The English Bench and Bar of To-day. gentleman or lady, but as a kind of superior being, who had at his or her disposal just the information to extricate him from an appalling difficulty. ' My good friend,' he said, or seemed to say, ' pray help me; I really know nothing about this matter. My own faculties are exceedingly limited; I am a simple searcher after truth, and I respectfully pray for your assistance. Let me proceed to ask you, in my own unsophisticated way, a few modest ques tions.' When those modest questions had been put, and — as they invariably were — answered in the exact way in which the questioner had anticipated and designed, the prisoner at the bar, if it was a hanging case and Sir John Coleridge was against him, was a dead man. He felt the hempen cord tighten round his neck, and turned pale and sick." Any man who becomes Attorney-General of England must be a reasonably competent cross-examiner; and there is no doubt that Sir John Coleridge answered to this descrip tion. But there are two circumstances which detract from the value of " a foreign resi dent's" opinion as to his attainments in this difficult branch of forensic study. In the first place he sketches the career of Lord Coleridge's contemporary, Sir Henry Haw kins, apparently without having known, and certainly without informing the reader, that "hanging Harry" — as the criminals call him — was the supreme cross-examiner of his day. In the second place one gathers from his language that it was chiefly in crim inal cases that he had seen Sir John Cole ridge's prowess displayed. Now, with all deference, the average Old Bailey prosecu tion or defence offers a somewhat narrow field for the exercise of the advocate's art, and it takes a comparatively small quantum of dialectic skill so to handle ignorant wit nesses as to make the prisoner feel " the hempen cord tighten round his neck." It is in civil actions, where the parties themselves give evidence, and where the issue of the cause depends upon the evidence that they give, that the unrivalled cross-examiner finds 'lis opportunity. Test Sir John Coleridge by the greatest professional effort of his life,
— his cross-examination of the Tichborne claimant. Most men believe that Orton's story was thoroughly false; and yet the At torney-General spent more than twenty days in a futile attempt to break him down. He displayed remarkable pertinacity and ability, but the episode was fatal to his claim to be the first cross-examiner at the English Bar; and Lord Cockburn, who presided at the trial, subsequently declared from the bench with just a spice of bitterness and personal pride in his tone, that " the claimant had beaten Sir John." But if, as a legal gladiator, Lord Coleridge must yield the palm to greater rivals, he is still entitled to be called the most elegant and painstaking advocate of his day. The abilities of a rhetorician are always dis trusted, especially by men who have no claim to the title; and there is a widespread impression that good English in a legal writer is barely consistent with good law. We know that Austin never forgaVe Blackstone for possessing a polished style. A very cursory review of the law reports will satisfy any one that Sir John Coleridge's arguments, although elegantly and even or nately expressed, were never characterized by the elaboration which dispenses with la bor. The case of McDermott. 1868 L. R. 2 P. C. at p. 347, is a typical instance of the point in question. The difference between Lord Cockburn and his successor as judges is as well marked as any of those which we have already noticed. At the bar Cockburn was merely a great advocate; but when he had ascended the bench, he soon made him self a great lawyer and a great judge. His magnificent gift of exposition, matured by practice, reached a far higher development in the great Matlock will case (1864), and in the Tichborne case (1870), than even in the prosecution of Palmer. But it is not solely nor chiefly for these great judicial ef forts that Lord Cockburn will be remem bered. The modern law of newspaper libel is practically his creation, and no lawyer will ever speak without respect of the judge
