The pet profession of England is the bar, and I see many reasons why
this should be the case. Our law of primogeniture necessitates the
existence of certain provisions for younger children independently of
the pittance bestowed on them by their families. The army and the navy,
the church and the bar, form then the only avenues to fortune for the
highly born; and one or other of these four roads must be adopted by him
who would carve out his own career. The barrister, for many reasons,
is the favourite--at least among those who place reliance in their
intellect. Its estimation is high. It is not incompatible but actually
favourable to the pursuits of parliament. Its rewards are manifold and
great; and while there is a sufficiency of private ease and personal
retirement in its practice, there is also enough of publicity for the
most ambitiously-minded seeker of the world's applause and the world's
admiration. Were we only to look back upon our history, we should find
perhaps that the profession of the law would include almost two-thirds
of our very greatest men. Astute thinkers, deep politicians, eloquent
debaters, profound scholars, men of wit, as well as men of wisdom, have
abounded in its ranks, and there is every reason why it should be, as I
have called it, the pet profession.
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Having conceded so much, may I now be permitted to take a nearer view of
those men so highly distinguished: and for this purpose let me turn my
reader's attention to the practice of a criminal trial. The first duty
of a good citizen, it will not be disputed, is, as far as in him lies,
to promote obedience to the law, to repress crime, and bring outrage
to punishment. No walk in life--no professional career--no uniform of
scarlet or of black--no freemasonry of craft or calling can absolve him
from this allegiance to his country. Yet, what do we see? The wretch
stained with crime--polluted with iniquity--for which, perhaps, the
statute-book contains neither name nor indictment--whose trembling
lips are eager to avow that guilt which, by confessing, he hopes may
alleviate the penalty--this man, I say, is checked in his intentions--he
is warned not, by any chance expression, to hazard a conviction of his
crime, and told in the language of the law not to criminate himself. But
the matter stops not here--justice is an inveterate gambler--she is not
satisfied when her antagonist throws his card upon the table confessing
that he has not a trump nor a trick in his hand--no, like the most
accomplished swindler of Baden or Boulogne, she assumes a smile of easy
and courteous benignity, and says, pooh, pooh! nonsense, my dear friend;
you don't know what may turn up; your cards are better than you think;
don't be faint-hearted; don't you see you have the knave of trumps,
_i. e._, the cleverest lawyer for your defender; a thousand things may
happen; I may revoke, that is, the indictment may break down; there are
innumerable chances in your favour, so pluck up your courage and play
the game out.
He takes the advice, and however faint-hearted before, he now assumes a
look of stern courage, or dogged indifference, and resolves to play for
the stake. He remembers, however, that he is no adept in the game, and
he addresses himself in consequence to some astute and subtle gambler,
to whom he commits his cards and his chances. The trepidation or the
indifference that he manifested before, now gradually gives way; and
however hopeless he had deemed his case at first, he now begins to think
that all is not lost. The very way his friend, the lawyer, shuffles and
cuts the cards, imposes on his credulity and suggests a hope. He sees
at once that he is a practised hand, and almost unconsciously he
becomes deeply interested in the changes and vacillations of the game he
believed could have presented but one aspect of fortune.
But the prisoner is not my object: I turn rather to the lawyer. Here
then do we not see the accomplished gentleman--the finished scholar--the
man of refinement and of learning, of character and station--standing
forth the very embodiment of the individual in the dock? possessed of
all his secrets--animated by the same hopes--penetrated by the same
fears--he endeavours by all the subtle ingenuity, with which craft
and habit have gifted him, to confound the testimony--to disparage
the truth--to pervert the inferences of all the witnesses. In fact,
he employs all the stratagems of his calling, all the ingenuity of
his mind, all the subtlety of his wit for the one end--that the man he
believes in his own heart guilty, may, on the oaths of twelve honest
men, be pronounced innocent. From the opening of the trial to its close,
this mental gladiator is an object of wonder and dread. Scarcely a
quality of the human mind is not exhibited by him in the brilliant
panorama of his intellect. At first, the patient perusal of a complex
and wordy indictment occupies him exclusively: he then proceeds
to cross-examine the witnesses--flattering this one--brow-beating
that--suggesting--insinuating--amplifying, or retrenching, as the
evidence would seem to favour or be adverse to his client. He is
alternately confident and doubtful, headlong and hesitating--now hurried
away on the full tide of his eloquence he expatiates in beautiful
generalities on the glorious institution of trial by jury, and
apostrophizes justice; or now, with broken utterance and plaintive
voice, he supplicates the jury to be patient, and be careful in the
decision they may come to. He implores them to remember that when
they leave that court, and return to the happy comforts of their home,
conscience will follow them, and the everlasting question crave for
answer within them--were they sure of this man's guilt? He teaches
them how fallacious are all human tests; he magnifies the slightest
discrepancy of evidence into a broad and sweeping contradiction; and
while, with a prophetic menace, he pictures forth the undying remorse
that pursues him who sheds innocent blood, he dismisses them with
an affecting picture of mental agony so great--of suffering so
heartrending, that, as they retire to the jury-room, there is not a man
of the twelve that has not more or less of a _personal_ interest in the
acquittal of the prisoner.
