Even this, to me, most odious business had its advantages in after-life. I attended one morning with my uncle the Petty Sessions of Hertford, where, no doubt, I was supposed to enlarge my knowledge of sessions practice; it certainly did so, for I knew nothing, and received a lesson, which is not only my earliest recollection, but my first experience in Advocacy.
At this Hertford Petty Sessional Division the chairman was a somewhat pompous clergyman, but very devoted to his duties. He was strict in his application of the law when he knew it, but it was fortunate for some delinquents, although unfortunate for others, that he did not always possess sufficient knowledge to act independently of his clerk's opinion, while the clerk's opinion did not always depend upon his knowledge of law.
An impudent vagabond was brought up before this clergyman charged with a violent and unprovoked assault on a man in a public-house. He was said to have gone into the room where the prosecutor was, and to have taken up his jug of ale and appropriated the contents to his own use without the owner's consent. The prosecutor, annoyed at the outrage, rose, and was immediately knocked down by the interloper, and in falling cut his head.
There was to my untutored mind no defence, but the accused was a man of remarkable cunning and not a little ingenuity. He knew the magistrate well, and his special weakness, which was vanity. By his knowledge the man completely outwitted his adversary, and shifted the charge from himself on to the prosecutor's shoulders. The curious thing was he cross-examined the reverend chairman instead of the witness, which I thought a master-stroke of policy, if not advocacy.
"You know this public-house, sir?" he asked.
The reverend gentleman nodded.
"I put it to yourself, sir, as a gentleman: how would you have liked it if another man had come to your house and drunk your beer?"
There was no necessity to give an answer to this question. It answered itself. The reverend gentleman would not have liked it, and, seeing this, the accused continued,—
"Well, your honour, this here man comes and takes my beer.
"'Halloa, Jack!' I ses, 'no more o' that.'