What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

And well it is that it has been so, for otherwise we should never have met Cousin Shallow—​Robert Shallow, Esquire—“In the county of Gloster, justice of peace and coram. Ay, cousin Slender and cust-alorum. Ay, and rato-lorum too.” And these allusions to-day only tickle the fancy of the antiquarians. But on their own first night every playgoer must have known the difference between a mere justice, and one of the quorum, and knew too, that the Custos Rotulorum was the principal civil officer of the county. I wager the play opened with a roar when Shallow stamped himself on his entrance as an absurd boaster who did not even know the titles of the dignities he claimed to have held. One can forgive Fielding his laughable account of Squire Western and his justiceship, which “was indeed a syllable more than justice,” for Fielding was a stipendiary magistrate, and I never met a stipendiary who had not a low opinion of the lay justices, the reason being, I suppose, as Montaigne tells us, that “few men are admired by their servants.” Dickens was a reporter, and no doubt had come across the actual justice of the peace who sat for the portrait of Mr. Nupkins, but I think he would have agreed that Sam Weller’s judgment that “there ain’t a magistrate goin’ as don’t commit himself

twice as often as he commits other people” is to be taken in a Pickwickian sense. Lay justices no doubt do commit themselves individually, but is this not true even of justices of the King’s Bench Division? For instance:—​But forbear! Who am I that I should suddenly become presumptuous and self-willed and begin to speak evil of dignitaries.

And looking back quite honestly at the work done by justices at quarter and petty sessions, I think the outcry that arises over individual instances of mistake, though good as a tonic for the bench, is not a fair thing if it is the only comment that fellow citizens have to offer to the wide amount of useful and honourable work that is done by the lay magistracy.

But as a beginner at the Bar, I did not go to quarter sessions to study the interesting social problem of the value of a lay magistracy, but because it was in these courts I first attained not only the right of audience, but the thing itself. There were many sessions to attend, the most important being the sessions of the county holden at Lancaster, Preston, Salford and Kirkdale. Then there were the city sessions for Manchester and Liverpool, and borough sessions at Wigan and Bolton, the last-named being genially presided over by that good friend of the circuit, Sam Pope, Q.C. Even if you had no work when you got there, the jaunt into new surroundings and the social meeting when you arrived, and the feeling that after all you had a place in the pageant of some kind, was a pleasant relief

from the dreariness of sitting in chambers. I suppose the racehorse who walks in after the race is over prefers being out on the heath to standing in his stall all day, and so it is with a junior barrister at quarter sessions. It is good to be in the race at all. And then as now, and I suppose as always, there was the same moaning about the want of work and the overcrowded state of the profession. But in the nature of things a profession, to be worth anything at all, must be overcrowded, the struggle for existence must be strenuously fought, many must be called and few chosen or a high standard of work will never be maintained.

There is no doubt at all that the most difficult thing to do at the Bar is to begin. For years you go round the links without a golf ball, as it were, unless you have the luck to pick one up somewhere. Gilbert’s classical receipt, namely, to fall in love with the rich attorney’s elderly, ugly daughter, is scarcely available to the married man.

I remember a disappointed cynic on the Northern Circuit, watching a third-rate encounter between two barristers of different religions, saying to me: “Parry, if I had my time over again I should start the Bar as a Jew or a Roman Catholic.” And certainly if you look among the list of those who have done well in the profession the members of these bodies are not unnumbered among the upper dogs.

Another way to success is to start with plenty of money. As Falkner Blair said of a wealthy young junior, who was keen about getting work, “What a

pleasant thing it would be to have £5,000 a year to buy briefs with—​only why not buy something jollier?”

But money and friendly solicitors are not alone sufficient. Indeed, I have known men who were injured at the opening of their career by having briefs thrust at them which they were not equipped to deal with. Many of us, however, would have taken that risk willingly, no doubt.