“Capital story, Willis, and very clever,” said my father as he finished laughing, “always supposing Holker didn’t want to get any admissions out of the fellow afterwards.”
It is a pleasant and fairly easy thing for an advocate to score off a witness, but it does not always mean business, and nothing is nearer to the gospel of the matter than this, that every unnecessary question in cross-examination is a blunder and every question the answer to which you have not foreseen is unnecessary.
Affairs of conscience at the Bar and the duty of the advocate were often discussed between my father and his legal friends, and in the late seventies, when I was at King’s College School, I heard many interesting conversations on these themes.
As an illustration of his argument someone told a story of an old special pleader whose name I forget. Special pleaders, I may remind the reader, did not address the Court, but drafted the “pleadings,” as they are called—that is to say, the documents in which the parties state their respective cases and endeavour to settle the issue. In the old days these pleas were very technical, and special pleaders who signed and settled the claim, defence, rejoinder, sur-rejoinder, rebutter and sur-rebutter made good incomes out of constant but small fees.
The Pleader was in his chambers in King’s Bench Walk, when late one night a young Hebrew clerk of a firm of City solicitors rushed in, and throwing down half a guinea and some papers said, “I vant a plea.”
“But what sort of a plea—what is the defence?” asked the Pleader.
“There is no defence,” said the candid clerk, “but
the governor says he vould like a set-off. He vants to gain time.”
“Hm!” said the Pleader, “a merely dilatory plea to gain time. I don’t approve of such a thing; but still----”
He drew out his “Bullen and Leake” and copied out the first plea he came to, which was to the effect that by agreement made by and between the plaintiff and defendant, the defendant bargained and sold to the plaintiff certain Russian hemp, to arrive by and be delivered by the ship Sarcophagus, at the price of £15 per ton, and after further formalities the defendant sought to set-off the price of this Russian hemp against the plaintiff’s claim. This he handed to the boy, who took it away.