Part 18 (1/2)
The same originator of happy sayings pointed to Eldon's characteristic weakness in the lines--
”Mr. Leach made a speech, Pithy, clear, and strong; Mr. Hart, on the other part, Was prosy, dull, and long; Mr. Parker made that darker Which was dark enough without; Mr. Bell spoke so well, That the Chancellor said--'I doubt.'”
Far from being offended by this allusion to his notorious mental infirmity, Lord Eldon, shortly after the verses had floated into circulation, concluded one of his decisions by saying, with a significant smile, ”And here _the Chancellor does not doubt_.”
Not less remarkable for precipitancy than Eldon for procrastination, Sir John Leach, Vice-Chancellor, was said to have done more mischief by excessive haste in a single term than Eldon in his whole life wrought through extreme caution. The holders of this opinion delighted to repeat the poor and not perspicuous lines--
”In equity's high court there are Two sad extremes, 'tis clear; Excessive slowness strikes us there, Excessive quickness here.
”Their source, 'twixt good and evil, brings A difficulty nice; The first from Eldon's _virtue_, springs, The latter from his _vice_.”
It is needless to remark that this attempt to gloss the Chancellor's shortcomings is an ill.u.s.tration of the readiness with which censors apologize for the misdeeds of eminently fortunate offenders. Whilst Eldon's procrastination and Leach's haste were thus put in contrast, an epigram also placed the Chancellor's frailty in comparison with the tedious prolixity of the Master of the Rolls--
”To cause delay in Lincoln's Inn Two diff'rent methods tend: His lords.h.i.+p's judgments ne'er begin, His honors never end.”
A mirth-loving judge, Justice Powell, could be as thoroughly humorous in private life as he was fearless and just upon the bench. Swift describes him as a surpa.s.singly merry old gentleman, laughing heartily at all comic things, and his own droll stories more than aught else. In court he could not always refrain from jocularity. For instance, when he tried Jane Wenham for witch-craft, and she a.s.sured him that she could fly, his eye twinkled as he answered, ”Well, then you may; there is no law against flying.” When Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester--a thorough believer in what is now-a-days called spiritualism--was persecuting his acquaintance with silly stories about ghosts, Powell gave him a telling reproof for his credulity by describing a horrible apparition which was represented as having disturbed the narrator's rest on the previous night. At the hour of midnight, as the clocks were striking twelve, the judge was roused from his first slumber by a hideous sound. Starting up, he saw at the foot of his uncompanioned bed a figure--dark, gloomy, terrible, holding before its grim and repulsive visage a lamp that shed an uncertain light. ”May Heaven have mercy on us!” tremulously e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the bishop at this point of the story. The judge continued his story: ”Be calm, my lord bishop; be calm. The awful part of this mysterious interview has still to be told. Nerving myself to fas.h.i.+on the words of inquiry, I addressed the nocturnal visitor thus--'Strange being, why hast thou come at this still hour to perturb a sinful mortal?' You understand, my lord, I said this in hollow tones--in what I may almost term a sepulchral voice.” ”Ay--ay,” responded the bishop, with intense excitement; ”go on--I implore you to go on. What did _it_ answer?” ”It answered in a voice not greatly different from the voice of a human creature--'Please, sir, _I am the watchman on beat, and your street-door is open_.'” Readers will remember the use which Barham has made of this story in the Ingoldsby Legends.
As a Justice of the King's Bench, Powell had in Chief Justice Holt an a.s.sociate who could not only appreciate the wit of others, but could himself say smart things. When Lacy, the fanatic, forced his way into Holt's house in Bedford Row, the Chief Justice was equal to the occasion. ”I come to you,” said Lacy, ”a prophet from the Lord G.o.d, who has sent me to thee and would have thee grant a _nolle prosequi_ for John Atkins, his servant, whom thou hast sent to prison.” Whereto the judge answered, with proper emphasis, ”Thou art a false prophet and a lying knave. If the Lord G.o.d had sent thee, it would have been to the Attorney General, for the Lord G.o.d knows that it belongeth not to the Chief Justice, to grant a _nolle prosequi_; but I, as Chief Justice, can grant a warrant to commit thee to John Atkins's company.” Whereupon the false prophet, sharing the fate of many a true one, was forthwith clapped in prison.
Now that so much has been said of Thurlow's brutal sarcasms, justice demands for his memory an acknowledgment that he possessed a vein of genuine humor that could make itself felt without wounding. In his undergraduate days at Cambridge he is said to have worried the tutors of Caius with a series of disorderly pranks and impudent _escapades_, but on one occasion he unquestionably displayed at the university the quick wit that in after life rescued him from many an embarra.s.sing position.
”Sir,” observed a tutor, giving the unruly undergraduate a look of disapproval, ”I never come to the window without seeing you idling in the court.” ”Sir,” replied young Thurlow, imitating the don's tone, ”I never come into the court without seeing you idling at the window.”
