At twenty-five he was elected one of the commissioners of the county of Grafton and held the office for three years, being chairman of the board two years. At twenty-nine he was appointed prosecuting attorney (solicitor) for that county, and discharged its duties with marked efficiency. In 1853 he removed from Bristol to Plymouth; and from that time was engaged on one side or the other of nearly every important cause there tried by the jury. The county of Grafton was created in 1771. It was a large county and had for its shire towns Haverhill on the Connecticut and Plymouth on the Pemigewasset. It had at the outset, as it now has, a bar of exceptional character and ability. Some of the greatest forensic and legal battles of the century--like the celebrated Dartmouth College case of national reputation--were lost and won here. Over the highest court, Smith, Richardson, and Parker, a triad of illustrious chief-justices presided, followed by Gilchrist, Woods, and Perley, but little less distinguished. Here, in the olden time, Jeremiah Mason, the foremost jurist of his day, Daniel and Ezekiel Webster, the Sullivans, and their compeers, "rode the circuit" after the custom in the mother country. These great advocates, after exhaustive preparation; spoke to crowded court-rooms, the people flocking to these entertainments like men to a feast. Then oratory was in demand at the bar; but now, in its place, is required a dry summary, as terse and pointed as an auditor's statement of accounts. When Mr. Bryant became actively engaged in jury trials, the bar was not what it once was, for Livermore, Olcott,--the father-in-law of Choate,--Woodward, and others were in their graves; Woods and Wilcox were on the bench; Ira Perley had removed to Concord; and Joe Bell had left the state. But there were Goodall, with his varied experience and eventful life; Felton, active, precise and mathematical; Duncan, whose earlier efforts were regarded by competent critics as at least equal to those of his famous brother-in-law, Choate; Harry Hibbard, scholar, lawyer and statesman; that dark haired "giant of the mountains," Bingham; Bellows and Sargent, since chief-justices,--headed by their acknowledged leader, Josiah Quincy, one of the most practical, sagacious, and clear-headed men in the state. Here, too, occasionally came Perley, with combative blood, incisive speech, and immense law learning, to enter the lists with that child of genius and prince of cross-examiners and advocates, Franklin Pierce. It was no child's play for a young man to withstand the "cut and thrust" of such, and contest for supremacy with them before twelve men.