Then came the law license, indulgently granted by the three Superior Court Judges--White, Overton, and Campbell--the former afterwards senator in Congress, Overton an eminent lawyer before he was a Superior Court judge, and Campbell, one of the respectable early settlers and lawyers of the State. The law license signed, practice followed, and successful--Gen. Jackson, Gen. James Robertson, Judge McNairy, Major Thomas Hardeman, and the old heads of the population giving him their support and countenance as a young man that might become useful to the State, and so deserved to be encouraged. Scarcely at the bar, and a legislative career was opened to him. He was elected to the General Assembly of the State; and, though serving but for a single session, left the impress of his mind and principles on the statute book, and on the public policy. He was the author of the Judicial Reform Act, by which the old system of Superior Courts was substituted by the circuit system, in which the administration of justice was relieved of great part of its delay, of its expense, and of much of its inconvenience to parties and witnesses. And he was the author of a humane law, giving to slaves the same full benefit of jury trial which was the right of the white man under the same accusation--a law which still remains on the statute book, but has lost its effect under the fatal outside interference which has checked the progress of Southern slave policy amelioration, and turned back the current which was setting so strongly in favor of mitigating the condition of the slave.