Years later, when he had become a great man, and John Scott was paying him a.s.siduous court, Thurlow said, in ridicule of the mechanical awkwardness of many successful equity draughtsmen, ”Jack Scott, don't you think we could invent a machine to draw bills and answers in Chancery?” Having laughed at the suggestion when it was made, Scott put away the droll thought in his memory; and when he had risen to be Attorney General reminded Lord Thurlow of it under rather awkward circ.u.mstances. Macnamara, the conveyancer, being concerned as one of the princ.i.p.als in a Chancery suit, Lord Thurlow advised him to submit the answer to the bill filed against him to the Attorney General. In due course the answer came under Scott's notice, when he found it so wretchedly drawn, that he advised Macnamara to have another answer drawn by some one who understood pleading. On the same day he was engaged at the bar of the House of Lords, when Lord Thurlow came to him, and said, ”So I understand you don't think my friend Mac's answer will do?” ”Do!”
Scott replied, contemptuously. ”My Lord, it won't do at all! it must have been drawn by that wooden machine which you once told me might be invented to draw bills and answers.” ”That's very unlucky,” answered Thurlow, ”and impudent too, if you had known--_that I drew the answer myself_.”
Lord Lyndhurst used to maintain that it was one of the chief duties of a judge to render it disagreeable to counsel to talk nonsense. Jeffreys in his milder moments no doubt salved his conscience with the same doctrine, when he recalled how, after elating him with a compliment, he struck down the rising junior with ”Lord, sir! you must be cackling too.
We told you, Mr. Bradbury, your objection was very ingenious; that must not make you troublesome: you cannot lay an egg, but you must be cackling over it.” Doubtless, also, he felt it one of the chief duties of a judge to restrain attorneys from talking nonsense when--on hearing that the solicitor from whom he received his first brief had boastfully remarked, in allusion to past services, ”My Lord Chancellor! I _made_ him!”--he exclaimed, ”Well, then, I'll lay my maker by the heels,” and forthwith committed his former client and patron to the Fleet prison. If this bully of the bench actually, as he is said to have done, interrupted the venerable Maynard by saying, ”You have lost your knowledge of law; your memory, I tell you, is failing through old age,”
how must every hearer of the speech have exulted when Maynard quietly answered, ”Yes, Sir George, I have forgotten more law than you ever learned; but allow me to say, I have not forgotten much.”
On the other hand it should be remembered that Maynard was a man eminently qualified to sow violent animosities, and that he was a perpetual thorn in the flesh of the political barristers, whose principles he abhorred. A subtle and tricky man, he was constantly misleading judges by citing fict.i.tious authorities, and then smiling at their professional ignorance when they had swallowed his audacious fabrications. Moreover, the manner of his speech was sometimes as offensive as its substance was dishonest. Strafford spoke a bitter criticism not only with regard to Maynard and Glyn, but with regard to the prevailing tone of the bar, when, describing the conduct of the advocates who managed his prosecution, he said: ”Glynne and Maynard used me _like advocates_, but Palmer and Whitelock _like gentlemen_; and yet the latter left out nothing against me that was material to be urged against me.” As a Devons.h.i.+re man Maynard is one of the many cases which may be cited against the smart saying of Sergeant Davy, who used to observe: ”The further I journey toward the West, the more convinced I am that the wise men come from the East.” But shrewd, observant, liberal though he was in most respects, he was on one matter so far behind the spirit of the age that, blinded and ruled by an unwise sentiment, he gave his parliamentary support to an abortive measure ”to prevent further building in London and the neighborhood.” In support of this measure he observed, ”This building is the ruin of the gentry and ruin of religion, as leaving many good people without churches to go to.
This enlarging of London makes it filled with lacqueys and pages. In St.
Giles's parish scarce the fifth part come to church, and we shall have no religion at last.”
Whilst justice has suffered something in respect of dignity from the overbearing temper of judges to counsel, from collisions of the bench with the bar, and from the mutual hostility of rival advocates, she has at times sustained even greater injury from the jealousies and altercations of judges. Too often wearers of the ermine, sitting on the same bench, nominally for the purpose of a.s.sisting each other, have roused the laughter of the bar, and the indignation of suitors, by their petty squabbles. ”It now comes to my turn,” an Irish judge observed, when it devolved on him to support the decision of one or the other of two learned coadjutors, who had stated with more fervor than courtesy altogether irreconcilable opinions--”It now comes to my turn to declare my view of the case, and fortunately I can be brief. I agree with my brother A, from the irresistible force of my brother B's arguments.”
Extravagant as this case may appear, the King's Bench of Westminster Hall, under Mansfield and Kenyon, witnessed several not less scandalous and comical differences. Taking thorough pleasure in his work, Lord Mansfield was not less industrious than impartial in the discharge of his judicial functions; so long as there was anything for him to learn with regard to a cause, he not only sought for it with pains but with a manifest pleasure similar to that delight in judicial work which caused the French Advocate, Cottu, to say of Mr. Justice Bayley: ”Il s'amuse a juger:” but notwithstanding these good qualities, he was often culpably deficient in respect for the opinions of his subordinate coadjutors. At times a vain desire to impress on the minds of spectators that his intellect was the paramount power of the bench; at other times a personal dislike to one of his _puisnes_ caused him to derogate from the dignity of his court, in cases where he was especially careful to protect the interests of suitors. With silence more disdainful than any words could have been, he used to turn away from Mr. Justice Willes, at the moment when the latter expected his chief to ask his opinion; and on such occasions the indignant _puisne_ seldom had the prudence and nerve to conceal his mortification. ”I have not been consulted, and I will be heard!” he once shrieked forth in a paroxysm of rage caused by Mansfield's contemptuous treatment; and forty years afterwards Jeremy Bentham, who was a witness of the insult and its effect, observed: ”At this distance of time--five-and-thirty or forty years--the feminine scream issuing out of his manly frame still tingles in my ears.”
