to ask the Advice of a Brother Lawyer, he could not decently desire them to refuse a fee from an accused Person when they were not employ’d by Government, nor would it have been discreet in him to consult with them about a Prosecution, whereby they might improve their discoveries to the disadvantage of Government: in prosecuting this Business it was necessary for him to attend the Supreme Court in their circuit; the Enemies of our Constitution carrying on their Plotts in the severall Counties and other Crimes encreasing with such enormity as in a great many Instances to engage the cheif time of the Court and of consequence to hinder your Memorialist from being engaged in any other business: by riding the Circuits his business at the Courts of Common Pleas was broken up, many courts being finished in the Course of his absence, & no Client being disposed to engage a Lawyer to conduct his cause whose engagements in public business will not suffer him to attend to it; your Memorialist thus scituated, has been obliged to decline and also relinquish Business of a profitable nature thro attention to his office.
Your Memorialist in order to make some representation of the business he had performed, laid before the Comttee. a calculation of what the causes prosecuted at the Supreme Court would amount to according to the fee bill, (which is a rate at which no Lawyer doth business of that kind nor doth any Client expect it), and at the same time he stated all the money he had received for bills of cost, which did not amount to more than the money expended in riding the Circuit; in this view of the matter the balance would amount to more than the Sum mentioned in the Report; but your Memorialist had no Idea that he should be allowed no more for conducting 56 capital Tryals, 14 of them for High Treason and many of them against a number of Persons in the same Indictment and also for conducting several hundred other Tryals for the greatest Crimes, no more than if he had brought Actions on notes of hand to be made up by the Fee bill; he reasonably supposed an honorable allowance would have been made him adequate to the vast importance of the business, conducted with as much attention and at as critical a time as ever business was conducted.
But beside this business which was the subject of the above Calculation, great numbers of important matters have from time to time been enquired into with great attention & Expence of nearly as much time, which thrô defect of Evidence have not been brought to veiw by Prosecutions, tho’ by means thereof offenders have been discouraged and Crimes and disturbances nipt in the bud: many have been the Applications from Government & also 289 from many officers of Government for Advice & direction which can’t well be reduced to a charge: your Memorialist has always thought it incumbent upon him in that Office to attend to all the business of Government in his department without suffering any other business to interfere; can any Person who is not a total Stranger to the affairs of Government since the year 1777, conceive that the Attorney General who faithfully attended to his office, could have any time for other business? hath it not been a Post of the utmost importance and sollicitude, ungratefull & Irksome in the Execution, & which perhaps in some instances might have been conducted in such a manner as to have saved the necessity of an Application to Government for a Reward: had your Memorialist attended to his private business in the line of his Profession, with that Attention & exertion with which he has served the Public in his Office, he certainly should have reaped a vastly greater profit than he expects from Government, and might have had the comfort of a settled run of business, which can only be acquired, by time & attention, and which your Memorialist has lost by his attention to his Office, and which is now settled in other Channels and transacted by some who were not known as Lawyers when yr. Memorialist engaged in the office: Your Memorialist wishes for nothing but Justice; and why he should not be paid according to the value of his Services as others are paid he knows not: while he has been transacting this business for Government, the unavoidable Expences of Supporting himself & his Family have amounted to above two Thousand Pounds, & if he has not earned his living by these his Exertions, he has most miserably deluded himself & injured his Family: however necessary and honorable the office is, yet is it not known how Obnoxious it is to popular opinion, & what Fortitude & Discretion it requires that the Common Safety should not suffer on the one hand, nor the peace of society be needlessly disturbed by groundless prosecutions on the other: has it not too often been necessary to prosecute against the life of Men and to load them with high charges, have not crimes of the most odious & filthy nature most necessarily been brought under public prosecution and added to the Labours of the office? is the officer who at the risque of every thing valuable in this World, has undauntedly executed an office the most perillous & obnoxious, had our Enemies overcome us, be turned off with an allowance from the Government he has thus served, that will not half Subsist him while performing the business would any Man exert himself in this manner meerly for his bread while others who have not performed one half the business in the same line of Profession are amply paid by Individuals?
If it is asked why the Expences of this office are greater than before the War; the Answer is very obvious; that the Expence is not greater than the encrease and importance of the business; in peaceable times heretofore it was not necessary for the Attorney General to ride the circuit to prosecute the numerous offences which opposed, and tended to defeat a Revolution, but by reason of peaceable & established Government he could conduct his private business without neglecting the Public, & tho’ there was no stated Salary, Grants were made from time to time; but the Criminal business of the Government since the War, has been vastly superiour in the quantity nature & importance of it, and therefore will be considered when the Recompence is in contemplation.
Your Memorialist in further answer to this Enquiry thinks it his duty to observe, that the Fee Bills of this Commonwealth are calculated to ease the Criminal of a great part of the cost of his Prosecution and throw it upon Government, when he is convicted he is sentenced to pay costs and the Attorny’s fee is by no means equal to what a client in a private suit would think the business was worth, by means whereof the States Attorney is obliged to apply to Government for his Reward or do the business for little or no pay, which can’t be expected: it may further be observed that your Memorialist is in a very disagreable scituation with regard to the length of time his Services have remained unrewarded the impressions of their magnitude & importance, however strong in the time of them, in the minds of the Public; he fears are growing faint; but he hopes that his close attention to the Interest of Government which really prevented his taking care of himself, will not, in this day of enjoying in some measure the fruit of his Labour, prove detrimental to him: the seeming largeness of the sum to which the services of a number of years amount, may be disagreable to some, when if it is compared with the services & circumstances will appear but very moderate.
Your Memorialist hopes he has not been tedious in his Observations, the importance of your Honours determination to him, he pleads as an Excuse; if any perticular difficulties arise, he wishes to be heard further, that so your Honors may be possessed of the whole of the matter to determine as in your Wisdom shall seem meet, and your Memorialist, as in duty bound shall ever wish the Prosperity of the Commonwealth.