“Sir, to you,” he said. “If that isn’t liked, I’ll propose another. If a woman is divorced from her husband, and a child is born to her before the decree is made absolute, is that child, lawfully begot, legitimate or illegitimate?”
They were glad to take this seriously. I forget what the decision was—that, given the necessary interval between the decree and its confirmation, I think, the situation was virtually impossible.
“Very well,” said the Deputy Clerk. “But perhaps one can conceive such a question rising. Let it pass, however; and answer me this, gentlemen: If one is imprisoned unjustly—that is to say, for a crime one has not committed—and, breaking out of prison, gives proof of one’s innocence, can one be indicted for prison-breaking?”
This, at least, was a fair poser, and discussion on it grew actually warm.
“Bosh!” said a fierce gentleman. “You ain’t going to justify your defiance of the law by arguing that the law is liable to make an occasional mistake—don’t tell me!”
Here a very young barrister dared the revolutionary sentiment that the law, being responsible in the first instance to itself, might be treated, if caught-stumbling in flagranti delicto, as drastically as any burglar with a pistol in his hand. He was called, almost shouted, down. The suggestion cut at the very root of jurisprudence. The law, like the king who typified it, could do no wrong; witness its time-honoured right to pardon the innocent victims of its own errors.
“It may detain and incarcerate one for being only a suspected person,” said Brindley. “That its suspicions may prove unfounded, is nothing. It must be cum privilegio, or the constitution goes. A nice thing if the Crown could be put on its defence for an error in judgment.”
“A very nice thing,” said the Deputy Clerk.
Brindley snorted at him. “Perhaps,” said he sarcastically, “the gentleman will state a case.”
The gentleman desired nothing better. I would have backed him to hold his own, anyhow; but, in this instance, I was gratified to gather from his manner that he had a real story to tell. And he had.