After completing his collegiate course he selected the law as his profession, and immediately commenced his studies in the office of François Xavier Martin, then a practicing lawyer in this State, but now a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana. The same diligent attention to the studies of his profession, which had distinguished his career in college, enabled him to obtain admittance to the bar in the year 1798. In that same year the late Chief Justice Taylor, who had married his sister, was elevated to the bench and gave all his business to his young friend and relative, which put him at once into full practice. This sudden accumulation of business, which would have operated to the disadvantage of a mind less active and cultivated, served only to call forth all his energies, by the necessity it occasioned of a thorough preparation to meet the great responsibility thrown upon him. He very soon acquired distinction in his profession, which steadily increased until he attained, by universal acknowledgment, the proud eminence of being at the head of the bar of this State--a pre-eminence which he never lost until he was raised by his admiring countrymen to a still more exalted station. But while he was thus pursuing, with rare success, the profits and honors of his profession, he never for a moment lost sight of the interests of his country. The very next year after he reached the age of manhood he was elected a member of the State Senate from his native county of Craven; and in 1808 he was elected a member of the House of Commons, and was chosen to preside over its deliberations. The same year he was nominated by the Federal party, to which he was attached, as Presidential Elector for the district in which he resided. The reputation which he had acquired at the bar and in the legislative halls of the State for integrity, patriotism and distinguished ability procured his election in 1813, and again in 1815, to the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States. Of the elevated stand which he took in that body it is needless for me here to speak. It is a part of the history of the country, that amidst the brilliant constellation of statesmen then seen in the councils of the American nation--a constellation illustrated by the genius and eloquence of a Lowndes, a Randolph, a Calhoun, a Webster, and a Clay, the star of Gaston was far from being the least brilliant. The admirer of parliamentary oratory will find in his speeches upon the Loan Bill and the previous question some of the finest displays of reasoning and eloquence which our country has produced.