Philadelphia Lawyer

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, this is Louis Varney. I live in Ralston, Nebraska, which is the Omaha area, surrounded by Omaha.

I think it was my grandmother used to say about the little boy that kept asking his grandma questions, and finally she got tired of it, and she said, “You ask more questions than a Philadelphia lawyer.” What do you think she meant by Philadelphia lawyer?

You know, a lawyer has to ask questions and find out about cases and everything, but I just would be kind of interested how that saying originated.

Probably she picked it up from, my grandmother picked it up from somebody else.

Yeah, more than likely. It’s got an old history, Lewis. It goes back a couple hundred years at least.

There are two possible origin stories for the Philadelphia lawyer. It at least goes back to 1788, by the way, which is really interesting.

Wow.

Yeah, but it was used by somebody in London saying it about Americans, which I find really interesting.

That is. The first use was in London. People have speculated that they were referring to the long history and knowledge of Benjamin Franklin, who lived and worked in London three different times in his life. He lived there last between 1764 and 1775.

I read an article on the TV the other night about the house that Benjamin Franklin lived in when he was in London on public television.

Yeah, I believe that. So when he lived in London, the last time he was there, he fought against the Stamp Act. And if you remember, the Stamp Act imposed taxes on certain goods and services in order to pay for the military defense of the colonies.

And so apparently Benjamin Franklin was very verbose on this subject and very eloquent on this subject and did all the diplomatic things he needed to do as a representative of the U.S. Government to try to persuade the king and the British political establishment not to do this.

And ultimately, of course, we know what happened. We had a Revolutionary War and we broke away from them because they would not agree to this.

But the other possible story about who might be the Philadelphia lawyer in question is this guy by the name of Andrew Hamilton, not Alexander Hamilton, but Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia. He defended this German-American printer, somebody just printed pamphlets and newspapers, named John Peter Zenger, who would print these kind of underground documents accusing the English colonial government in New York of corruption and graft and all kinds of misdeeds.

Well, the English colonial government sued him, sued John Peter Zinger, and then Andrew Hamilton came up from Philadelphia to defend his case successfully. It is one of the earliest clear-cut cases of the idea of freedom of speech, which we now have ensconced in the Bill of Rights.

So we’re talking about a lawyer who’s very, very talented and very, very articulate. From Philadelphia, went out of his way to take the trouble to go to New York to defend this printer in order to establish these basic principles of what the Americans should be allowed to print in their newspapers.

So, Lewis, those are our two best theories right there. Thank you for calling us. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. Take care now.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So the names of that last case, just so people can Google it, because there’s a ton of really wonderful work that has been done on this. It’s John Peter Zenger and Andrew Hamilton. And just Google Zenger Hamilton case, and you’ll come up with this really interesting stuff.

And law students love this story because it predates the Bill of Rights. But it’s all about the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press that we now take for granted.

Is there a word or phrase that’s caught your ear? We’d love to hear about it. 877-929-9673 or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.