value: the community did not. Public sentiment favored an
American law for America. It was quickened by the unfriendly
feeling toward the mother country which became pronounced toward
the close of the eighteenth century and culminated in the War of
1812. Several of the States, New Jersey leading off, passed
statutes forbidding the citation, in the argument of causes, of
any decisions of the English courts made since the Declaration of
Independence. Under one of these Henry Clay, in 1808, was
stopped by the Supreme Court of Kentucky when reading in argument
from an opinion of Lord Ellenborough;[Footnote: Hickman _v._
Boffman, Hardin's Rep., 348, 364.] but after a few years,
legislation of this kind, while it might remain formally
unrepealed, was treated as obsolete both by court and
bar.[Footnote: Statutes of New Jersey, ed. of 1800, p. 436
(1799); Morehead and Brown, "Digest of the Statutes of Kentucky,"
I, 613 (1807).]

In courts held by unlearned judges, also, English law-books were
lightly considered. One of this kind was Chief Justice
Livermore, of New Hampshire. Shortly after the close of the
Revolution, while presiding on the bench, he stopped a lawyer who
was reading from one with the inquiry whether he thought that the
members of the court did not "understand the principles of
justice as well as the old wigged lawyers of the dark ages
did."[Footnote: "Memoir of Jeremiah Mason Mason," 29.]

But whether cited or not from their original sources, the settled
doctrines of English law were sure in the end to permeate both
bar and bench in every State.