LAW OF THE ATHENS.
----“Lawyers have more sober sense
Than t’ argue at their own expense,
But make their best advantages
Of others’ quarrels, like the Swiss;
And out of foreign controversies,
By aiding both sides, fill their purses.”--BUTLER.
WHATEVER airs the Athens may give herself in other matters, however she
may boast of her taste and her elegance, talk of her science and her
literature, or cherish the mouldering skeleton of her medical school,
no one can be a day within her precincts without discovering that the
law is her Alpha and her Omega,--the food which she eats, the raiment
she puts on, the dwelling-house which she inhabits, the conversation in
which she engages, the soul which animates her whole frame, the mind
which is discovered in every feature of her countenance, and every
attitude of her body. Once destroy that, or remove it to another place,
and the pride of the Athens would be at an end: you might lodge owls
in all her palaces, and graze cattle in all her streets.
From the way in which the Scottish courts of law are regulated,
there is hardly a suit from the Solway Firth to the Pentland, or
from Peterhead to the remotest of the Hebudæ, which does not look
toward the Athens, the moment that the litigiousness of a client, or
the machinations of an attorney, call it into existence. I hinted
already, that there is no one thing in which the Athens can now retain
a superiority except the practice of Scotch law; and, as Scotland
increases in wealth, that law is so constructed, that the portion which
the scribes and spouters of the Athens shall be enabled to levy upon
their countrymen must always increase in a greater ratio. Scotchmen are
apt to be proud of the Athens,--to regard her with a portion at least
of that admiration which subjects pay to the pomp of their kings. There
is propriety in this; for there is scarcely a stone in the walls of the
Athenian palaces, or a decent coat in her streets, which has not been
squeezed out of some litigious or unfortunate man of the provinces,
in the shape of a lawyer’s fee. I noticed the power which the crown
lawyers of Scotland have over the liberties and lives of the people;
and the power which lawyers of another class have over the fortunes of
the Scotch lairds, is every jot as ruinous and humiliating. There are
complaints in England, that when once property gets into chancery, the
“infant” becomes grey before he can enjoy it; but the Scottish chancery
is incalculably worse; for the moment that a Scotch proprietor allows
his lands to pass into the keeping of an Edinburgh agent, from that
moment he must lay his account either with losing them altogether, or
purchasing them anew; and to enumerate the heirs of Scottish families,
who are at any time pining away in heart-broken obscurity, or toiling
under the burning suns of the East or the West, in the hope of winning
back a poor fragment of the ample heritage to which they were born,
would require no trifling succession of pages.
It cannot indeed be otherwise. According to the definition of the
political economists, law is not only unproductive labour in itself,
but wherever it clutches its talons, it tears away the funds by which
more valuable labour should be supported, and distracts and lacerates
the spirit by which those funds should be applied. When a Scotchman
from the country visits the Athens, and sees a long line of costly
buildings mounting up in the air, he may rest assured, that for
every shilling that those buildings cost, and every shilling that
shall be spent in them, he and his compatriots must pay. The Athens
herself,--the overtopping and overwhelming part of the Athens,--that
part which rises by the power, and extends itself by the weight, of the
law, produces nothing whatever. It is as sterile as the Castle rock;
and, were it not for the folly of other people, its ascendency would
not be so great as it makes the Athens feel. This, however, is a matter
for the Scotch themselves; and it sometimes happens, with nations as
well as with individuals, that a deformity or a vice is praised and
cherished, while beauties and virtues are treated with neglect.
It is matter of trite remark, that very few of the seed of Jacob have
ever taken up their abode in the Athens, and that the few who have
done so, have in a short time been starved to death or to removal;
and it has sometimes been wondered why a people, who have been so
successful in pillaging the other nations of Europe, should have failed
so completely in this instance. A very slight acquaintance with the
Athenian “men of business,” as they are called, will explain the fact,
and resolve the difficulty. The man of business has all the natural
rapacity and cunning of the Jew, and he is at the same time so well
conversant with every quirk and turn of the law, that there is no
possibility of calling him to account for his depredations.
