WITNESSES.

In the days when Mr. Davenport Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, made a professional reputation for himself in the committee-rooms of the Houses of Parliament, he had many a sharp tussle with one of those venal witnesses who, during the period of excitement that terminated in the disastrous railway panic, were ready to give scientific evidence on engineering questions, with less regard to truth than to the interests of the persons who paid for their evidence. Having by mendacious evidence gravely injured a cause in which Mr. Hill was interested as counsel, and Mr. Tite, the eminent architect, and present member for Bath, was concerned as a projector, this witness was struck with apoplexy and died—before he could complete the mischief which he had so adroitly begun. Under the circumstances, his sudden withdrawal from the world was not an occasion for universal regret. "Well, Hill, have you heard the news?" inquired Mr. Tite of the barrister, whom he encountered in Middle Temple Lane on the morning after the engineer's death. "Have you heard that —— died yesterday of apoplexy?" "I can't say," was the rejoinder, "that I shall shed many tears for his loss. He was an arrant scoundrel." "Come, come," replied the architect, charitably, "you have always been too hard on that man. He was by no means so bad a fellow as you would make him out. I do verily believe that in the whole course of his life that man never told a lie—out of the witness-box." Strange to say, this comical testimony to character was quite justified by the fact. This man, who lied in public as a matter of business, was punctiliously honorable in private life.

Of the simplest method of tampering with witnesses an instance is found in a case which occurred while Sir Edward Coke was Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Loitering about Westminster Hall, one of the parties in an action stumbled upon the witness whose temporary withdrawal from the ways of men he was most anxious to effect. With a perfect perception of the proper use of hospitality, he accosted this witness (a staring, open-mouthed countryman), with suitable professions of friendliness, and carrying him into an adjacent tavern, set him down before a bottle of wine. As soon as the sack had begun to quicken his guest's circulation, the crafty fellow hastened into court with the intelligence that the witness, whom he had left drinking in a room not two hundred yards distant, was in a fit and lying at death's door. The court being asked to wait, the impudent rascal protested that to wait would be useless; and the Chief Justice, taking his view of the case, proceeded to give judgment without hearing the most important evidence in the cause.

In badgering a witness with noisy derision, no barrister of Charles II.'s time could surpass George Jeffreys; but on more than one occasion that gentleman, in his most overbearing moments, met with his master in the witness whom he meant to brow-beat. "You fellow in the leathern doublet," he is said to have exclaimed to a countryman whom he was about to cross-examine, "Pray, what are you paid for swearing?" "God bless you, sir, and make you an honest man," answered the farmer, looking the barrister full in the face, and speaking with a voice of hearty good-humor; "if you had no more for lying than I have for swearing, you would wear a leather doublet as well as I."

Sometimes Erskine's treatment of witnesses was very jocular, and sometimes very unfair; but his jocoseness was usually so distinct from mere flippant derisiveness, and his unfairness was redeemed by such delicacy of wit and courtesy of manner, that his most malicious jeux d'esprit seldom raised the anger of the witnesses at whom they were aimed. A religious enthusiast objecting to be sworn in the usual manner, but stating that though he would not "kiss the book," he would "hold up his hand" and swear, Erskine asked him to give his reason for preferring so eccentric a way to the ordinary mode of giving testimony. "It is written in the book of Revelations," answered the man, "that the angel standing on the sea held up his hand." "But that does not apply to your case," urged the advocate; "for in the first place, you are no angel; secondly, you cannot tell how the angel would have sworn if he had stood on dry ground, as you do." Not shaken by this reply, which cannot be called unfair, and which, notwithstanding its jocoseness, was exactly the answer which the gravest divine would have made to such scruples, the witness persisted in his position; and on being permitted to give evidence in his own peculiar way, he had enough influence with the jury to induce them to give a verdict adverse to Erskine's wishes.

