LAW OF THE ATHENS.

——“Lawyers have more sober sense
Than t’ argue at their own expense,
But make their best advantages
Of others’ quarrels, like the Swiss;
And out of foreign controversies,
By aiding both sides, fill their purses.”—Butler.

Whatever airs the Athens may give herself in other matters, however she may boast of her taste and her elegance, talk of her science and her literature, or cherish the mouldering skeleton of her medical school, no one can be a day within her precincts without discovering that the law is her Alpha and her Omega,—the food which she eats, the raiment she puts on, the dwelling-house which she inhabits, the conversation in which she engages, the soul which animates her whole frame, the mind which is discovered in every feature of her countenance, and every attitude of her body. Once destroy that, or remove it to another place, and the pride of the Athens would be at an end: you might lodge owls in all her palaces, and graze cattle in all her streets.

From the way in which the Scottish courts of law are regulated, there is hardly a suit from the Solway Firth to the Pentland, or from Peterhead to the remotest of the HebudÆ, which does not look toward the Athens, the moment that the litigiousness of a client, or the machinations of an attorney, call it into existence. I hinted already, that there is no one thing in which the Athens can now retain a superiority except the practice of Scotch law; and, as Scotland increases in wealth, that law is so constructed, that the portion which the scribes and spouters of the Athens shall be enabled to levy upon their countrymen must always increase in a greater ratio. Scotchmen are apt to be proud of the Athens,—to regard her with a portion at least of that admiration which subjects pay to the pomp of their kings. There is propriety in this; for there is scarcely a stone in the walls of the Athenian palaces, or a decent coat in her streets, which has not been squeezed out of some litigious or unfortunate man of the provinces, in the shape of a lawyer’s fee. I noticed the power which the crown lawyers of Scotland have over the liberties and lives of the people; and the power which lawyers of another class have over the fortunes of the Scotch lairds, is every jot as ruinous and humiliating. There are complaints in England, that when once property gets into chancery, the “infant” becomes grey before he can enjoy it; but the Scottish chancery is incalculably worse; for the moment that a Scotch proprietor allows his lands to pass into the keeping of an Edinburgh agent, from that moment he must lay his account either with losing them altogether, or purchasing them anew; and to enumerate the heirs of Scottish families, who are at any time pining away in heart-broken obscurity, or toiling under the burning suns of the East or the West, in the hope of winning back a poor fragment of the ample heritage to which they were born, would require no trifling succession of pages.

It cannot indeed be otherwise. According to the definition of the political economists, law is not only unproductive labour in itself, but wherever it clutches its talons, it tears away the funds by which more valuable labour should be supported, and distracts and lacerates the spirit by which those funds should be applied. When a Scotchman from the country visits the Athens, and sees a long line of costly buildings mounting up in the air, he may rest assured, that for every shilling that those buildings cost, and every shilling that shall be spent in them, he and his compatriots must pay. The Athens herself,—the overtopping and overwhelming part of the Athens,—that part which rises by the power, and extends itself by the weight, of the law, produces nothing whatever. It is as sterile as the Castle rock; and, were it not for the folly of other people, its ascendency would not be so great as it makes the Athens feel. This, however, is a matter for the Scotch themselves; and it sometimes happens, with nations as well as with individuals, that a deformity or a vice is praised and cherished, while beauties and virtues are treated with neglect.

It is matter of trite remark, that very few of the seed of Jacob have ever taken up their abode in the Athens, and that the few who have done so, have in a short time been starved to death or to removal; and it has sometimes been wondered why a people, who have been so successful in pillaging the other nations of Europe, should have failed so completely in this instance. A very slight acquaintance with the Athenian “men of business,” as they are called, will explain the fact, and resolve the difficulty. The man of business has all the natural rapacity and cunning of the Jew, and he is at the same time so well conversant with every quirk and turn of the law, that there is no possibility of calling him to account for his depredations.

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 what will please you a great deal better. Before the Judges have taken their places in the Inner Courts, you cannot miss the tall figure, the gleesome grey eye, the snub nose, and all the other characteristics of the spirit of the wizard and the soul of the man, that mark Sir Walter Scott. A dozen of chosen friends, some Whig and some Tory, hang about him; and, as he limps along with wonderful vigour, considering the irregularity of his legs, peals of laughter ring at every word which he utters, and a score of fledgling Tory barristers, who have not yet got either a place or a brief, stretch out their goose necks, huddle round, and cackle at the echo of that which they cannot possibly hear. In another place, or rather in all places, the Editor of the Edinburgh Review starts about like wildfire; and unless it be when an attorney ever and anon brings him up with the sheet-anchor of a fee and a brief, there is no possibility of arresting his motion. He darts aside like lightning, runs over the brief with such rapidity that you would think he were merely counting the pages of an article for the Edinburgh Review, and having handed it to his clerk, who seems as heavy as himself is agile, he again darts into the throng, like an otter into the waters, and is seen no more till he bring up another gudgeon.

