The Modern Athens 21

The Modern Athens 21

Those hounds usually pursue their game in couples. There is one who

is called “the dining partner,” whose business it is to watch for

every inexperienced or expensive man of property, who happens to be

spending a few days in the Athens, get invited to the same party with

him, ply him with flattery, and when his weak side is once discovered,

inflame his vanity upon that. Toward the close of the party, when the

wine has circulated with that abundance and rapidity which are common

in such cases, the dining partner becomes large in his professions of

friendship. The victim swallows the bait with avidity; a meeting takes

place in the kennel of the hounds next morning; and a loan of a few

thousand pounds, being upon a first security, is negotiated in a manner

which is quite fair and equitable; but the men of the law, when they go

down to “take their infeftment” over the lands, contrive to suggest so

many improvements that the supply is speedily exhausted; and, as it has

created much more appetite than it has satisfied, another and a larger

supply becomes necessary. The terms of this are a little different:

money, which was in profusion upon the first occasion, is now difficult

to be had. More than the legal interest would invalidate the security;

but matters may be so managed, as to give a bond for payment of the

interest, and repayment of the principal of fifteen thousand pounds,

while ten thousand only is advanced. The gates of ruin are now fairly

opened; loan follows after loan, till the whole value of the lands be

mortgaged, and the whole rents consumed in interest; and when matters

have come to this situation, the men of business press a sale at a time

which they know to be disadvantageous, and thus get into their own

possession property, upon the improvement of which almost the whole

of the sums advanced by them have been expended,--are, in short, much

in the same situation as if they had got a present of the lands, and

only laid out a few thousand pounds for their improvement. It is not

the object of the men of business to retain a great deal of property

in land; so they divide the lands into lots, sell them at a handsome

profit, and retain the freehold qualifications, either to promote their

own political interest, or to part with them for large sums in the

event of a disputed election,--a matter which they are often known to

bring about for this very purpose. Such are some of the blessings which

the legal men of the Athens bestow upon their country, in return for

the fees with which it has previously fattened them.

 

But, notwithstanding many examples of this kind, there remains among

that part of the Athenian lawyers, who go by the name of “men of

business,” no small degree, both of talent and of integrity, while,

among the “men of profession,”--the advocates, or members of the Scotch

bar, there are a few, for the reasons that were formerly stated, the

very choicest spirits, not of the Athens merely, but of all Scotland.

Though the occasions upon which these persons display their eloquence

be merely of a private nature,--though a very large proportion of them

have no eloquence to display, or no opportunity for displaying it; yet

the profession of advocate is the only one in Scotland which makes

the professor of it a gentleman; and among the people of the Athens,

of all classes, the special pleaders before the Courts of Session and

Justiciary,--the supreme civil and criminal courts of Scotland, take

a deeper hold of the public mind in the Athens, and engross a greater

share of the public attention, than the orators of St. Stephen’s do in

the British Metropolis.

 

One reason of this may be the way in which the different courts are

blended together, and in which business is conducted. The Court of

Session is a court of equity, as well as a court of law; and this is

extremely favourable for the pleader, as the two characters blended

together in the same oration give it a rich and popular character,

which it can never have in the stiff formality of the English courts.

Great part of the pleadings, too, are written; and this not only keeps

the inferior speakers from lowering the general tone of the bar, but

enables the more celebrated to confine themselves to such general

arguments as are best calculated for oratorical display. Another thing:

criminal trials, which are ever the most interesting to the public,

are not managed by the fag-end of the law, as at the Old Bailey; and

the counsel for the prisoner is not limited to legal exceptions in the

course of the trial, cross-questionings of witnesses, and motions in

arrest of judgment and mitigation of punishment, after the jury have

returned their verdict, and are beyond the reach of his eloquence,

however touching or powerful. In the Scotch criminal court, whether in

the Athens or at the provincial assizes, the law itself takes care that

the prisoner, whatever be his crime, shall have the aid of counsel; and

if the crime be remarkable, either from its enormity or on account of

the character or rank of the party accused, then the very first counsel

at the bar are ranged on his side. These are allowed full scope,

both to attack the form of the case _in limine_, and to throw every

suspicion upon the evidence, and make every appeal to the judgments and

passions of the jury, that ingenuity can suggest, or eloquence apply.

The official men who have the conducting of the prosecution, are not

only, generally speaking, men of much smaller abilities than those who

have the conducting of the defence, but upon political grounds, as

well as from that general aversion which men have to the sanguinary

operations of the law, the feeling of the public is opposed to them,

and in favour of their antagonists.

