The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

Williams had provided himself with a set of supporters that are common enough in the courts, whose business it was to grin, and sneer, and smile, and look knowing at particular hits of the counsel, and otherwise to back up his wit, and humour, and logic, by the agency of sympathy. This expedient is getting to be quite common, and is constantly practised in suits that relate, in any manner, to politics or political men. It is not so common, certainly, in trials for life; though it may be, and has been, used with effect, even on such serious occasions. The influence of these wily demonstrations, which are made to have the appearance of public opinion, is very great on the credulous and ignorant; men thus narrowly gifted invariably looking around them to find support in the common mind.

The hits of Williams told, to Timms’s great annoyance; nor did he know exactly how to parry them. Had he been the assailant himself, he could have wielded the weapons of his antagonist with equal skill; but his dexterity was very much confined to the offensive in cases of this nature; for he perfectly comprehended all the prejudices on which it was necessary to act, while he possessed but a very narrow knowledge of the means of correcting them. Nevertheless, it would not do to let the prosecution close the business of the day with so much of the air of triumph, and the indomitable attorney made another effort to place his client more favourably before the public eye.

“The harp is a most religious instrument,” he coolly observed, “and it has no relation to the violin, or any light and frivolous piece of music. David used it as the instrument of praise, and why should not a person who stands charged——”

“I have told you, gentlemen, that all this is irregular, and cannot be permitted,” cried the judge, with a little more of the appearance of firmness than he had yet exhibited.

The truth was, that he stood less in fear of Timms than of Williams; the connection of the last with the reporters being known to be much the most extensive. But Timms knew his man, and understood very well what the committal of counsel had got to be, under the loose notions of liberty that have grown up in the country within the last twenty years. Time was, and that at no remote period, when the lawyer who had been thus treated for indecorum at the bar would have been a disgraced man, and would have appealed in vain to the community for sympathy; little or none would he have received. Men then understood that the law was their master, established by themselves, and was to be respected accordingly. But that feeling is in a great measure extinct. Liberty is every hour getting to be more and more personal; its concentration consisting in rendering every man his own legislator, his own judge, and his own juror. It is monarchical and aristocratic, and all that is vile and dangerous, to see power exercised by any but the people; those whom the constitution and the laws have set apart expressly to discharge a delegated authority being obliged, by clamours sustained by all the arts of cupidity and fraud, to defer to the passing opinions of the hour. No one knew this better than Timms, who had just as lively a recollection as his opponent that this very judge was to come before the people, in the next autumn, as a candidate for re-election. The great strain of American foresight was consequently applied to this man’s conscience, who, over-worked and under-paid, was expected to rise above the weaknesses of humanity, as a sort of sublimated political theory that is getting to be much in fashion, and which, if true, would supersede the necessity of any court or any government at all. Timms knew this well, and was not to be restrained by one who was thus stretched, as it might be, on the tenter-hooks of political uncertainty.

“Yes, your honour,” retorted this indomitable individual, “I am fully aware of its impropriety, and was just as much so when the counsel for the prosecution was carrying it on to the injury of my client; I might say almost unchecked, if not encouraged.”

“The court did its best to stop Mr. Williams, sir; and must do the same to keep you within the proper limits of practice. Unless these improprieties are restrained, I shall confine the counsel for the State to the regular officer, and assign new counsel to the accused, as from the court.”

Both Williams and Timms looked amused at this menace, neither having the smallest notion the judge dare put such a threat in execution. What! presume to curb licentiousness when it chose to assume the aspect of human rights? This was an act behind the age, more especially in a country in which liberty is so fast getting to be all means, with so very little regard to the end.

A desultory conversation ensued, when it was finally settled that the trial must be postponed until the arrival of the counsel expected from town. From the beginning of the discussion, Williams knew such must be the termination of that day’s work; but he had accomplished two great objects by his motion. In the first place, by conceding delay to the accused, it placed the prosecution on ground where a similar favour might be asked, should it be deemed expedient. This resisting of motions for delay is a common ruse of the bar, since it places the party whose rights are seemingly postponed in a situation to demand a similar concession. Williams knew that his case was ready as related to his brief, the testimony, and all that could properly be produced in court; but he thought it might be strengthened out of doors, among the jurors and the witnesses. We say, the witnesses; because even this class of men get their impressions, quite frequently, as much from what they subsequently hear, as from what they have seen and know. A good reliable witness, who relates no more than he actually knows, conceals nothing, colours nothing, and leaves a perfectly fair impression of the truth, is perhaps the rarest of all the parties concerned in the administration of justice. No one understood this better than Williams; and his agents were, at that very moment, actively employed in endeavouring to persuade certain individuals that they knew a great deal more of the facts connected with the murders, than the truth would justify. This was not done openly or directly; not in a way to alarm the consciences or pride of those who were to be duped, but by the agency of hints, and suggestions, and plausible reasonings, and all the other obvious devices, by means of which the artful and unprincipled are enabled to act on the opinions of the credulous and inexperienced.

While all these secret engines were at work in the streets of Biberry, the external machinery of justice was set in motion with the usual forms. Naked, but business-like, the blind goddess was invoked with what is termed “republican simplicity,” one of the great principles of which, in some men’s estimation, is to get the maximum of work at the minimum of cost. We are no advocates for the senseless parade and ruthless expenditure—ruthless, because extracted from the means of the poor—with which the governments of the old world have invested their dignity; and we believe that the reason of men may be confided in, in managing these matters, to a certain extent; though not to the extent that it would seem to be the fashion of the American theories, to be desirable. Wigs of all kinds, even when there is a deficiency of hair, we hold in utter detestation; and we shall maintain that no more absurd scheme of clothing the human countenance with terror was ever devised, than to clothe it with flax. Nevertheless, as comfort, decency and taste unite in recommending clothing of some sort or other, we do not see why the judicial functionary should not have his appropriate attire as well as the soldier, the sailor, or the priest. It does not necessarily follow that extravagances are to be imitated if we submit to this practice; though we incline to the opinion that a great deal of the nakedness of “republican simplicity,” which has got to be a sort of political idol in the land, has its origin in a spirit that denounces the past as a species of moral sacrifice to the present time.