THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. JULY 1, 1826. ORIGINAL PAPERS. SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.-NO. XIII. I HAVE heretofore observed that it formed no part of my plan to make my selection of subjects from the Irish Bar, according to any supposed scale of individual merit or importance, and repeat the intimation here; for were it otherwise, I should certainly have been unjust to the person whom I now take up, in having so long delayed to make any mention of his name. Mr. Wallace is in several respects a remarkable man. He has for many years held an eminent station in his profession, and is pre-eminently entitled to the self-gratulation of reflecting, that his success has been of that honourable kind, in which neither accident nor patronage had any share. Of his early life and original prospects I have heard little, besides the fact that, in his youth, he found himself alone in the world without competence or connections, and with merely the rudiments of general knowledge; and that under these disheartening circumstances, instead of acquiescing in the obscurity to which he was apparently doomed, he formed, and for years persevered in a solitary plan of self-instruction, until feeling his courage and ambition increased by the result of the experiments he had made upon himself, and measuring his strength with the difficulties to be encountered, he rejected the temporary allurements of any more ignoble calling; and with a boldness and self-reliance, which the event has justified, decided upon the Bar as the most suited to his pretensions. With this view, and with a patient determination of purpose, which is among the most trying exercises of practical philosophy, he qualified himself for Trinity College, and entering there, gave himself (what was probably his chief motive in submitting to the delay) the reputation of having received a regular and learned education. He was called to the Bar in 1798, where his talents soon bringing him into notice, he advanced at a gradual and steady pace to competence, then on to affluence, and finally to the conspicuous place which he now fills in the Irish courts. He obtained a silk gown about seven years ago-a period beyond which it could not, without consummate injustice, have been withheld; but he was known to have connected himself, in his political sympathies, with Mr. Grattan and the friends of Ireland; and this, according to the maxims by which the country was then governed, was an unanswerable reason for procrastinating to the latest moment his title to precedency. Mr. Wallace's intellectual qualities are in many particulars such as might be inferred from his history. In his character, as developed by his early life, we find none of the peculiarities of his country-no mercurial vivacity—no movements of an impatient and irregular ambition--but July, 1826.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXVII. B rather the composed and dogged ardour of a Scotchman, intent upon his distant object of fame and profit, and submitting, without a murmur, to the fatigues and delays through which it must be approached. In the same way it may be said of his mind, that it has little or nothing that is strictly national. The forms in which it excels are purely abstract, and would come as appropriately from a native of any other country. It is as an advocate (as contradistinguished from a mere lawyer) that he has been most successful; and here the characteristic quality of his style and manner, or rather the compound result of all the qualities that belong to him professionally and individually, is masculine energy. He is emphatically "the strong man." There is at all times, and on all occasions, an innate constitutional imposing vigour in his topics, language, tones, and gestures; all co-operating to a common end, and keeping for ever alive in his auditory the conviction that they are listening to a singularly able-minded man. This impression is aided by his general aspect. His face, without a particle of pedantic solemnity, is full of seriousness and determination. Whatever of lofty or refined emotion may belong to the individual, never settles upon his countenance, and equally absent is every trace of sentimental discontent but you find there a rigid statue-like stability of expression, importing consciousness of strength and immobility of purpose, and suggesting to those who know his history and character an early and deliberate preparation for the world's frown, and a determination to retort it. His features, though remarkably in unison with the intellectual and moral characters impressed upon them, have few physical peculiarities that can be conveyed by description. They are of the hardy Celtic outline, are evidently composed of the most durable materials, and still retain all the compactness and rotundity of early youth. His frame, though little above the middle size, presents the same character of vigour and durability, and contributes its due proportion towards completing that general idea of strength, which I have selected as most descriptive of the entire man. The more stern attributes, however, that I have ascribed to him, refer exclusively to the individual, as I have seen him in the discharge of his public duties. In the intercourse of private life he is, according to universal report, of the most frank and familiar manners, an extremely attractive companion, and, what is better still, a warm and constant friend. Considering as I do, Mr. Wallace's mind to be in its original constitution what may be denominated one of all-work, I should say of it, that among the multiform and dissimilar departments of intellectual exercise involved in the profession of the law, there was scarcely any for which he could not have provided a corresponding aptitude of faculty. His