OConnell as a Legal Raconteur. course Tim would take. He nobly dis appointed the predictions of his enemies. He waited till his brother was brought into the dock — sprang into the dock and em braced him — remained at his side during the whole trial, cross-examined the witnesses for the prosecution from the dock, invariably styling the prisoner ' my brother.' He car ried the sympathies of the jury entirely with him, got a verdict for his brother, and earned glory for himself." O'Connell took delight in a favorite re creation of lawyers — detecting legal inac curacies in the work of the novelist. He highly admired Bulwer's " Night and Morn ing." " I read that book of Bulwer's " he said, " with very great interest. But he has made a very great legal blunder. He requires his reader to suppose that Philip Beaufort has no mode of establishing his own legitimacy except by producing the certificate or the registry of his parents' marriage. Here is a great mistake. Phil ip's mother would have been a sufficient witness in her son's behalf. Philip need only have levied distress on the estate for his rents, and if his right to do so had been contested his mother's evidence of his legi timacy would have been received in any court of law as conclusive in establishing his right. It is a great mistake. This comes of men writing of matters they know nothing about. Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer and always avoided such errors." O'Connell was fond of mentioning an ac tion for breach of promise in which he had been engaged, brought by a lady named Fitzgerald against a clergyman named Hawkesworth. The correspondence read upon the trial was comical enough. The lady it appeared had at one time doubted his fidelity, whereupon the parson writes to reassure her in these words: "Don't be lieve anyone who says I'll jilt you. They lie who say so, and I pray all such liars may be condemned to an eternity of itching without the benefit of scratching." Three
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thousand pounds' damage were given against him. He decamped to America upon a preaching speculation which proved unsuc cessful. He came back to Ireland and married the prosecutrix. When O'Connell was Lord Mayor of Dublin, on the first day's sitting his weekly court was, of course extremely crowded. The tipstaffs tried to clear it. " Let all per sons leave the court that have n't business," shouted one of these functionaries. " In Cork," said O'Connell, " I remember the crier trying to disperse the crowd by ex claiming, ' All ye blackguards that isn't law yers, quit the court! '" Of forensic eloquence, amongst some of his earlier contemporaries, O'Connell re corded the following specimens : "A young barrister, who was counsel against a cow-stealer, wound up his statement with a violent invective against the thief, who, it seems, had branded his own name on the horns of the cow he had stolen. ' If, my Lord,' continued the orator, ' the cow were a cow of any feeling, how could she bear to have such a name branded on her horn? ' Another orator of this school warned the jury not to be carried away ' by the dark oblivion of a brow! ' A brother counsel stopped him : ' That was nonsense.' ' I know it was,' replied the unabashed advocate, ' but it is good enough for a jury! '" Here is a story related by O'Connell of doing a judge out of a bribe. " Denis O'Brien had a record at Nenagh — the judge talked of purchasing a pair of car riage horses, and Denis accordingly sent him a magnificent pair, hoping they would answer his Lordship, etc. The judge gra ciously accepted the horses, and praised their points extravagantly, and, what was more important for Denis, he charged the jury in his favor, and obtained a verdict for him. The instant Denis gained his point he sent in a bill to the judge for the full value of the horses. His Lordship called Denis aside to expostulate privately with