Those hounds usually pursue their game in couples. There is one who
is called “the dining partner,” whose business it is to watch for
every inexperienced or expensive man of property, who happens to be
spending a few days in the Athens, get invited to the same party with
him, ply him with flattery, and when his weak side is once discovered,
inflame his vanity upon that. Toward the close of the party, when the
wine has circulated with that abundance and rapidity which are common
in such cases, the dining partner becomes large in his professions of
friendship. The victim swallows the bait with avidity; a meeting takes
place in the kennel of the hounds next morning; and a loan of a few
thousand pounds, being upon a first security, is negotiated in a manner
which is quite fair and equitable; but the men of the law, when they go
down to “take their infeftment” over the lands, contrive to suggest so
many improvements that the supply is speedily exhausted; and, as it has
created much more appetite than it has satisfied, another and a larger
supply becomes necessary. The terms of this are a little different:
money, which was in profusion upon the first occasion, is now difficult
to be had. More than the legal interest would invalidate the security;
but matters may be so managed, as to give a bond for payment of the
interest, and repayment of the principal of fifteen thousand pounds,
while ten thousand only is advanced. The gates of ruin are now fairly
opened; loan follows after loan, till the whole value of the lands be
mortgaged, and the whole rents consumed in interest; and when matters
have come to this situation, the men of business press a sale at a time
which they know to be disadvantageous, and thus get into their own
possession property, upon the improvement of which almost the whole
of the sums advanced by them have been expended,--are, in short, much
in the same situation as if they had got a present of the lands, and
only laid out a few thousand pounds for their improvement. It is not
the object of the men of business to retain a great deal of property
in land; so they divide the lands into lots, sell them at a handsome
profit, and retain the freehold qualifications, either to promote their
own political interest, or to part with them for large sums in the
event of a disputed election,--a matter which they are often known to
bring about for this very purpose. Such are some of the blessings which
the legal men of the Athens bestow upon their country, in return for
the fees with which it has previously fattened them.
But, notwithstanding many examples of this kind, there remains among
that part of the Athenian lawyers, who go by the name of “men of
business,” no small degree, both of talent and of integrity, while,
among the “men of profession,”--the advocates, or members of the Scotch
bar, there are a few, for the reasons that were formerly stated, the
very choicest spirits, not of the Athens merely, but of all Scotland.
Though the occasions upon which these persons display their eloquence
be merely of a private nature,--though a very large proportion of them
have no eloquence to display, or no opportunity for displaying it; yet
the profession of advocate is the only one in Scotland which makes
the professor of it a gentleman; and among the people of the Athens,
of all classes, the special pleaders before the Courts of Session and
Justiciary,--the supreme civil and criminal courts of Scotland, take
a deeper hold of the public mind in the Athens, and engross a greater
share of the public attention, than the orators of St. Stephen’s do in
the British Metropolis.
One reason of this may be the way in which the different courts are
blended together, and in which business is conducted. The Court of
Session is a court of equity, as well as a court of law; and this is
extremely favourable for the pleader, as the two characters blended
together in the same oration give it a rich and popular character,
which it can never have in the stiff formality of the English courts.
Great part of the pleadings, too, are written; and this not only keeps
the inferior speakers from lowering the general tone of the bar, but
enables the more celebrated to confine themselves to such general
arguments as are best calculated for oratorical display. Another thing:
criminal trials, which are ever the most interesting to the public,
are not managed by the fag-end of the law, as at the Old Bailey; and
the counsel for the prisoner is not limited to legal exceptions in the
course of the trial, cross-questionings of witnesses, and motions in
arrest of judgment and mitigation of punishment, after the jury have
returned their verdict, and are beyond the reach of his eloquence,
however touching or powerful. In the Scotch criminal court, whether in
the Athens or at the provincial assizes, the law itself takes care that
the prisoner, whatever be his crime, shall have the aid of counsel; and
if the crime be remarkable, either from its enormity or on account of
the character or rank of the party accused, then the very first counsel
at the bar are ranged on his side. These are allowed full scope,
both to attack the form of the case _in limine_, and to throw every
suspicion upon the evidence, and make every appeal to the judgments and
passions of the jury, that ingenuity can suggest, or eloquence apply.