powers have, however, been very much confined to those classes of cases in which facts rather than legal doctrines are the subject-matter of investigation. This may have been partly accidentalfor at the Irish Bar, it is not only matter of chance whether the individual is to succeed at all, but chance, in the majority of instances, determines the particular faculties that must be developed and permanently cultivated for the purpose. There the aspirant for professional eminence cannot, as in England, select a particular department, and make it the subject of his exclusive study. One comes to the scene of exertion relying upon his stores of learned research, and his capacity for the solitary labours of the desk-but the necessity of taking whatever business is offered, throws him into a totally dissimilar line. He becomes a nisi-prius, or motion-lawyer, upon compulsion; strains his lungs in open court to a pitch, that neither nature nor himself had ever designed; and ascertaining by experience that this is to be his way of getting on," resigns his original studies as unproductive toil, and concludes a prosperous career without having ever given an opinion upon a title, or settled the draft of a deed of assignment. Another starts upon the strength of his oral qualifications. Full of confidence and ardour, and fired with admiration of preceding models, he is all for eloquence and eloquence of the highest order. He studies blackletter, and technicalities as a painful effort, but his cordial meditations are over the defence of Milo, and the immortal productions of the Athenian school. In his ambitious reveries, he sees before him a brilliant perspective of popular occasions, with the usual accompaniments of crowded galleries, spell-bound juries, an admiring bench, an applauding bar-but let him take heed. It is at all times in the power of two or three friendly attornies, who are in any business, to get him into Chancery, and keep him there, and with the best intentions imaginable (if he only prove competent to the tasks assigned him) to blast his fame for eloquence for ever.* It does not, however, appear to me, that Mr. Wallace is one of those to whom any cross-purposes of this kind have assigned a final destination that can be reasonably lamented. The cases in which he is in most request, are, perhaps, those in which he was originally, and still continues more peculiarly fitted to excel. Judging of him from his professional attributes and his collateral pursuits, I am led to infer that the early and strongest propensity of his mind was for the discovery of truth; or in other words, that he was more of the philosopher than the sophist; and it will, I apprehend, be generally found true, that such an intellect, however competent to seize, is less prone to retain and manage a large mass of the multiform propositions of English law, where the terms in most familiar use are often subtle deductions from distant principles that are no longer visible to those who employ the terms with most effect, and where, in fact, the process of argumentation may be likened to the working of an algebraic equation, in which the final result is ascertained by the juxtaposition of signs rather than by a comparison of *I could cite more than one example of persons, whose talents for public-speaking have been thus suppressed. I know of only one exception; or to speak more strictly, of an instance of very uncommon powers of cratory, breaking out long after the enthusiasm of youth had passed away, and in despite of a long subjection to habits of an opposite tendency. It was that of an Englishman, the present Mr. Justice Burton. He had been disciplined in all the severity of his native school, and forced his way at the Irish Bar, entirely by his legal superiority. It was only, when in the regular course of seniority he came to address juries, that it was first discovered by others, and probably by himself, that there lay in the depths of his mind a mine of rich materials that had never been explored. To the last he had to dig for them. For the first half hour he was nothing; it took him that time to reconnoitre his subject, and get thoroughly heated: after that he was—not an accomplished speaker-for he never affected the externals of oratory-but in its great essentials-unity of purpose, and bold, rapid, and impassioned reasoning, enforced by the vigorous practical tones and gestures of real life, possessor of an energy, that at times, and often for a long time together, was quite Demosthenic. ideas. He has also indulged in too constant a sympathy with the concerns of general humanity, to have ever shrunk into a mere technical proficient. To form the true "Leguleius, cautus atque acutus," a man must make up his mind to remain for years and years profoundly indifferent to all that passes beyond the precincts of his immediate calling. He must take the course of legislation as he would the course of the stars, as things above him; and never venture, even in his most private reflections, to pry into the policy of an Act of Parliament, saving so far as the preamble may be pleased to enlighten or perplex him on that point. If questions on the Currency rage around him, he must take no part, except in hoping that the decision will not diminish the exchangeable value of the counsel's fee. If he chances to hear that a bog has burst from its moorings, or that a blazing comet threatens to pounce upon our planet, he must leave them to be treated of by the curious in such matters, and go on with his meditations over a special demurrer. He must bring himself, in short, to take no interest, direct or indirect, in aught that does not come home to his learned self. His bag must be to him the true sign of the times; and as long as it continues in high condition, he is to rest satisfied that human