Less fair but more successful was Erskine's treatment of the commercial traveller, who appeared in the witness box dressed in the height of fashion, and wearing a starched white necktie folded with the 'Brummel fold.' In an instant reading the character of the man, on whom he had never before set eyes, and knowing how necessary it was to put him in a state of extreme agitation and confusion, before touching on the facts concerning which he had come to give evidence, Erskine rose, surveyed the coxcomb, and said, with an air of careless amusement, "You were born and bred in Manchester, I perceive." Greatly astonished at this opening remark, the man answered, nervously, that he was "a Manchester man—born and bred in Manchester." "Exactly," observed Erskine, in a conversational tone, and as though he were imparting information to a personal friend—"exactly so; I knew it from the absurd tie of your neckcloth." The roars of laughter which followed this rejoinder so completely effected the speaker's purpose that the confounded bagman could not tell his right hand from his left. Equally effective was Erskine's sharp question, put quickly to the witness, who, in an action for payment of a tailor's bill, swore that a certain dress-coat was badly made—one of the sleeves being longer than the other. "You will," said Erskine, slowly, having risen to cross-examine, "swear—that one of the sleeves was—longer—than the other?" Witness. "I do swear it." Erskine, quickly, and with a flash of indignation, "Then, sir, I am to understand that you positively deny that one of the sleeves was shorter than the other?" Startled into a self-contradiction by the suddenness and impetuosity of this thrust, the witness said, "I do deny it." Erskine, raising his voice as the tumultuous laughter died away, "Thank you, sir; I don't want to trouble you with another question." One of Erskine's smartest puns referred to a question of evidence. "A case," he observed, in a speech made during his latter years, "being laid before me by my veteran friend, the Duke of Queensbury—better known as 'old Q'—as to whether he could sue a tradesman for breach of contract about the painting of his house; and the evidence being totally insufficient to support the case, I wrote thus: 'I am of opinion that this action will not lie unless the witnesses do.'" It is worthy of notice that this witticism was but a revival (with a modification) of a pun attributed to Lord Chancellor Hatton in Bacon's 'Apophthegmes.'

In this country many years have elapsed since duels have taken place betwixt gentlemen of the long robe, or between barristers and witnesses in consequence of words uttered in the heat of forensic strife; but in the last century, and in the opening years of the present, it was no very rare occurrence for a barrister to be called upon for 'satisfaction' by a person whom he had insulted in the course of his professional duty. During George II.'s reign, young Robert Henley so mercilessly badgered one Zephaniah Reeve, whom he had occasion to cross-examine in a trial at Bristol, that the infuriated witness—Quaker and peace-loving merchant though he was—sent his persecutor a challenge immediately upon leaving court. Rather than incur the ridicule of 'going out with a Quaker,' and the sin of shooting at a man whom he had actually treated with unjustifiable freedom, Henley retreated from an embarrassing position by making a handsome apology; and years afterwards, when he had risen to the woolsack, he entertained his old acquaintance, Zephaniah Reeve, at a fashionable dinner-party, when he assembled guests were greatly amused by the Lord Chancellor's account of the commencement of his acquaintance with his Quaker friend.

Between thirty and forty years later Thurlow was 'called out' by the Duke of Hamilton's agent, Mr. Andrew Stewart, whom he had grievously offended by his conduct of the Great Douglas Case. On Jan. 14, 1769-1770, Thurlow and his adversary met in Hyde Park. On his way to the appointed place, the barrister stopped at a tavern near Hyde Park Corner, and "ate an enormous breakfast," after which preparation for business, he hastened to the field of action. Accounts agree in saying that he behaved well upon the ground. Long after the bloodless rencontre, the Scotch agent, not a little proud of his 'affair' with a future Lord Chancellor, said, "Mr. Thurlow advanced and stood up to me like an elephant." But the elephant and the mouse parted without hurting each other; the encounter being thus faithfully described in the 'Scots' Magazine:' "On Sunday morning, January 14, the parties met with swords and pistols, in Hyde Park, one of them having for his second his brother, Colonel S——, and the other having for his Mr. L——, member for a city in Kent. Having discharged pistols, at ten yards' distance, without effect, they drew their swords, but the seconds interposed, and put an end to the affair."

