The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

“Why, ’Squire,” said Timms, passing his hand down his chin, and trying to look simple and disinterested, “I am afraid clients like ours are often flush. I have been employed about the Tombs a good deal in my time, and I have gin’rally found that the richest clients were the biggest rogues.”

Dunscomb gave his companion a long and contemplative look. He saw that Timms did not entertain quite as favourable an opinion of Mary Monson as he did himself, or rather that he was fast getting to entertain; for his own distrust originally was scarcely less than that of this hackneyed dealer with human vices. A long, close, and stringent examination of all of Timms’s facts succeeded—facts that had been gleaned by collecting statements on the spot. Then a consultation followed, from which it might be a little premature, just now, to raise the veil.

CHAPTER IX.

“—–Her speech is nothing,

Yet the unshaped use of it doth move

The hearers to collection. They aim at it,

And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts.”

Hamlet.

The reader is not to be surprised at the intimacy which existed between Thomas Dunscomb and the half-educated semi-rude being who was associated with him as counsel in the important cause that was now soon to be tried. Such intimacies are by no means uncommon in the course of events; men often overlooking great dissimilarities in principles, as well as in personal qualities, in managing their associations, so far as they are connected with the affairs of this world. The circumstance that Timms had studied in our counsellor’s office would, as a matter of course, produce certain relations between them in after-life; but the student had made himself useful to his former master on a great variety of occasions, and was frequently employed by him whenever there was a cause depending in the courts of Duke’s, the county in which the unpolished, half-educated, but hard-working and successful county practitioner had established himself. It may be questioned if Dunscomb really knew all the agencies set in motion by his coadjutor in difficult cases; but, whether he did or not, it is quite certain that many of them were of a character not to see the light. It is very much the fashion of our good republic to turn up its nose at all other lands, a habit no doubt inherited from our great ancestors the English; and one of its standing themes of reproach are the legal corruptions and abuses known to exist in France, Spain, Italy, &c.; all over the world, in short, except among ourselves. So far as the judges are concerned, there is a surprising adherence to duty, when bribes alone are concerned, no class of men on earth being probably less obnoxious to just imputations of this character than the innumerable corps of judicial officers; unpaid, poor, hard-worked, and we might almost add unhonoured, as they are. That cases in which bribes are taken do occur, we make no doubt; it would be assuming too much in favour of human nature to infer the contrary; but, under the system of publicity that prevails, it would not be easy for this crime to extend very far without its being exposed. It is greatly to the credit of the vast judicial corps of the States, that bribery is an offence which does not appear to be even suspected at all; or, if there be exceptions to the rule, they exist in but few and isolated cases. Here, however, our eulogies on American justice must cease. All that Timms has intimated and Dunscomb has asserted concerning the juries is true; and the evil is one that each day increases. The tendency of everything belonging to the government is to throw power directly into the hands of the people, who, in nearly all cases, use it as men might be supposed to do who are perfectly irresponsible, have only a remote, and half the time an invisible interest in its exercise; who do not feel or understand the consequences of their own deeds, and have a pleasure in asserting a seeming independence, and of appearing to think and act for themselves. Under such a regime it is self-apparent that principles and law must suffer; and so the result proves daily, if not hourly. The institution of the jury, one of very questionable utility in its best aspects in a country of really popular institutions, becomes nearly intolerable, unless the courts exercise a strong and salutary influence on the discharge of its duties. This influence, unhappily, has been gradually lessening among us for the last half century, until it has reached a point where nothing is more common than to find the judge charging the law one way, and the jury determining it another. In most cases, it is true, there is a remedy for this abuse of power, but it is costly, and ever attended with that delay in hope “which maketh the heart sick.” Any one, of even the dullest apprehension, must, on a little reflection, perceive that a condition of things in which the ends of justice are defeated, or so procrastinated as to produce the results of defeat, is one of the least desirable of all those in which men can be placed under the social compact; to say nothing of its corrupting and demoralizing effects on the public mind.

All this Dunscomb saw, more vividly, perhaps, than most others of the profession, for men gradually get to be so accustomed to abuses as not only to tolerate them, but to come to consider them as evils inseparable from human frailty. It was certain, however, that while our worthy counsellor so far submitted to the force of things as frequently to close his eyes to Timms’s manœuvres, a weakness of which nearly every one is guilty who has much to do with the management of men and things, he was never known to do aught himself that was unworthy of his high standing and well-merited reputation at the bar. There is nothing unusual in this convenient compromise between direct and indirect relations with that which is wrong.