affairs must be running a prosperous career. Mr. Wallace has, however, found constant and profitable occupation in a branch of his profession, where a proficiency does not involve a corresponding waste of sensibility. He is in high repute in jury cases, and still more in those cases where issues of fact come under the investigation of the court, upon the sworn statements of the parties and their witnesses. It was said of the celebrated Malone, that to be judged of, he should be heard addressing "a jury of twelve wise men;" and certainly when I consider the eminent qualifications of Mr. Wallace, distinguished as he is for a solid and comprehensive judgment; for manly sagacity rather than captious subtilty in argument; for the talent (and here he peculiarly excels) of educing an orderly, lucid, and consistent statement out of a chaotic assemblage of intricate and conflicting facts; for his knowledge of human nature, both practical and metaphysical, and, along with these, for the sustained and authoritative force of his language and delivery, which operate as a kind of personal warranty for the soundness of every topic he advances; -I should say that the most fitting place for the exhibition of such powers would be before such a tribunal as the admirers of Malone would have assigned him; but a tribunal, so constituted, is not to be found. The most discriminating of Irish sheriffs would be somewhat puzzled in his efforts to empannel a round dozen of special sages in a jury-box; but though wisdom in such numerical force is not to be met with, there is a tribunal in Ireland (a novelty perhaps) filled by persons, who for knowledge, intellect, and impartiality, may without exaggeration be denominated "four wise men," and who are most frequently called upon to serve as jurors in that description of cases in which Mr. Wallace's professional superiority is most acknowledged. Those cases (in technical parlance called "heavy motions") are more numerous in the Court of King's Bench, partly from its exclusive jurisdiction, as a court of criminal law, and also in no small degree from its present constitution, and the consequent influx of general business, by which the public confidence in its adjudications is unequivocally declared. It is accordingly in this court that Mr. Wallace, in his ordinary every-day manner, as an advocate, may be heard to most advantage. His skill in dissecting a knavish affidavit is admirable, and renders him the terror of all knavish deponents upon whom he may have to operate. The exhibition is often amusing enough to a disinterested spectator. The party whose conscience is to undergo the ordeal of a public scrutiny, may be seen seated by his attorney; his countenance at first glowing with a defensive smirk of self-complacent defiance, but manifesting, as the investigation into his candour and veracity proceeds, the most marvellous varieties of hue and expression. An inconsistency or two are pointed out, and his smile of anticipated triumph gradually degenerates into a sub-acid sneer. A fraudulent suppression is next put up, and then he begins to look at his attorney; and, finding no refuge there, to look very grave. The counsel proceeds, inexorably accurate in his detections, and caustic in his comments. Our worthy deponent begins now to tremble for his reputation, and not without reason; for down come upon it a succession of mortal blows, every one of which the listening crowd, who desire no better sport, pronounce, by a malignant buz, to have been, "a palpable hit." This quickly brings on the final stage. Our hero, according to the very best of his knowledge, information, and belief," is mortified and wrathful in the extreme. He starts and frowns and shifts his posture, and compresses his lips, and clenches his fists he would give worlds (so at least says his eye; and I would believe it as soon as his affidavit) to have just one blow at the head of his merciless torturer, or to tell him in open court that he is a calumniator and an assassin. He is on the point of committing some extravagance, when his attorney throws in a word or two of cool advice, to prevent his rage from boiling over, and the paroxysm gradually works itself to rest in silent vows of indefinite vengeance, or in sotto-voce murmurings of impotent vituperation. In such cases as the preceding, the severity of Mr. Wallace's animadversions is forgotten with the occasion; but when in the discharge of his duty he has been impelled to be equally unceremonious in his comments upon litigants of a higher order, murmurs have arisen, and questions been started, as to what are or ought to be the privileges of a barrister, in arraigning the conduct and motives of the parties to whom he is opposed. The irritated suitor of course exclaims against at license under which he has smarted, as an intolerable grievance, and in general finds many sufficiently disposed to join in his indignation; but no disinterested person, acquainted with human nature, as developed. in the course of our legal proceedings, and considering alone the ends of justice, can easily bring himself to desire that the privileges complained of should be in any way abridged. The law makes a counsel personally responsible for any injurious observations upon the characters of individuals not warranted by his instructions; and that those limits are seldom exceeded may be collected from the fact, that actions for slander of this description are unheard-of in practice. But if his instructions are manifestly libellous, is he not under a paramount moral obligation to suppress the obnoxious matter? or is every just and honourable feeling of the gentleman to be merged in the conventional character of the barrister? The answer is-A counsel cannot tell whether his instructions be true or false; and though they should lean |