The official men who have the conducting of the prosecution, are not
only, generally speaking, men of much smaller abilities than those who
have the conducting of the defence, but upon political grounds, as
well as from that general aversion which men have to the sanguinary
operations of the law, the feeling of the public is opposed to them,
and in favour of their antagonists.
There was nothing, indeed, with which I ever was better pleased, or in
which I felt Old England so much inferior to her northern neighbour,
as in the conducting of criminal trials. One who is in the habit of
looking in at that great suttling-house for the gallows, the Old
Bailey,--who sees the hurried manner in which the life of a man is,
perhaps justly enough, sworn away,--who listens to the few seconds of
advice, and the few trifling questions put by the counsel to whom the
poor culprit has given the last shilling that he could beg from his
weeping relations,--who marks the anxiety of the counsel till the case
shall come to that point at which he may coldly abandon his miserable
client--the very point at which an appeal to the jury might turn the
scale,--cannot but feel, when he witnesses the slow and pathetic
solemnity of the Scotch courts, that he is among pleaders of other
powers. A case which brings even Theisseger to the bar, is one of no
common importance, and one never by any chance finds the powers of
Brougham, or the acuteness of Scarlett, come in to save a poor man from
death. But when I was in the Athens, there was only one trial for a
capital crime, and yet the legal sagacity of Moncrieff, and the burning
eloquence of Jeffrey, were exerted for full two hours, on behalf of the
prisoner; and exerted, too, in such a manner as convinced me that the
fee must have been the very least part of their inducement. I never
heard objections put with so perfect a knowledge both of the general
principles of law, or the specialities of the particular case, or
evidence so scientifically dissected, as were done by the former; and
the appeal of Jeffrey to the feelings of the jury, and even to those
of the judges, was one of the finest things I ever heard. There are
many men far more learned in the law than this celebrated Scotchman;
and many who can take a far more sweeping and comprehensive view of
a subject; but all the little sallies of which his speech consisted,
were as sharp as needles and as shining as diamonds. Their brilliancy
made you open your bosom to receive them, and their keenness was such
that they would have pierced their way in spite of you. Their effect
upon the crowded spectators, and upon the jury, was tremendous; nor
was the lord justice clerk himself, who seemed not only a very proud
and consequential person in himself, but by no means a hearty admirer
of the barrister, able to resist the influence. Whenever Jeffrey tore
away a pillar of the evidence against his client, and clenched the
advantage by an appeal to those passions which he seemed to know so
well how to touch, there was a general hum of satisfaction in the
crowd; the jurors looked up with eyes of new hope, as much as to say,
“we shall be able to acquit him yet;” and the judge relaxed a little of
the lofty severity of his countenance.
Another cause why the people of the Athens, and of Scotland generally,
set so high a value upon the Athenian advocates, may be that they are
the only class of persons among whom public speaking is so much as
known. I do not mean to say that the Scotch have no talents for this
kind of display. Quite the reverse; for instead of taciturnity, which
their supposed cautious character would lead one to set down as their
leading propensity, they are the most loquacious people,--I mean the
longest-winded people that ever I met with; having, in their common
conversation, ten times as much _badinage_ and ornament as the English,
and ten times more concatenation of ideas than the Irish.
