“‘Six weeks is not long to wait for help in a matter of life and death,’ thought the eighty-pounders, the clerks who execute England.”
Most unpardonable of all are such cases as Carter,—[308]
“* * * half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they ought to modify and stigmatise until civilization shall come and correct them.”
The Bench and Bar are tempting game for those who enjoy the absurdity of legal tricks and manners. Disraeli pursues it in the Camelopard Court, in Popanilla; Dickens in Pickwick, Old Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, not to mention the Circumlocution and Prerogative Offices; Trollope in Orley Farm; and Butler in Erewhon.
Furnival, attorney for the defence, makes an eloquent and persuasive appeal in behalf of Lady Mason:[309]
“And yet as he sat down he knew that she had been guilty! * * * and knowing that, he had been able to speak as though her innocence were a thing of course. That those witnesses had spoken truth he also knew, and yet he had been able to hold them up to the execration of all around them as though they had committed the worst of crimes from the foulest of motives! And more than this, stranger than this, worse than this,—when the legal world knew—as the legal world soon did know—that all this had been so, the legal world found no fault with Mr. Furnival, conceiving that he had done his duty by his client in a manner becoming an English barrister and an English gentleman.”
Contempt for chicanery and injustice, scorn for downright oppression and exploitation, are notes often sounded. Much more rare is an expression of sympathy for aspiring but baffled mediocrity, with its converse satire for those at fault. The most striking example is given by Trollope. An introductory chapter, with a title and a refrain of Væ Victis! is devoted to this subject:[310]
“There is sympathy for the hungry man, but there is no sympathy for the unsuccessful man who is not hungry. If a fellow-mortal be ragged, humanity will subscribe to mend his clothes; but humanity will subscribe nothing to mend his ragged hopes so long as his outside coat shall be whole and decent.”
This indictment is hung on the peg of the competitive examination, a device satirized also by Peacock and Dickens, for being a pretentious failure. Trollope concludes a sarcastic exhortation to all to persevere in the mad scramble for capricious rewards, with this reflection:[311]
“There is something very painful in these races which we English are always running to one who has tenderness enough to think of the nine beaten horses instead of the one who has conquered.”