APPENDIX
Remarks of Mr. William H. Day in Presenting the portrait of
Judge Bynum. 19 February, 1898
May it Please Your Honors:
I have been requested by the Hon. Win. P. Bynum, an ex-member of this
Court, to present to you his portrait.
To me, for personal reasons, it is a pleasure; and I feel, in doing this, I
am assisting in handing down to those who shall follow us here the features of
a great jurist and a good man.
Had Judge Bynum lived during the period of our Revolution he would have
been of the few who shaped and moulded government. Living in these days
of banalities he, by his life, gives expression to the highest anticipation of
the fathers.
Strong, virile, earnest, in his manliness, in his power!
These great attributes will leave upon coming generations the impress of
this man. No influence can lfe exerted upon the life of another but by those
who have a real life of their own. All other men are imitators. Judge Bynum
is too original and sincere for this. He stands for himself: sometimes iso¬
lated, always erect. He was courageous enough, in 1S65. to wring himself
away from the baneful prejudices of 1861 — a strength vouchsafed to but few
men of those titanic days.
In her army, in her legislative halls, upon her bench, he has served North
Carolina well.
Called to this Court in 1873, he at once commanded the respect and
(1107) then the admiration of the legal profession, through it, that of our
entire people!
His dissenting opinion in the S. v. Blalock rang out upon our profession
like a tocsin in the dark; its clear tones aroused them to a full appreciation
of their rights. So true was its vibrant ring, the next succeeding Legislature
unanimously enacted it to be the law.
In S. v. Turpin (77 N. C., 473) his clear sympathetic reasoning exorcised
from our State the last ghost of common-law brutality.
In his opinion in S. v. Richmond and Danville, R. R. Co. (73 N. C., 640).
with the keen foresight of a genuine seer he foretold the result upon our
liberties of the aggregation of corporate power. Said he: “The rapid multi¬
plication of these bodies, their resources and far-reaching ambition, their
ubiquity and vast combinations, all moved and directed by concentrated power
and talent, constitute them a distinct and almost independent overshadowing
power in our Government, and, in fact, the great social and political problem
of the age. Whether they shall control governments or governments shall
control them are questions that are forcing themselves upon public attention
and fast assuming practical Importance. They should and will be maintained
in the exercise of all their essential and legitimate powers, as necessary and
useful institutions of modern civilization. But if, in addition to the dan¬
gerous power of transferring all of their property and franchises to anybody
anywhere, It should also be held that their corporate powers are eueh con¬
tracts as puts them beyond the reach of all legislative check or control, then
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