Wherever you meet with this highly-gifted personage, you are never at a loss to distinguish him from every body else. His writings, his speeches, and his face, have the most remarkable family likeness that I ever met with. All the three seem cut into little faucettes and angles, which glitter and sparkle in every possibility of light, both direct and oblique. In the speech and the writing, rich as is the play of genius on the surface, it bears no proportion to the mass of intellect which it covers and dazzles; and keen, acute, and purged of all grossness and obesity, as is the lower part of the face, it bears no proportion to the expansion of forehead that towers above. Jeffrey has the most wonderful pair of eyes that ever illuminated a human visage. Even when he is shooting along like a small but swift meteor through the crowd in the Parliament-House, they are beaming so as to force you to turn away your eyes, and if he looks at you, you find yourself utterly unable to withstand it. When that look is darting for any important purpose, such as to ascertain whether a witness be or be not speaking the truth, it is more searching than that of Garrow even in his best days, so that the most hardened tremble before it, and are instantly divested of all power of concealing the truth. If, however, you attempt to repay Jeffrey in his own coin, by working into his mind with that sharp and anatomical glance which he employs in dissecting the minds of other people, you find that you are woefully mistaken. Those eyes, which can penetrate to the bottom of any other man’s heart, and expose even that part of it which he studies with the greatest assiduity to conceal, are a perfect sealed book to you; you cannot see beyond their external surface, and they give you not so much as a hint of what the owner is thinking, or what he may be disposed to say or do next. Wonderful as the eyes are, they are perhaps exceeded by the eyebrows, and certainly two such intellectual batteries were never alternately masked and displayed in a manner so singular. They range over a greater extent of surface, and twist themselves into a more endless variety of curves than is almost possible to conceive, and while they do so, they express all manner of thoughts, and utter all descriptions of sentences. Few men have more eloquence in their speech than Jeffrey, and I have met with none who had half as much in his face.

Another character in this reeling crowd, which never fails to attract the attention of a stranger, is that of Robert Forsyth. As far as one man can be unlike another, he is the very antipodes of Jeffery. He is large, square, and muscular, more intended by nature, you would think, for breaking stones on the high road, than for breaking syllogisms before their Lordships. His face is coarse, broad and flat, and as immovable in all its muscles as though it had been chiselled out of a block of granite. As he moves along, he turns his head neither to the one side nor to the other; and indeed he does not require it, for his eyes have that divergent squint which enables him at once to scan both sides of the horizon. The lines of labour are so ploughed across and across every part of his ample countenance, and they give it so knotted and so corrugated an appearance, that you can easily perceive he has followed more occupations, and been attached to more sides of politics than one. Still there is by no means the quiescence of a mind at ease upon the strong picture of his visage; the lower part of it is fixed in something between a half laugh and a half grin, and the upper part has a firmness about it which tells you he is a through-going lawyer, whom it will not be easy to turn from his purpose.

The throng is so great, however, and the variety of faces, gowned and ungowned, wigged and unwigged, beaming forth every shade of mind, and betokening every degree of mental vacuity, is so perplexing, that your eye and your imagination are completely bewildered, and you cannot attend either to individuals or single groups, while the buz of voices of so many different tones and pitches give your ears the impression of a very Babel.

Business commences; the Lords Ordinary take their seats—in places which make them look more like as if they were standing in the pillory than any thing else. But even there, advocates are drudging in their vocations; agents running backwards and forwards with briefs; clients watching the result with palpitating hearts; and the Athenian loungers hanging about, anticipating their Lordships in the decision of the several cases. The well-employed advocates now put you very much in mind of shuttle-cocks. They run from bar to bar, making motions here and speeches there, in the most chaos-looking style that can be imagined. Of the whole gown and wig mass, it is but a small portion, however, who are thus occupied; four-fifths of the whole keep trudging on from end to end of the hall, and seem never to expect or even to get a fee; while the bar clerks collected round the fire-places keep up a continual titter at the repetition of all the good jokes of the day; and the same scene continues day after day, and month after month. You are astonished that a place, the real business of which is so dull and so dry, should have charms for so many idle people; but except this Parliament-house there is not another in-door lounge in the whole Athens; and as the business of the courts forms the chief topic of the evening’s conversation, many attend for the purpose of qualifying themselves for displays upon a very different arena. It is long before a stranger can bring himself to relish this first and most favourite of all Athenian pleasures. I, for one, got tired of it in two or three days, and began to be of opinion that, however much this fondness for legal proceedings may sharpen the wits of the Athenian idlers, it is but a sorry treat for those who have no wish either to get rich by the acting, or wise by the suffering of the law.

When the business of the day is over, you can perceive the veteran barristers taking council together as to where they may be joyous for the night; and the younger legal men of all descriptions hurrying off toward Princes Street, in order that they may show themselves to the Athenian fair, before they retreat to drown the daily badgerings in the nightly bowl.