"Another instance of his intrepidity before a judge was in the Busteed case. The judge had threatened to convict him for contempt. Busteed had apologized, and Brady also, with his matchless grace and courtesy, had tendered Busteed's apology; but the judge still said that he should send him to prison. 'You will, will you?' said Brady; 'I say you will not.' And, citing authority after authority against his power to do so, he dared him to thus stretch his prerogative. The judge thought best to excuse Mr. Busteed."
Perhaps one of the best instances of his moral courage to be found was his conduct with reference to the late Edwin M. Stanton. He was associated with Mr. Stan ton in the Sickles trial, and conceived a warm personal attachment to him. Mr. Brady remained a Democrat to the last, and was an active member of Tammany Hall. Upon one occasion, during a meeting of the Tammany Committee, when the name of Stanton was received with hisses and yells of objurgation, Brady rose, and facing the crowd told them "that he knew they hated Edwin M. Stanton, but he, a Democrat, knew him, and held him in his heart of hearts." It was a bold declaration, considering the time and place, even for one so highly esteemed as James T. Brady.
As before remarked, Mr. Brady never relied upon his eloquence alone for success at the bar. He had a profound respect for his profession, and scorned its trickeries. He worked faithfully over the cases intrusted to him, studied them carefully, and never brought them to trial till he was thorough master of the law bearing upon them. This enabled him frequently to present issues which a less learned man would not have dreamed of. When he was retained as counsel for Huntington the forger, he conceived the idea that the man was morally unaccountable for his deed, and his theory of moral insanity, as developed by him in this case, is one of the most powerful arguments upon the subject to be found in any language. He read every thing he could find on the subject of insanity, and when he went into court there was not a physician in the land better informed with respect to it than he. The cases in which he was frequently engaged required an unusual acquaintance with medical jurisprudence, and he was regarded as one of the best authorities on the subject in the country.
His power over a jury was remarkable. He never lost sight of the "twelve peers," and by his dexterous management soon had them so thoroughly under the influence of his magnetic mind that they hung upon his words, followed his every act, laughed or cried as he willed, and seemed capable of thinking only as he permitted them. He defended fifty-one men for their lives in the course of his practice, and brought them all off in safety.
Mr. Clarke, from whose memoir I have already quoted, relates the following incidents in his career:
"The case of a young man charged with murder, in what was claimed to be an accidental fracas, attracted a good deal of interest. He was a Mason, and that society applied to Mr. Brady to defend him, tendering twenty-five hundred dollars as a fee; but for some cause he declined the case. Not long after, one afternoon, a neatly-dressed, modest young girl came to the office and asked for Mr. Brady. Told to walk into his private office, she timidly approached his desk, and saying, 'Mr. Brady, they are going to hang my brother, and you can save him. I've brought you this money; please don't let my brother die,' she burst into tears. It was a roll of two hundred and fifty dollars, which the poor girl had begged in sums of five and ten dollars. The kind-hearted man heard her story. 'They shall not hang your brother, my child,' said he, and putting the roll of bills in an envelope, told her to take it to her mother, and he would ask for it when he wanted it. The boy was cleared. In Mr. Brady's parlor hangs an exquisite picture, by Durand, with a letter on the back asking him to accept it as a mark of appreciation for his generous kindness in defending this poor boy. Mr. Brady prized that picture....
"Once when, in the height of his appeal to the jury, a dog began barking vigorously, he whirled around, shook his finger at the dog and said, gravely, with the quickness of thought, 'I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark!'
"An Irishman once came to his office: 'And are yez Misther Brady?' 'I am; come in, Patrick. What is it you wish?' 'I ax yer pardon; I oughtn't to intrude upon yez,' 'But what is it, Patrick?' 'Well, yer honor, it isn't for the likes o' me to be comin' troublin' yer honor.' 'But tell me what you want, Pat.' 'Well, yer honor, I came to see ye about a friend of mine as met wid an accident.' 'An accident?' said Mr. Brady; 'then why don't you go for a doctor?' 'Arrah, sure, you're the docther for my friend; he had an accident which wants yer honor.' 'Well, what was it?' 'Well, yer honor, he was arristed for a thrifle of a burglary, shure.' Quick as Mr. Brady was, with the readiness of his race, for repartee, he sometimes met his match among his own countrymen. He was once examining an unwilling witness who persistently called him Mr. O'Brady. At length, even his proverbial good nature being a little ruffled, he said to the witness: 'You need not call me Mr. O'Brady. I've mended my name since I came here and dropped the O.' 'Have ye, now? 'Pon my sowl it's a pity ye didn't mend yer manners at the same time.'"