CHARACTERS AND COMMENTARIES
For Lawyers and Others. By Theobald Mathew. (William Hodge. los. 6d.) For Lawyers and Others consists of a delightful series of essays illustrated with the author's pen and ink sketches. These depict personalities of the years during which Mr. Mathew has himself played a great part in legal life, but much of the book concerns law and lawyers in much earlier times, par- ticularly the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Then, as now, the abuses of the law were less shocking than some of its provisions. It was wrong of Lord Macclesfield to sell Chancery Masterships and wrong of the Masters to speculate with the funds in Court. But these seem minor matters compared with the fact that Lord Ferrers when on trial for his life had to put forward in person a defence of insanity (which suggests a new drawing-room game for lawyers, cross- examining in such a way as to appear not merely a booby but a lunatic). Sermonising the defendants was better fun in the old days. It is pleasant to think that Coleridge J. told Newman "that hereafter he must meet his opponents with a calm refutation of arguments and increased holiness of life," and then ordered him to "be imprisoned among the mis- demeanants of the first dass," from whOse company one hopes he derived moral benefit. Dr. Dodd was an even more unfortunate cleric : he paid up a debt-collecting prosecu- tion, and yet he was hanged, in spite Of the 'efforts of Dr. Johnson.
There is no part of the book more entertaining than the chapter on "Legal Ghosts," containing anecdotes of once famous barristers and judges, almost forgotten by the present genera- tion for, as Mr. Mathew 'says, "a legal generation is a short measure of time." Almost the same might be said of politics. The book ends with a reproduction of twa delightful if ten- dentious pamphlets on the Budget crisis of 1910, which make one realise how far we have progressed from the days when politics concerned something more interesting than the handing out of subsidies and contracts, and politicians were
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