"Comparatively I do not care a straw for the twelve men. It is not to them especially that I am anxious that you should address yourself—"
"But that will be my bounden duty, Mr. Finn."
"I can well believe, sir, that though I have myself been bred a lawyer, I may not altogether understand the nature of an advocate's duty to his client. But I would wish something more to be done than what you intimate."
"The duty of an advocate defending a prisoner is to get a verdict of acquittal if he can, and to use his own discretion in making the attempt."
"But I want something more to be attempted, even if in the struggle something less be achieved. I have known men to be so acquitted that every man in court believed them to be guilty."
"No doubt;—and such men have probably owed much to their advocates."
"It is not such a debt that I wish to owe. I know my own innocence."
"Mr. Chaffanbrass takes that for granted," said Mr. Wickerby.
"To me it is a matter of astonishment that any human being should believe me to have committed this murder. I am lost in surprise when I remember that I am here simply because I walked home from my club with a loaded stick in my pocket. The magistrate, I suppose, thought me guilty."
"He did not think about it, Mr. Finn. He went by the evidence;—the quarrel, your position in the streets at the time, the colour of the coat you wore and that of the coat worn by the man whom Lord Fawn saw in the street; the doctor's evidence as to the blows by which the man was killed; and the nature of the weapon which you carried. He put these things together, and they were enough to entitle the public to demand that a jury should decide. He didn't say you were guilty. He only said that the circumstances were sufficient to justify a trial."