remember, was that up to now no one had paid a commission of any kind, and therefore it was very reasonable my client should have one. I was expatiating on this when West interrupted in his biting way:
“Is it a crime in Manchester to sell a public-house without paying a commission?”
“Not a crime,” I replied, “but exceedingly bad taste.”
The Manchester jury nodded approval.
After I had won the case West and I walked up Strangeways together. He never wore a greatcoat, and in the summer sported a white hat. I can see his upright figure striding along with hands behind his back and hear the comedy of indignation in his voice as he turns round to me and says, “I tell you what it is, Parry. If a Manchester man sold his soul to the devil, some fellow-citizens would sue his executors for a commission on the transaction.”
“Very likely,” I replied, “and, after all, there are several members of the Northern Circuit we could spare to go down and take the evidence.”
But one would give a wrong impression of West if one left it to be understood that he was an indifferent judge. He was most earnest and painstaking in the discharge of his duties, and though he never sought to gain popularity by sentimentalism, he was very ready if he felt he could honestly do so to extend clemency to youths and first offenders and to the weak who had fallen through temptation. The heavy sentences he gave to the “scuttlers”—gangs
of young hooligans who used to terrorise the back streets—were the subject of much comment. But they stamped out the disease, at all events temporarily, and left the ground clear for the more permanent cures of social reformers. The scuttler of the eighties finds a more wholesome outlet for his energy to-day in the boxing competitions at the lads’ club or in the battalions of the Boy Scouts. On all occasions where West had to deal with questions having a moral and social as well as a legal aspect, his judgments were always healthy in tone and liberal and enlightened in policy. I remember well in a prize-fighting prosecution how clearly and wisely he drew the distinction, difficult to define in legal language, but easily understood in the common-sense light he threw upon it, between boxing as a wholesome and desirable sport or pastime, and prize fighting as a brutal and degrading spectacle or entertainment.
In all affairs that came before him he expressed the views of a moderate, sensible English gentleman who brought sound instincts of right and wrong to bear upon his interpretations of the law. Those who knew him personally will long remember the charm of his somewhat old-world courtesy, and recall with pleasure the wealth of his reminiscences and anecdotes of early Victorian years. And now he is gone we may openly remember his charitable deeds. Harsh and stern as he was generally accounted, some of us could have told of cases where he had personally assisted the relatives of those whom in the
course of his duty he had been obliged to sentence to imprisonment. But had one written of these things in his lifetime, one would have forfeited his friendship, so careful was he to hide his good works before men and to leave his left hand in ignorance of the doings of the right. To those who knew the man as well as the judge, he will always remain an example of the aristocrat at his best.