One of the best 'Northern Circuit stories' pinned upon Lord Eldon relates to a challenge which an indignant suitor is said to have sent to Law and John Scott. In a trial at York that arose from a horse-race, it was stated in evidence that one of the conditions of the race required that "each horse should be ridden by a gentleman." The race having been run, the holders refused to pay the stakes to the winner on the ground that he was not a gentleman; whereupon the equestrian whose gentility was thus called in question brought an action for the money. After a very humorous inquiry, which terminated in a verdict for the defendants, the plaintiff was said to have challenged the defendants' counsel. Messrs. Scott and Law, for maintaining that he was no gentleman; to which invitation, it also averred, reply was made that the challengees "could not think of fighting one who had been found no gentleman by the solemn verdict of twelve of his countrymen." Inquiry, however, has deprived this delicious story of much of its piquancy. Eldon had no part in the offence; and Law, who was the sole utterer of the obnoxious words, received no invitation to fight. "No message was sent," says a writer, supposed to be Lord Brougham, in the 'Law Magazine,' "and no attempt was made to provoke a breach of the peace. It is very possible Lord Eldon may have said, and Lord Ellenborough too, that they were not bound to treat one in such a predicament as a gentleman, and hence the story has arisen in the lady's mind. The fact was as well known on the Northern Circuit as the answer of a witness to a question, whether the party had a right by his circumstances to keep a pack of fox-hounds; 'No more right than I to keep a pack of archbishops.'"

Curran is said to have received a call, before he left his bed one morning, from a gentleman whom he had cross-examined with needless cruelty and unjustifiable insolence on the previous day. "Sir!" said this irate man, presenting himself in Curran's bedroom, and rousing the barrister from slumber to a consciousness that he was in a very awkward position, "I am the gintleman whom you insulted yesterday in His Majesty's court of justice, in the presence of the whole county, and I am here to thrash you soundly!" Thus speaking, the Herculean intruder waved a horsewhip over the recumbent lawyer. "You don't mean to strike a man when he is lying down?" inquired Curran. "No, bedad; I'll just wait till you've got out of bed and then I'll give it to you sharp and fast." Curran's eye twinkled mischievously as he rejoined: "If that's the case, by —— I'll lie here all day." So tickled was the visitor with this humorous announcement, that he dropped his horsewhip, and dismissing anger with a hearty roar of laughter, asked the counsellor to shake hands with him.

In the December of 1663, Pepys was present at a trial in Guildhall concerning the fraud of a merchant-adventurer, who having insured his vessel for £2400 when, together with her cargo, she was worth no more than £500, had endeavored to wreck her off the French coast. From Pepys's record it appears that this was a novel piece of rascality at that time, and consequently created lively sensation in general society, as well as in legal and commercial coteries. "All the great counsel in the kingdom" were employed in the cause; and though maritime causes then, as now, usually involved much hard swearing, the case was notable for the prodigious amount of perjury which it elicited. For the most part the witnesses were sailors, who, besides swearing with stolid indifference to truth, caused much amusement by the incoherence of their statements and by their free use of nautical expressions, which were quite unintelligible to Chief Justice (Sir Robert) Hyde. "It was," says Pepys, "pleasant to see what mad sort of testimonys the seamen did give, and could not be got to speak in order; and then their terms such as the judge could not understand, and to hear how sillily the counsel and judge would speak as to the terms necessary in the matter, would make one laugh; and above all a Frenchman, that was forced to speak in French, and took an English oath he did not understand, and had an interpreter sworn to tell us what he said, which was the best testimony of all." A century later Lord Mansfield was presiding at a trial consequent upon a collision of two ships at sea, when a common sailor, whilst giving testimony, said, "At the time I was standing abaft the binnacle;" whereupon his lordship, with a proper desire to master the facts of the case, observed, "Stay, stay a minute, witness: you say that at the time in question you were standing abaft the binnacle; now tell me, where is abaft the binnacle?" This was too much for the gravity of 'the salt,' who immediately before climbing into the witness-box had taken a copious draught of neat rum. Removing his eyes from the bench, and turning round upon the crowded court with an expression of intense amusement, he exclaimed at the top of his voice, "He's a pretty fellow for a judge! Bless my jolly old eyes!—[the reader may substitute a familiar form of 'imprecation on eye-sight']—you have got a pretty sort of a land-lubber for a judge! He wants me to tell him where abaft the binnacle is!" Not less amused than the witness, Lord Mansfield rejoined, "Well, my friend, you must fit me for my office by telling me where abaft the binnacle is; you've already shown me the meaning of half seas over."

With less good-humor the same Chief Justice revenged himself on Dr. Brocklesby, who, whilst standing in the witness-box of the Court of King's Bench, incurred the Chief Justice's displeasure by referring to their private intercourse. Some accounts say that the medical witness merely nodded to the Chief Justice, as he might have done with propriety had they been taking seats at a convivial table; other accounts, with less appearance of probability, maintain that in a voice audible to the bar, he reminded the Chief Justice of certain jolly hours which they had spent together during the previous evening. Anyhow, Lord Mansfield was hurt, and showed his resentment in his 'summing-up' by thus addressing the Jury: "The next witness is one Rocklesby, or Brocklesby—Brocklesby or Rocklesby, I am not sure which; and first, he swears that he is a physician."

