SKETCHES BY A LAW REPORTER.* THERE seems to be a
spell cast over every one who attempts to write about the legal profession, which prevents the production of a really good book. There are many curious points of social and antiquarian interest connected with the practice of the Law, and copious stores of traditional gossip and humorous anecdote. More- over, a real history of the English Bench and Bar, tracing the steps by which it has gradually been formed into the most peculiar of all professions, would be a valuable contribution to the social history of the country. It is assuredly not for want of a worthy theme that successive authors have failed, and we doubt much whether the profession is in general averse to publicity. Few members of it would agree with Lord Lyndhurst's remark to Lord Campbell—that he had added a new terror to death, unless indeed
* Select Biographical Sketches, from the Note-Books of a Law Reporter. By William Heath Bennet, liarrister,it•Law. London: George Roatledge and Boas. 1867.
they felt that their lives would not bear narrating by a biographer so lengthy and often so unmerciful. Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors and Chief Justices were gigantic efforts in the way of book-making ; with some unquestionable merits, they have defects at least equally conspicuous, and on the whole they do not extend the reputation which their compiler fairly earned in other fields. We not long ago had occasion to notice Mr. Jeaffreson's Book About Lawyers, a work more comprehensive in contents, more gossiping in style, and a still more barefaced specimen of book-making than the
works of the admirable Chief Justice and middling Chancellor just mentioned. We have now before us a volume which is as far below Mr. Jeaffreson's as that gentleman's is below Lord Campbell's, a volume which ought never to have seen the light, and which we ven- ture to think never would have seen it, had not the author's friends been injudicious enough to subscribe for copies. Mr. Jeaffreson is avowedly a bookmaker, and a very clever one : if he would only learn to omit matters which have no perceptible connection with his subject, he would produce books which really are amusing, instead of merely containing grains of amusement intermingled with husk. The present writer, Mr. Bennet, professes to give to the world sketches from his own note-book, which he has accumu- lated during many years of law reporting ; and such a series of sketches, by a man possessing a sense of humour, might certainly be amusing. In truth, however, this book is as mere a compilation as Mr. Jeaffreson's, for though the author professes to reproduce his memoranda relating to some of the great judges, "coupled with such information from public sources as will make the notes and the statements referred to by them cohere," yet the amount of original stuff contained in the volume is infinitesimal. Much of it is mere reprint of other persons' remarks on matters
utterly uninteresting, and the remainder consists of prosy lives of a few eminent judges, such as may be founds in any dictionary of biography, uniformly eulogistic in tone, and interspersed with
sapient common-places intended for the benefit of junior members of the Bar. The style is slipshod and often positively ungram- matical, and the very few amusing stories which have found their way into these inexpressibly dry pages have not been improved in the telling, wherever they differ from the versions given by Lord Campbell or Lord Brougham, to say nothing of Mr. Jeaffreson. Nor do we deem it desirable, as a mere matter of style, to tell the same anecdote, or propound the same moral sentiment, more than once in a book of 218 loosely printed pages.
• We must, however, do Mr. Bennet the justice to say that here and there are to be found oases in the desert, small scraps of ori- ginal matter inserted in the dreary waste of common-place, though it is quite another question what the value of these scraps may be when extracted. Of Lord Ellenborough, the first great man on his list, he has nothing new to tell, except that he himself, when lad, was left in charge of a brief in an undefended cause during the accidental absence of the counsel engaged, and that the Chief Justice, not liking to be kept waiting, made him produce the one necessary witness, and finished the cause before the counsel could be called. Concerning Sir Samuel Romilly there is one interest- ing fact related,—that while on a visit to Paris in 1802, during which he saw something of French criminal procedure, he made the following remarks in his diary :—
" After every witness was examined, an examination of the prisoner took place by the judges. This would have much shocked most Englishmen, who have very superstitious notions of the rights and priiileges of persona accused of crime. It should seem, however, that if the great object of all trials be to discover truth, to punish the guilty, and to afford security to the innocent, the examination of the accused is the most important, and an indispensable, part of every trial. I observed one objection to it, however, which is, that the judges often endeavour to show their ability, and gain the admiration of the audience, by their mode of cross-examining the prisoner. This necessarily makes them, as it were, parties, and gives them an interest to convict."
There never was a more genuine philanthropist than Sir Samuel Hominy, but his sensitive nature did not warp his judgment. He saw very clearly both the point of essential justice, and the danger of practical abuse, in the French method of examining the prisoner, and it is not much to the credit of English juris- prudence that we have not in sixty-five years made a single step in advance on this important subject.