Mansfield's overbearing demeanor to his _puisnes_ was reproduced with less dignity by his successor; but Buller, the judge who wore ermine whilst he was still in his thirty-third year, and who confessed that his ”idea of heaven was to sit at Nisi Prius all day, and to play whist all night,” seized the first opportunity to give Taffy Kenyon a lesson in good manners by stating, with impressive self-possession and convincing logic, the reasons which induced him to think the judgment delivered by his chief to be altogether bad in law and argument.
[30] One of Jekyll's best displays of brilliant impudence was perpetrated on a Welsh judge, who was alike notorious for his greed of office and his want of personal cleanliness. ”My dear sir,” Jekyll observed in his most amiable manner to this most unamiable personage, ”you have asked the minister for almost everything else, why _don't_ you ask him for a piece of soap and a nail-brush?”
CHAPTER XLI.
WITS IN 'SILK' AND PUNSTERS IN 'ERMINE.'
Whilst Lord Camden held the chiefs.h.i.+p of the Common Pleas, he was walking with his friend Lord Dacre on the outskirts of an Ess.e.x village, when they pa.s.sed the parish stocks. ”I wonder,” said the Chief Justice, ”whether a man in the stocks endures a punishment that is physically painful? I am inclined to think that, apart from the sense of humiliation and other mental anguish, the prisoner suffers nothing, unless the populace express their satisfaction at his fate by pelting him with brick-bats.” ”Suppose you settle your doubts by putting your feet into the holes,” rejoined Lord Dacre, carelessly. In a trice the Chief Justice was sitting on the ground with his feet some fifteen inches above the level of his seat, and his ankles encircled by hard wood. ”Now, Dacre!” he exclaimed, enthusiastically, ”fasten the bolts, and leave me for ten minutes.” Like a courteous host Lord Dacre complied with the whim of his guest, and having placed it beyond his power to liberate himself bade him 'farewell' for ten minutes. Intending to saunter along the lane and return at the expiration of the stated period, Lord Dacre moved away, and falling into one of his customary fits of reverie, soon forgot all about the stocks, his friend's freak, and his friend. In the meantime the Chief Justice went through every torture of an agonizing punishment--acute shootings along the confined limbs, aching in the feet, angry pulsations under the toes, violent cramps in the muscles and thighs, gnawing pain at the point where his person came in immediate contact with the cold ground, pins-and-needles everywhere. Amongst the various forms of his physical discomfort, faintness, fever, giddiness, and raging thirst may be mentioned. He implored a peasant to liberate him, and the fellow answered with a shout of derision; he hailed a pa.s.sing clergyman, and explained that he was not a culprit, but Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and one of Lord Dacre's guests. ”Ah!” observed the man of cloth, not so much answering the wretched culprit as pa.s.sing judgment on his case, ”mad with liquor. Yes, drunkenness is sadly on the increase; 'tis droll, though, for a drunkard in the stocks to imagine himself a Chief Justice!” and on he pa.s.sed. A farmer's wife jogged by on her pillion, and hearing the wretched man exclaim that he should die of thirst, the good creature gave him a juicy apple, and hoped that his punishment would prove for the good of his soul. Not ten minutes, but ten hours did the Chief Justice sit in the stocks, and when at length he was carried into Lord Dacre's house, he was in no humor to laugh at his own miserable plight. Not long afterwards he presided at a trial in which a workman brought an action against a magistrate who had wrongfully placed him in the stocks. The counsel for the defence happening to laugh at the statement of the plaintiff, who maintained that he had suffered intense pain during his confinement, Lord Camden leaned forwards and inquired in a whisper, ”Brother were you ever in the stocks?” ”Never, my lord,”
answered the advocate, with a look of lively astonishment ”I have been,”
was the whispered reply; ”and let me a.s.sure you that the agony inflicted by the stocks is--_awful_!”
Of a different sort, but scarcely less intense, was the pain endured by Lord Mansfield whenever a barrister p.r.o.nounced a Latin word with a false quant.i.ty. ”My lords,” said the Scotch advocate, Crosby, at the bar of the House of Lords, ”I have the honor to appear before your lords.h.i.+ps as counsel for the Curators.” ”Ugh!” groaned the Westminster Oxford law-lord, softening his reproof by an allusion to his Scotch nationality, ”Curators, Mr. Crosby, Curators: I wish _our_ countrymen would pay a little more attention to prosody.” ”My Lord,” replied Mr.