But they have no subject to excite public speaking, and no occasion
upon which to exercise it. Elections they have none, not even so much
as a parish-meeting, or a wardmote. The only persons among them that
have the privilege of electing even their own local managers, are “the
Trades,” or little corporations of artificers, in the royal burghs,
who annually choose “deacons;” but they usually do this more by the
eloquence of liquor than of words, and as the deacons are commonly a
sort of pack-horses to the burghal corporation, they fall into most of
the sensual and senseless vulgarity which are the characteristics of
it. Churches and hospitals supported by voluntary contribution, at the
annual festivals of which the contributors may make speeches, there
are none. Indeed, unless a Scotchman were to stand on a hill-side and
address the wind, or on the sea-shore and address the waves, he has no
scope for oratory; and thus, come from what part of the country he may,
the pleadings before the courts at the Athens, are quite a novelty to
him, and he runs after and admires them as such. Thus the total absence
of all eloquence throughout the country, makes a very small portion of
it obtain distinction in the Athens.
Curious as it is to find a city where every soul is so much absorbed
by the law, that men and women, girls and boys, of all ages and all
conditions of life, season their common speech with the slang of legal
phrases, and destructive of not only all literary and liberal taste,
but of all the joyous intercourse of life, as it is to hear every
night a rehearsal of Jeffrey’s sarcasm, or Cockburn’s joke of the
morning; yet the Parliament-house of the Athens is a spirit-stirring
scene, and very delightful, compared with the gloomy desolation of
Westminster-hall.
While the courts are sitting it is usually as crowded as the Royal
Exchange at four o’clock, and the hum, and bustle, and eagerness, are
vastly more interesting than the solemn faces and demure looks of
the dealers in tallow and tapioca, who stand under the shadow of the
Grasshopper, with their jaws distended like a trap for foxes, and their
hands up to their elbows in their pockets, as if they could not abstain
from fumbling money, even when the precise minute of bargain has not
arrived.
It is true that you meet with no Rothschild, or any other pawnbroker
for kings, in this ancient apartment of the Scottish Parliament; but,
if you be more a lover of mind than of money, you are sure to meet with
what will please you a great deal better. Before the Judges have taken
their places in the Inner Courts, you cannot miss the tall figure, the
gleesome grey eye, the snub nose, and all the other characteristics
of the spirit of the wizard and the soul of the man, that mark Sir
Walter Scott. A dozen of chosen friends, some Whig and some Tory, hang
about him; and, as he limps along with wonderful vigour, considering
the irregularity of his legs, peals of laughter ring at every word
which he utters, and a score of fledgling Tory barristers, who have
not yet got either a place or a brief, stretch out their goose necks,
huddle round, and cackle at the echo of that which they cannot possibly
hear. In another place, or rather in all places, the Editor of the
Edinburgh Review starts about like wildfire; and unless it be when an
attorney ever and anon brings him up with the sheet-anchor of a fee
and a brief, there is no possibility of arresting his motion. He darts
aside like lightning, runs over the brief with such rapidity that you
would think he were merely counting the pages of an article for the
Edinburgh Review, and having handed it to his clerk, who seems as heavy
as himself is agile, he again darts into the throng, like an otter into
the waters, and is seen no more till he bring up another gudgeon.
Wherever you meet with this highly-gifted personage, you are never
at a loss to distinguish him from every body else. His writings, his
speeches, and his face, have the most remarkable family likeness that
I ever met with. All the three seem cut into little faucettes and
angles, which glitter and sparkle in every possibility of light, both
direct and oblique. In the speech and the writing, rich as is the
play of genius on the surface, it bears no proportion to the mass of
intellect which it covers and dazzles; and keen, acute, and purged of
all grossness and obesity, as is the lower part of the face, it bears
no proportion to the expansion of forehead that towers above. Jeffrey
has the most wonderful pair of eyes that ever illuminated a human
visage. Even when he is shooting along like a small but swift meteor
through the crowd in the Parliament-House, they are beaming so as to
force you to turn away your eyes, and if he looks at you, you find
yourself utterly unable to withstand it. When that look is darting for
any important purpose, such as to ascertain whether a witness be or
be not speaking the truth, it is more searching than that of Garrow
even in his best days, so that the most hardened tremble before it,
and are instantly divested of all power of concealing the truth. If,
however, you attempt to repay Jeffrey in his own coin, by working into
his mind with that sharp and anatomical glance which he employs in
dissecting the minds of other people, you find that you are woefully
mistaken. Those eyes, which can penetrate to the bottom of any other
man’s heart, and expose even that part of it which he studies with the
greatest assiduity to conceal, are a perfect sealed book to you; you
cannot see beyond their external surface, and they give you not so much
as a hint of what the owner is thinking, or what he may be disposed to
say or do next. Wonderful as the eyes are, they are perhaps exceeded
by the eyebrows, and certainly two such intellectual batteries were
never alternately masked and displayed in a manner so singular. They
range over a greater extent of surface, and twist themselves into a
more endless variety of curves than is almost possible to conceive, and
while they do so, they express all manner of thoughts, and utter all
descriptions of sentences. Few men have more eloquence in their speech
than Jeffrey, and I have met with none who had half as much in his face.