On one occasion Lord Mansfield covered his retreat from an untenable position with a sparkling pleasantry. An old witness named Elm having given his evidence with remarkable clearness, although he was more than eighty years of age, Lord Mansfield examined him as to his habitual mode of living, and found that he had throughout life been an early riser and a singularly temperate man. "Ay," observed the Chief Justice, in a tone of approval, "I have always found that without temperance and early habits, longevity is never attained." The next witness, the elder brother of this model of temperance, was then called, and he almost surpassed his brother as an intelligent and clear-headed utterer of evidence. "I suppose," observed Lord Mansfield, "that you also are an early riser." "No, my lord," answered the veteran, stoutly; "I like my bed at all hours, and special-lie I like it of a morning." "Ah; but, like your brother, you are a very temperate man?" quickly asked the judge, looking out anxiously for the safety of the more important part of his theory. "My lord," responded this ancient Elm, disdaining to plead guilty to a charge of habitual sobriety, "I am a very old man, and my memory is as clear as a bell, but I can't remember the night when I've gone to bed without being more or less drunk." Lord Mansfield was silent. "Ah, my lord," Mr. Dunning exclaimed, "this old man's case supports a theory upheld by many persons, that habitual intemperance is favorable to longevity." "No, no," replied the Chief Justice, with a smile, "this old man and his brother merely teach us what every carpenter knows—that Elm, whether it be wet or dry, is a very tough wood." Another version of this excellent story makes Lord Mansfield inquire of the elder Elm, "Then how do you account for your prolonged tenure of existence?" to which question Elm is made to respond, more like a lawyer than a simple witness, "I account for it by the terms of the original lease."

Few stories relating to witnesses are more laughable than that which describes the arithmetical process by which Mr. Baron Perrot arrived at the value of certain conflicting evidence. "Gentlemen of the jury," this judge is reported to have said, in summing up the evidence in a trial where the witnesses had sworn with noble tenacity of purpose, "there are fifteen witnesses who swear that the watercourse used to flow in a ditch on the north side of the hedge. On the other hand, gentlemen, there are nine witnesses who swear that the watercourse used to flow on the south side of the hedge. Now, gentlemen, if you subtract nine from fifteen, there remain six witnesses wholly uncontradicted; and I recommend you to give your verdict for the party who called those six witnesses."

Whichever of the half-dozen ways in which it is told be accepted as the right one, the following story exemplifies the difficulty which occasionally arises in courts of justice, when witnesses use provincial terms with which the judge is not familiar. Mr. William Russell, in past days deputy-surveyor of 'canny Newcastle,' and a genuine Northumbrian in dialect, brogue, and shrewdness, was giving his evidence at an important trial in the Newcastle court-house, when he said—"As I was going along the quay, I saw a hubbleshew coming out of a chare-foot." Not aware that on Tyne-side the word 'hubbleshew' meant 'a concourse of riotous persons;' that the narrow alleys or lanes of Newcastle 'old town' were called by their inhabitants 'chares;' and that the lower end of each alley, where it opened upon quay-side, was termed a 'chare-foot;' the judge, seeing only one part of the puzzle, inquired the meaning of the word 'hubbleshew.' "A crowd of disorderly persons," answered the deputy-surveyor. "And you mean to say," inquired the judge of assize, with a voice and look of surprise, "that you saw a crowd of people come out of a chair-foot?" "I do, my lord," responded the witness. "Gentlemen of the jury," said his lordship, turning to the 'twelve good men' in the box, "it must be needless for me to inform you—that this witness is insane!"

The report of a trial which occurred at Newcastle Assizes towards the close of the last century gives the following succession of questions and answers:—Barrister.—"What is your name?" Witness.—"Adam, sir—Adam Thompson." Barrister.—"Where do you live?" Witness.—"In Paradise." Barrister (with facetious tone).—"And pray, Mr. Adam, how long have you dwelt in Paradise?" Witness.—"Ever since the flood." Paradise is the name of a village in the immediate vicinity of Newcastle; and 'the flood' referred to by the witness was the inundation (memorable in local annals) of the Tyne, which in the year 1771 swept away the old Tyne Bridge.