 

There was nothing, indeed, with which I ever was better pleased, or in

which I felt Old England so much inferior to her northern neighbour,

as in the conducting of criminal trials. One who is in the habit of

looking in at that great suttling-house for the gallows, the Old

Bailey,--who sees the hurried manner in which the life of a man is,

perhaps justly enough, sworn away,--who listens to the few seconds of

advice, and the few trifling questions put by the counsel to whom the

poor culprit has given the last shilling that he could beg from his

weeping relations,--who marks the anxiety of the counsel till the case

shall come to that point at which he may coldly abandon his miserable

client--the very point at which an appeal to the jury might turn the

scale,--cannot but feel, when he witnesses the slow and pathetic

solemnity of the Scotch courts, that he is among pleaders of other

powers. A case which brings even Theisseger to the bar, is one of no

common importance, and one never by any chance finds the powers of

Brougham, or the acuteness of Scarlett, come in to save a poor man from

death. But when I was in the Athens, there was only one trial for a

capital crime, and yet the legal sagacity of Moncrieff, and the burning

eloquence of Jeffrey, were exerted for full two hours, on behalf of the

prisoner; and exerted, too, in such a manner as convinced me that the

fee must have been the very least part of their inducement. I never

heard objections put with so perfect a knowledge both of the general

principles of law, or the specialities of the particular case, or

evidence so scientifically dissected, as were done by the former; and

the appeal of Jeffrey to the feelings of the jury, and even to those

of the judges, was one of the finest things I ever heard. There are

many men far more learned in the law than this celebrated Scotchman;

and many who can take a far more sweeping and comprehensive view of

a subject; but all the little sallies of which his speech consisted,

were as sharp as needles and as shining as diamonds. Their brilliancy

made you open your bosom to receive them, and their keenness was such

that they would have pierced their way in spite of you. Their effect

upon the crowded spectators, and upon the jury, was tremendous; nor

was the lord justice clerk himself, who seemed not only a very proud

and consequential person in himself, but by no means a hearty admirer

of the barrister, able to resist the influence. Whenever Jeffrey tore

away a pillar of the evidence against his client, and clenched the

advantage by an appeal to those passions which he seemed to know so

well how to touch, there was a general hum of satisfaction in the

crowd; the jurors looked up with eyes of new hope, as much as to say,

“we shall be able to acquit him yet;” and the judge relaxed a little of

the lofty severity of his countenance.

 

Another cause why the people of the Athens, and of Scotland generally,

set so high a value upon the Athenian advocates, may be that they are

the only class of persons among whom public speaking is so much as

known. I do not mean to say that the Scotch have no talents for this

kind of display. Quite the reverse; for instead of taciturnity, which

their supposed cautious character would lead one to set down as their

leading propensity, they are the most loquacious people,--I mean the

longest-winded people that ever I met with; having, in their common

conversation, ten times as much _badinage_ and ornament as the English,

and ten times more concatenation of ideas than the Irish.

 

But they have no subject to excite public speaking, and no occasion

upon which to exercise it. Elections they have none, not even so much

as a parish-meeting, or a wardmote. The only persons among them that

have the privilege of electing even their own local managers, are “the

Trades,” or little corporations of artificers, in the royal burghs,

who annually choose “deacons;” but they usually do this more by the

eloquence of liquor than of words, and as the deacons are commonly a

sort of pack-horses to the burghal corporation, they fall into most of

the sensual and senseless vulgarity which are the characteristics of

it. Churches and hospitals supported by voluntary contribution, at the

annual festivals of which the contributors may make speeches, there

are none. Indeed, unless a Scotchman were to stand on a hill-side and

address the wind, or on the sea-shore and address the waves, he has no

scope for oratory; and thus, come from what part of the country he may,

the pleadings before the courts at the Athens, are quite a novelty to

him, and he runs after and admires them as such. Thus the total absence

of all eloquence throughout the country, makes a very small portion of

it obtain distinction in the Athens.

 

Curious as it is to find a city where every soul is so much absorbed

by the law, that men and women, girls and boys, of all ages and all

conditions of life, season their common speech with the slang of legal

phrases, and destructive of not only all literary and liberal taste,

but of all the joyous intercourse of life, as it is to hear every

night a rehearsal of Jeffrey’s sarcasm, or Cockburn’s joke of the

morning; yet the Parliament-house of the Athens is a spirit-stirring

scene, and very delightful, compared with the gloomy desolation of

Westminster-hall.

 

While the courts are sitting it is usually as crowded as the Royal

Exchange at four o’clock, and the hum, and bustle, and eagerness, are

vastly more interesting than the solemn faces and demure looks of

the dealers in tallow and tapioca, who stand under the shadow of the

Grasshopper, with their jaws distended like a trap for foxes, and their

hands up to their elbows in their pockets, as if they could not abstain

from fumbling money, even when the precise minute of bargain has not

arrived.

 

It is true that you meet with no Rothschild, or any other pawnbroker

for kings, in this ancient apartment of the Scottish Parliament; but,

if you be more a lover of mind than of money, you are sure to meet with