Another character in this reeling crowd, which never fails to attract
the attention of a stranger, is that of Robert Forsyth. As far as one
man can be unlike another, he is the very antipodes of Jeffery. He is
large, square, and muscular, more intended by nature, you would think,
for breaking stones on the high road, than for breaking syllogisms
before their Lordships. His face is coarse, broad and flat, and as
immovable in all its muscles as though it had been chiselled out of a
block of granite. As he moves along, he turns his head neither to the
one side nor to the other; and indeed he does not require it, for his
eyes have that divergent squint which enables him at once to scan both
sides of the horizon. The lines of labour are so ploughed across and
across every part of his ample countenance, and they give it so knotted
and so corrugated an appearance, that you can easily perceive he has
followed more occupations, and been attached to more sides of politics
than one. Still there is by no means the quiescence of a mind at ease
upon the strong picture of his visage; the lower part of it is fixed in
something between a half laugh and a half grin, and the upper part has
a firmness about it which tells you he is a through-going lawyer, whom
it will not be easy to turn from his purpose.
The throng is so great, however, and the variety of faces, gowned and
ungowned, wigged and unwigged, beaming forth every shade of mind, and
betokening every degree of mental vacuity, is so perplexing, that your
eye and your imagination are completely bewildered, and you cannot
attend either to individuals or single groups, while the buz of voices
of so many different tones and pitches give your ears the impression of
a very Babel.
Business commences; the Lords Ordinary take their seats--in places
which make them look more like as if they were standing in the pillory
than any thing else. But even there, advocates are drudging in their
vocations; agents running backwards and forwards with briefs; clients
watching the result with palpitating hearts; and the Athenian loungers
hanging about, anticipating their Lordships in the decision of the
several cases. The well-employed advocates now put you very much
in mind of shuttle-cocks. They run from bar to bar, making motions
here and speeches there, in the most chaos-looking style that can be
imagined. Of the whole gown and wig mass, it is but a small portion,
however, who are thus occupied; four-fifths of the whole keep trudging
on from end to end of the hall, and seem never to expect or even to
get a fee; while the bar clerks collected round the fire-places keep
up a continual titter at the repetition of all the good jokes of the
day; and the same scene continues day after day, and month after month.
You are astonished that a place, the real business of which is so dull
and so dry, should have charms for so many idle people; but except
this Parliament-house there is not another in-door lounge in the whole
Athens; and as the business of the courts forms the chief topic of
the evening’s conversation, many attend for the purpose of qualifying
themselves for displays upon a very different arena. It is long before
a stranger can bring himself to relish this first and most favourite
of all Athenian pleasures. I, for one, got tired of it in two or three
days, and began to be of opinion that, however much this fondness for
legal proceedings may sharpen the wits of the Athenian idlers, it is
but a sorry treat for those who have no wish either to get rich by the
acting, or wise by the suffering of the law.
When the business of the day is over, you can perceive the veteran
barristers taking council together as to where they may be joyous for
the night; and the younger legal men of all descriptions hurrying off
toward Princes Street, in order that they may show themselves to the
Athenian fair, before they retreat to drown the daily badgerings in the
nightly bowl.