[Illustration: 115]
Authors have long got the credit of being the most accomplished persons
going--thoroughly conversant not only with the features of every walk
and class in life, but also with their intimate sentiments, habits of
thought, and modes of expression. Now, I have long been of opinion,
that in all these respects, lawyers are infinitely their superiors. The
author chooses his characters as you choose your dish, or your wine at
dinner--he takes what suits, and leaves what is not available to his
purpose. He then fashions them to his hand--finishing off this portrait,
sketching that one--now bringing certain figures into strong light, anon
throwing them into shadow: they are his creatures, who must obey him
while living, and even die at his command. Now, the lawyer is called on
for all the narrative and descriptive powers of his art, at a moment's
notice, without time for reading or preparation; and worse than all, his
business frequently lies among the very arts and callings his taste is
most repugnant to. One day he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise
slowness through all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case--the next
he is borne along in a torrent of indignant eloquence, in defence of
some Orange processionist or some Ribbon associate: now he describes,
with the gravity of a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a
mill-stream; now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the desolate
hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted husband. In one court he
attempts to prove that the elderly gentleman whose life was insured for
a thousand at the Phoenix, was instrumental to his own decease, for not
eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows, with palpable
clearness, that being stabbed in the body, and having the head
fractured, is a venial offence, and merely the result of “political
excitement” in a high-spirited and warm-hearted people.
These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate powers, at the
hand of him who makes them; but what are they to that deep and critical
research with which he seems, instinctively, to sound the depths of
every scientific walk in life, and every learned profession. Hear him
in a lunacy case--listen to the deep and subtle distinctions he draws
between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring intellect--remark
how insignificant the physician appears in the case, who has made these
things the study of a life long--hear how the barrister confounds him
with a hail-storm of technicals--talking of the pineal gland as if it
was an officer of the court, and of atrophy of the cerebral lobes, as
if he was speaking of an attorney's clerk. Listen to him in a trial of
supposed death by poison; what a triumph he has there, particularly if
he be a junior barrister--how he walks undismayed among all the tests
for arsenic--how little he cares for Marsh's apparatus and Scheele's
discoveries--hydro-sulphates, peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides
are familiar to him as household words. You would swear that he was
nursed at a glass retort, and sipped his first milk through a blow-pipe.
Like a child who thumps the keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself
a Liszt or Moschelles, so does your barrister revel amid the phraseology
of a difficult science--pelting the witnesses with his insane blunders,
and assuring the jury that their astonishment means ignorance.
[Illustration: 117a]
Nothing in anatomy is too deep--nothing in chemistry too subtle--no
fact in botany too obscure--no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like
Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of God; and he knows
them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and the
mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have some
potent spell within them.
[Illustration: 117b]
The youth you remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening
parties, or the chaperon of tiding damsels to the Phoenix, comes forth
now a man of deep and consummate acquirement--he whose chemistry went
no further than the composition of a “tumbler of punch,” can now perform
the most difficult experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes
of failure in a test that has puzzled the scientific world for half
a century. He knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden's
affections--he can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow
will be knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint
attack of Cupid.
[Illustration: 118]
With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an indictment is
invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when the crown
prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy, what a
glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure, what
droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits
trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of life--his
age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers of ridicule
against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw themselves on
the protection of the court. And truly, if a little Latin suffice for a
priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court. A joke is a universal
blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only “an old lawyer,” loves
it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are seldom in such good
company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the bar joins in the
mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which enables them to bear
each other's dulness, and dine together afterwards. People are insane
enough to talk of absenteeism as one of the evils of Ireland, and regret
that we have no resident aristocracy among us--rather let us rejoice
that we have them not, so long as the lawyers prove their legitimate
successors.
How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little
progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite
satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all things,
feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all things--who can
throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and wrong, that they are
both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness, delightful to gaze
on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is accomplished I know
not--perhaps it is the wig.
What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read,
where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of the
brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and _vice versa_, for
the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October. It appeared
that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from stress of
weather, nearly at the same time--that the Durham, which preceded
the Prussian vessel, “clewed up her top-sails, and dropped her anchor
_rather_ suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the vessels came
in collision.” The question, therefore, was, whether the Durham came to
anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike manner; or, in other
words, whether, when the “Durham clewed up topsails, and let go her
anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up, or got stern way on her,”
&c. Nothing could possibly be more instructive, nor anything scarcely
more amusing, than the lucid arguments employed by the counsel on both
sides. The learned Thebans, that would have been sick in a ferry-boat,
spoke as if they had circumnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces,
top-gallants, clews, and capstans they hurled at each other like _bon
bons_ at a carnival; and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to
dark. Once only, when the judge “made it noon,” for a little refection,
did they cease conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly
daring, till at last so confused were the witnesses--the plaintiff,
defendant, and all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom,
before they thought of settling the differences in the Admiralty
Court. This was no common occasion for the display of these powers so
peculiarly the instinctive gift of the bar, and certainly they used it
with all the enthusiasm of a _bonne bouche_.
How I trembled for the Aurora, when an elderly gentleman, with a wart on
his nose, assured the court that the Durham had her top-sail backed ten
minutes before the anchor fell; and then, how I feared again for the
Durham, as a thin man in spectacles worked the Prussian, about in a
double-reefed mainsail, and stood round in stays so beautifully. I
thought myself at sea, so graphic was the whole description--the waves
splashed and foamed around the bulwarks, and broke in spray upon the
deck--the wind rattled amid the rigging--the bulkheads creaked, and the
good ship heaved heavily in the trough of the sea, like a mighty monster
in his agony. But my heart quailed not--I knew that Dr. Lushington was
at the helm, and Dr. Haggard had the look-out a-head--I felt that Dr.
Robinson stood by the lee braces, and Dr. Addison waited, hatchet in
hand, to cut away the mainmast. These were comforting reflections, till
I was once more enabled to believe myself in her Majesty's High Court of
Admiralty.
Alas! ye Coopers--ye Marryats--ye Charniers--ve historians of storm and
sea-fight, how inferior are your triumphs compared with the descriptive
eloquence of a law court. Who can pourtray the broken heart of blighted
affection, like Charles Phillips in a breach of promise? What was
Scott compared to Scarlett?--how inferior is Dickens to Counsellor
O'Driscoll?--here are the men, who, without the trickery of trade,
ungilt, unlettered, and unillustrated, can move the world to laughter
and to tears. They ask no aid from Colburn, nor from Cruikshank--they
need not “Brown” nor Longman. Heaven-born warriors, doctors, chemists,
and anatomists--deep in every art, learned in every science--mankind
is to them an open book, which they read at will, and con over at
leisure--happy country, where we have you in abundance, and where your
talents are so available, that they can be had for asking.
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