JOSEPH H. CHOATE

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 6, 9 January 1899, Page 5

JOSEPH H. CHOATE

AMERICAN AMB ASSADOR

A Washington cable published on Saturday stated that Joseph 11. Choate had been appointed American Ambassador in London. It is a remarkable fact, says the 'Commercial Advertiser' of New York, That a man of. Mr Choate's eminent qualifications for high official place should have held but two public positions, one as a member of the commission to prepare amendments to the constitution, and the other as president of the constitutional convention of 1594. His fame lias been made as a lawyer, and at the bar he stands peerless, as versatile in his gifts as he is potent in the exercise of any one of them—equally the leader, whether he essays his powers in the cross-examination of a reluctant witness, addresses a jury with persuasive argument and magnetic good humour, pierces the armour of an opponent with the barbed shafts of his irony, or expounds grave legal and constitutional questions with learning, acumen and force. He has been tbe leading counsel in many of the most important cases tried in tbe Supreme Court of New York, as well as those argued in the Court of Appeals, and, of late years, has been frequently engaged in arguments before the' United States Supreme Court, the most notable, perhaps, of the last being his able aud exhaustive plea against the constitutionality of the income tax ordained by the Fifty-third Congress. '.Mr Choate, now in bis sixty-sixth year, may be said to be at tbe very zenith of his powers. Hie, Republicanism is of that enlightened type which derives its essence from his innate sympathy with the underlying principles upon which the party is based, rather than from any merely external affiliations. While his voice has usually been beard in the support of tbe pa'rtv he has been frank to point out what he considered its errors.