I think at the end of the harangue, so impressively did Higgin deliver it, that the juror expected to hear that he was “to be hanged by the neck until he was dead.” He slunk away to his lonely gallery, and Higgin never failed to make him a special bow of recognition every time he entered the court.
The sentences given by Higgin seemed to me terrible and almost brutal, but, as a matter of fact, the class of criminal dealt with is a very difficult proposition. Parliament provides no other way of keeping him out of mischief than penal servitude. If he is constantly in and out of prison he is a source of anxiety and wretchedness to his family and a dangerous nuisance to the public. Higgin’s view was that when a man insisted on living by theft, society ought to keep him out of mischief, and, though it is a rough and perhaps cruel method of doing it, the sentimentalist would probably be better employed in instituting some kinder form of asylum for the hopeless cases than in vainly clamouring for their release from prison. There is at least as much to be said for the judge who put the Dartmoor shepherd in prison as for the statesman who let him out.
Higgin had a very considerable practice in arbitrations, both as counsel and umpire or referee. He was popularly said to have killed the arbitration system in Lancashire by the length of the arbitrations and the height of his fees.
Certainly the old days of fat arbitrations, with short hours and long lunches, did not survive into my time, though I was engaged in one or two important arbitrations which I thought were fought out with businesslike dispatch. Indeed, I think a good arbitration is the very best tribunal for a business dispute, always assuming that it is the interest of everyone connected with it to get it done at reasonable speed.
In Higgin’s day, alas! it was otherwise. I remember a good story Gully once told me of a Manchester arbitration. Two business men, brothers and partners, had very serious disputes, and agreed to dissolve partnership. Under their deeds of partnership the dispute had to go to arbitration. Arbitrators were chosen on each side and Higgin was appointed umpire. The tribunal sat at the Mitre, a favourite home of Higgin, and on the first day of the case Gully appeared for the defendant and Leresche—afterwards County Stipendiary—for the plaintiff. Neither brother had spoken to the other for many weeks, and the whole dispute was rather a painful one. About 11 o’clock Higgin arrived, and having greeted everyone with friendly but dilatory courtesy, opened a few letters which his clerk had brought, and replied to them after obtaining leave of counsel to do so.
Mine host then brought in the menu, and general consultation as to lunch took place. The hour was fixed at 1.30, the hot-pot ordered, and the brand of wine decided upon. The two brothers glared at each other during these strange proceedings with the uneasy feeling that this was to be a funeral feast and they were the corpse. To their rough Lancashire minds it had somewhat that appearance. And now it was nearing 12, and Leresche proceeded to open the case. Leresche was not a man of few words at any time, and his methods of obtaining full value out of an arbitration were expensive and peculiar. He started off by reading some
Scots deeds. They were deeds, he said, referred to in the partnership deed, and were deeds of trust and settlements and wills showing for some generations where the partnership moneys had come from. Gully protested that these were not relevant, but Higgin gravely shook his head and said he never interfered with counsel in his opening, and away sped Leresche through a bewildering maze of incomprehensible Scots law, continuing each deed to the end of its jargon, and then folding it up and placing it reverently in the middle of the table in front of Higgin. There was a leisurely and social lunch, all enjoying themselves except the two brothers, who sat silent in sulky gloom. Leresche, duly refreshed, went at the deeds again until about half-past three, when he suggested an adjournment.
“For now,” he said, putting his hand on the goodly pile before him, “I have read every deed, and, subject to what you may say, sir, and what my friend, Mr. Gully, may have to say, I really cannot, for my part, see why it should be necessary during the course of the arbitration to refer to these deeds again.”
“I cannot see how it would assist us,” said Higgin, gravely, “unless Mr. Gully——”
Gully assured him he never wanted to see or hear of the deeds again.