With an assiduity and a i concentration of energy which has characterized all the transactions of his life, he now gave himself up to his profession. It was not many years before he became as well known at the bar as he had before been known as a jiolitician. His business developed rapidly, and though he continued to take more or less interest in political mattei-s, they were not allowed after 1857 to interfere with his professional duties.

From that time until 1869, when he again consecrated all his jiersonal and professional energies to the reform of the municipal government of New York City, a period of about twenty years, his was nearly or quite the largest and most lucrative practice in the country conducted by any single barrister. During what may be termed the professional parts of his career he has associated his name imperishably with some of the most remarkable forensic struggles of our time.

It was, however, duringthis period of Mr. Tilden's life, in which he was devoting himself almost exclusively to his profession, that his name figures prominently in one of the most important political transactions in American history. The convention held in 1848 at Baltimore for the selection of a Presidential ticket to be supported by the Democratic party presumed to deny to the regular delegates from New York State, of whom Mr. Tilden was one, admission to their body upon equal terms with 'the delegates from other States, assigning as a reason that the convention which chose them had declared that the immunity from slavery contained in the Jeffersonian ordinance of 1787 should be applied to all the Territories of the Northwest, so long as they should remain under the government of Congress. Mr. Tilden was selected by his colleagues of the delegation to make their report to i their constituents, -- a report which helps to make the Utica Convention of June, 1848, one of the most momentous in the history of the country.