In 1816, the year of his majority, he was returned a member of the House of Commons from the town of New Bern; and whatever advantages he may have lost by his retirement from college (and they were doubtless many and important), it may well be questioned whether any of the more fortunate youths he had left behind in the classic shades of Yale were, by this time, better fitted to play a distinguished part in a deliberative assembly or a court of justice. Profiting by the instruction, the conversation, the intercourse, and the example of that accomplished gentleman, Mr. Stanly, and his compeers, Gaston, Edward Graham, Moses Mordecai, and others, whom he met at the bar or in society, but above all by his own profound study, he not only gained great attainments in the law, but (what is now I fear becoming rare), a familiar acquaintance with the classic authors of English literature, and with the arts of rhetoric and composition. He wrote and spoke our language with a readiness, force, precision, and propriety, the more remarkable because equally as conspicuous in jocose and trifling conversation (in which he freely indulged) as in public address. As a critic, whether under the inspiration of a "good or bad natured muse," he has had few peers among the judges of "English undefiled." His appearance in the Legislature was the advent of a new star above the horizon, somewhat erratic and peculiar in its orbit, but effulgent even in its irregularities, and shining with a splendor not unworthy of the oldest and greatest lights of the firmament. Tradition furnishes anecdotes of many encounters, during the session, of gladiatorial skill, in which his love of pleasantry and the _gaudia certaminis_ involved him with the late Attorney-General Drew, a son of genius and of Erin, and others, with various success: but it assures us that this, his first and last session in the General Assembly, closed with a profound impression and universal acknowledgment of his genius, culture, and high promise for the future. The Hon. Thomas Ruffin, the speaker of the House of Commons, who had been first appointed a judge of the Superior Court during this session, discovering in Mr. Badger a congenial spirit, alike emulous with himself of liberal culture and professional distinction, invited him to take his briefs and pursue the practice in Orange. The acceptance of this proposition carried him to Hillsborough as his place of residence for the next two or three years, during which, having married the daughter of Hon. James Turner, of Warren, he transferred his home to Warrenton; thence he moved to Louisburg, where he continued to reside until his retirement from the bench in 1825, when he removed to Raleigh, and there abode during the residue of his life.