However bad, however depraved the human mind, it still leans to mercy:
the power to dispose of another man's life is generally sufficient for
the most malignant spirit in its thirst for vengeance. What then are the
feelings of twelve calm, and perhaps, benevolent men at a moment like
this? The last words of the advocate have thrown a new element into the
whole case, for independent of their verdict upon the prisoner comes
now the direct appeal to their own hearts. How will they feel when they
reflect on this hereafter? I do not wish to pursue this further. It
is enough for my present purpose that, by the ingenuity of the lawyer,
criminals have escaped, do escape, and are escaping, the just sentence
on their crimes. What then is the result? the advocate, who up to this
moment has maintained a familiar, even a friendly, intimacy with his
client in the dock, now shrinks from the very contamination of his look.
He cannot bear that the blood-stained fingers should grasp the hem of
his garment, and he turns with a sense of shame from the expressions of
a gratitude that criminate him in his own heart. However, this is but
a passing sensation; he divests himself of his wig and gown, and
overwhelmed with congratulations for his brilliant success, he springs
into his carriage and goes home to dress for dinner--for on that day he
is engaged to the Chancellor, the Bishop of London, or some other great
and revered functionary--the guardian of the church, or the custodian of
conscience.
Now, there is only one thing in all this I would wish to bring
strikingly before the mind of my readers, and that is, that the lawyer,
throughout the entire proceeding, was a free and a willing agent. There
was neither legal nor moral compulsion to urge him on. No; it was no
intrepid defence against the tyranny of a government or the usurpation
of power--it was the assertion of no broad and immutable principle of
truth or justice--it was simply a matter of legal acumen and persuasive
eloquence, to the amount of fifty pounds sterling.
This being admitted, let me now proceed to consider another functionary,
and observe how far the rule of right is consulted in the treatment _he_
meets with--I mean the hangman. You start, good reader, and your gesture
of impatience denotes the very proposition I would come to. I need
scarcely remind you, that in our country this individual has a kind of
prerogative of detestation. All other ranks and conditions of men may
find a sympathy, or at least a pity, somewhere, but for him there is
none. No one is sufficiently debased to be his companion,--no one so low
as to be his associate! Like a being of another sphere, he appears but
at some frightful moments of life, and then only for a few seconds. For
the rest he drags on existence unseen and unheard of, his very name a
thing to tremble at. Yet this man, in the duties of his calling, has
neither will nor choice. The stern agent of the law, he has but one
course to follow; his path, a narrow one, has no turning to the right
or to the left, and, save that his ministry is more proximate, is less
accessory to the death of the criminal than he who signs the warrant for
execution. In fact, he but answers the responses of the law, and in the
loud amen of his calling, he only consummates its recorded assertion.
How then can you reconcile yourself to the fact, that while you
overwhelm the advocate who converts right into wrong and wrong into
right, who shrouds the guilty man, and conceals the murderer, with
honour, and praise, and rank, and riches, and who does this for a brief
marked fifty pounds, yet have nothing but abhorrence and detestation for
the impassive agent whose fee is but one. One can help what he does--the
other cannot. One is an amateur--the other practices in spite of
himself. One employs every energy of his mind and every faculty of his
intellect--the other only devotes the ingenuity of his fingers. One
strains every nerve to let loose a criminal upon the world--the other
but closes the grave over guilt and crime!
The king's counsel is courted. His society sought for. He is held in
high esteem, and while his present career is a brilliant one in the
vista before him, his eyes are fixed upon the ermine. Jack Ketch, on the
other hand, is shunned. His companionship avoided, and the only futurity
he can look to, is a life of ignominy, and after it an unknown grave.
Let him be a man of fascinating manners, highly gifted, and agreeable;
let him be able to recount with the most melting pathos the anecdotes
and incidents of his professional career, throwing light upon the
history of his own period--such as none but himself could throw;--let
him speak of the various characters that have _passed through his
hands_, and so to say, “dropped off before him”--yet the prejudice
of the world is an obstacle not to be overcome; his calling is in
disrepute, and no personal efforts of his own, no individual preeminence
he may arrive at in his walk, will ever redeem it. Other men's
estimation increases as they distinguish themselves in life; each fresh
display of their abilities, each new occasion for the exercise of their
powers, is hailed with renewed favour and increasing flattery; not
so he,--every time he appears on his peculiar stage, the disgust and
detestation is but augmented,--_vires acquirit eundo_,--his countenance,
as it becomes known, is a signal for the yelling execrations of a mob,
and the very dexterity with which he performs his functions, is made
matter of loathing and horror. Were his duties such as might be carried
on in secret, he might do good by stealth and blush to find it fame; but
no, his attributes demand the noon-day and the multitude--the tragedy he
performs in, must be played before tens of thousands, by whom his
every look is scowled at, his every gesture scrutinized. But to
conclude,--this man is a necessity of our social system. We want him--we
require, him, and we can't do without him. Much of the machinery of a
trial might be dispensed with or retrenched. His office, however, has
nothing superfluous. He is part of the machinery of our civilisation,
and on what principle do we hunt him down like a wild beast to his lair?
Men of rank and title are daily to be found in association, and even
intimacy with black legs and bruisers, grooms, jockeys, and swindlers;
yet we never heard that even the Whigs paid any attention to a hangman,
nor is his name to be found even in the list of a Radical viceroy's
levee. However, we do not despair. Many prejudices of this nature have
already given way, and many absurd notions have been knocked on the head
by a wag of great Daniel's tail. And if our friend of Newgate, who is
certainly anti-union in his functions, will only cry out for Repeal, the
justice that is entreated for all Ireland may include him in the general
distribution of its favours. Poor Theodore Hook used to say, that
marriage was like hanging, there being only the difference of an
aspirate between halter and altar.
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