London Souvenirs

by Charles William Heckethorn

'That's about it,' innocently replied the plaintiff.

'That's how it happened,' said counsel, turning to the jury.

And then, turning to the plaintiff again: 'And the coach-wheels passing over you broke no bones, but ruined your voice, which we all can hear is very weak; this must be a sad affliction, for you especially, because I am given to understand that you were before this accident a famous singer at free-and-easies and other convivial meetings, and made much money by your voice?'

'That's the fact,' hoarsely whispered the plaintiff.

'Very sad. I am told your voice was not only melodious, but very powerful. Perhaps,' continued counsel in the most insidiously flattering tones, 'you might give his Lordship and the jury a specimen of what your voice was before this unlucky accident.'

And the fool, entrapped by counsel's apparent sympathy and the petty vanity clinging to all singing men to show off, actually broke forth into a rollicking drinking song, which shook the walls of the building. Thereupon counsel asked for a verdict for his client the defendant, and for costs, and got the first, if not the second.

The terms barrister and counsel are often used indiscriminately; every barrister is a counsel, but not every counsel a barrister. There are barristers whose names are in everybody's mouth, and who earn their thousands a year; there are counsel unknown to the public, who never, or only under peculiar circumstances, appear at the Bar, but who are well known to the legal profession, and make more than twice as much as the barrister practising at the Bar; they are 'consulting' counsel. When you go to a joiner and tell him to make you a cabinet, he takes your order, and sets about making the piece of furniture you want; he does not say that, as such an article is not one he ever heard of in his trade, he will go and learn from someone more experienced than himself how to execute your order, and that you will have to pay for his improving himself in joinery. But if you go to your lawyer with a case which is not of the most usual description, he informs you that he must have counsel's opinion, for which you have to pay from two to five guineas, to improve your lawyer's legal knowledge. And he sends a number of questions to a 'consulting' counsel. Now, as every lawyer of any standing has in his library all the legal handbooks and reports of cases which are the consulting counsel's only guides, the lawyer might as well look up the precedents himself, but that would not be etiquette, nor so profitable all round, and so the more expensive method must be followed. The consulting counsel sits in his chambers as the soothsayers of old sat in their temples, whence, like them, he sends forth oracular utterances as obscure and ambiguous as those of the ancient mummers, and straightway solicitors and clients feel relieved of all anxiety: they have counsel's opinion and their case is as good as won. For their counsel's opinion is favourable, or, at all events, this is the interpretation they put on it, though counsel's opinion on the same case on the other side reads the very reverse. Should it so happen that on the day in which counsel has given his opinion a case should be decided in a law-court, which shows that his opinion is not worth a rap, will counsel rush off to the lawyer to tell him so? Not he; he is not going to admit that he is fallible. And he will not give his opinion on the same case twice. A lawyer's clerk having obtained such an opinion from counsel, and passing a pub, where he had agreed to meet a friend of his to settle a little betting transaction, left the opinion in the omnibus in which he had come, and did not discover his loss till it was too late to go to counsel again the same day. So he went the next day, prepared to pay out of his own pocket for another copy of the document. Counsel honestly said: 'I could not do that, my friend, for to-day I might give you an opinion totally opposed to the one I gave you yesterday, which would be awkward if the first should turn up.'

Sometimes consulting counsel will condescend to come into court to argue some disgustingly technical point about 'contingent remainders' or 'conveyancing.' On such occasions they evince unbounded contempt for the court, whose ignorance necessitates their presence. They will consume a whole day in dull and dry arguments, and send some judges to sleep, and those who remain awake after counsel's speech know less of the matter than they knew before; their brains are muddled with the legal rigmarole they have been listening to. The ecclesiastical counsel, who flourished in the days before the Probate and Divorce Courts were established, and from 'doctors' became 'counsel,' when called out into the general practice of the new system, were like so many owls suddenly brought into daylight, Sir Cresswell Cresswell so bedevilled them, and yet did it so politely that they could not complain.

Barristers had a good time of it in those old days of the Ecclesiastical Courts; the system of appeal was splendidly organized—the pettiest case could gradually be raised into one of great importance. There were courts throughout the country—royal, archiepiscopal, episcopal, decanal, sub-decanal, prebendal, rectorial, vicarial, and manorial. A case arises in any one of these courts, and the verdict being unsatisfactory to one of the parties, he appeals to the courts of the archdeacons and others, where the case is again heard, decided, and again appealed against. Poor men, who cannot go on for ever, must stop; but the party who can afford it goes to the Consistorial Court, where the whole process of hearing, deciding, and appealing is repeated. The third step is the Chancellor's Court; the fourth the Court of Arches. If the appellant still has some money left, he may go to the Privy Council—formerly to the Court of Delegates at Doctors' Commons, now abolished. This is no mere imaginary case. 'There was a case,' says Dr. Nicholls, 'in which the cause had originally commenced in the Archdeacon's Court at Totnes, and thence there had been an appeal to the Court at Exeter, thence to the Arches, and thence to the Delegates; and the whole question at issue was simply the question which of two persons had the right of hanging his hat on a particular peg. Fancy, what an army of barristers must have grown fat on this oyster!'

Success at the Bar comes to barristers in the most capricious manner. In this profession, as in many other pursuits, modest merit but slowly makes its way. Manners make the man, but impudence an advocate; without this latter quality even high connections and powerful patronage often seem ineffectual. Earl Camden, the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was called to the Bar in his twenty-fourth year, and remained a briefless barrister for nine long years, when he resolved to abandon Westminster Hall for his College Fellowship; but at the solicitation of his friend Healey, afterwards Lord Chancellor Northington, he consented once more to go the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief as his junior in an important case. His leader's illness threw the management of the case into Mr. Pratt's hands; his success was complete, and, after many years' lucrative practice, he was made Attorney-General, and three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1766 he was made Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage. The Earl of Eldon was on the point of retiring from the contest for clients, when fortune unexpectedly smiled upon him, and the records of the Bar are full of similar instances.