Mr. Bennet has a personal story connected with Romilly which, if he would only have told it, would have illustrated the singular manner in which obsolete customs and procedure linger in the legal system of this country for generations after , they have disappeared from practice. We give so much (If the story as Mr. Bennet vouchsafes in his own words, and thus afford our readers a favourable specimen of his style :—
"A poor young woman of the name of Mary Ann Dix, in January, 1812, had been a prisoner in the gaol at Bristol for nearly two years. She had been originally summoned before the Episcopal Consistory Court for defaming the character of a married woman of the name of Duffey, with whom she had had a quarrel in the street. She refused to retract this aspersion on her opponent's fair fame, was pronounced to be contumacious, and was consequently sentenced to do penance in her parish church of St. Mary Radcliffe, and pay some amount of costa which her extreme poverty prevented her from doing. She was herself a pauper, and her father also, but who had managed to contribute to her maintenance in gaol from the charity of others. This sentence of pen- ance, although pronounced in general terms, her friends could never obtain from the ecclesiastical authorities how it was to be complied with, except that she was to appear in a white sheet in the church, with a burning candle in her hand, and repeat some formula prescribed by the old law. This, I believe, was the last sentence of penance ever pro- nounced in Protestant England. Still contumacious, sentence of excom- munication was publicly proclaimed against her, and she was taken into custody on the writ de excommunicato eapiendo, and had remained in gaol as before mentioned. The next step in the series of ecclesiastical censures and punishments would have been to issue the writ de heretic° comburendo, then in full force. But to have exacted the issuing of this writ, much more the carrying the exigency of it into execution, would have pushed the joke a little too far. In this dilemma, and as the Insol- vent Acts then in operation did not take cognizance of ecclesiastical cases, it was thought advisable to petition Parliament on the subject, and our friend Mr. Vowles was deputed to attend in London, and superintend the presentation of this petition. It was by him entrusted to Sir S. Romilly, who advised that it should be presented by Lord Folkestone, as a prelude to a debate upon the general abuses of the Ecclesiastical Courts in the kingdom. I attended with my father and Mr. Vowles at many of the meetings with Sir S. Romilly, in the discus- sions which took place in the lobby of the old House of Commons, and other adjacent places. He was pleased to notice me, and I was several times patted on the head encouragingly by him."
The friendly pat seems to have driven out of Mr. Bennet's head all memory of the poor young woman and her fate, for not another word is said about her.
The next dignitary on the list is Lord Eldon, concerning whom the world has heard countless stories,—of his wit, his manners, his obstinacy, his vast legal erudition. Mr. Bennet is not the man to add anything remarkable ; most of his reminiscences, which are more personal as regards Lord Eldon than in the other sections of the book, are of a very trumpery kind. One, how- ever, deserves mention, which shows how near Lord Eldon was to contributing to the list of great lawyers who have made a mess of their own private affairs :—
"In the latter part of the year 1828, I was summoned to attest the execution of his Lordship's will in the parlour of his solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was unfolded on the table, and, to my great surprise, consisted of a bundle of papers, all in his Lordship's handwriting, and extending to a considerable length. It appeared to have been composed, probably at Encombe, during the long vacation, at various times ; the writing being upon detached pieces of paper—some of it written on the backs of the sheets, in admired confusion. His Lordship, however, pro- nounced it to be his last will and testament ; and his execution of it was duly attested by tho three then necessary witnesses, myself the last. Immediately on this ceremony being completed, his solicitor, Mr. Wil- son, said, 'Now, my Lord, I will forthwith take this in to Brodie' (the eminent conveyancer, and his next-door neighbour), and let him con- sider this as instructions for a proper preparation of your Lordship's will, for this will never do.' Lord Eldon : Well, Wilson, do as you like with it, for perhaps you are right. The anxiety of it will, at any rate, be off my shoulders—and put it upon Brodie's.' This will was subse- quently settled by Mr. Brodie upon those instructions ; but was not, however, the last will which his Lordship executed."
Concerning Lords Campbell and Truro we have eighty very dull pages, enlivened by the one anecdote of two rival attorneys' clerks having had a race which should be the first to retain the latter in a cause when he was at the bar, and of the loser having proposed that they should toss up for the serjeant 1 We heard but recently of a contest for the services of a living advocate, destined perhaps to equal greatness, in which the dispute was not terminated so readily or so amicably. One-third of the life of Lord Lyndhurst, which closes the series, is taken up with some boyish letters written by him from America, which are certainly not worth publication, even in the Latin in which they were originally composed, much less in Mr. Bennet's translation. There is also a detailed account of the author's being sent to France to obtain depositions in corroboration of the statements published by O'Meara, Napoleon's medical attendant at St. Helena. The only connection of Lord Lyndhurst with the story is that he, as Solicitor-General, on seeing these documents advised the Govern- ment to discontinue criminal proceedings against O'Meara for libel on Sir Hudson Lowe, but the story itself might have been interesting if better told. We are not sure that the best things in the book are not the photographs that illustrate it, which are taken from portraits, and which at least serve to show what fashionable painters made of the faces of six, if not all of them handsome, yet certainly able and accomplished lawyers.
Previous page
