THE COUNSELLOR'S SOCIAL STATUS.

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Thus far my informant-himself a remnant of this by-gone race, and as such contrasting, not without a sigh, the modern degeneracy of slinking into a circuit-town in a corner of the Dublin mail, with the pomp and circumstance that marked the coming of the legal tourist in the olden time. Still the circuitgoing barrister of the present day, though no longer so prominent an object of popular observance, is by no means considered as an ordinary person. The very title of Counsellor continues to maintain its major influence over the imaginations of the populace. When he comes to be known among them, landlords, waiters, guards, and coachmen, bow to him as low, and are as alert in service, as if he were a permanent grand-juryman, or chief-magistrate of police. At an assizes ball (if he be still in his juniority) the country-belles receive him with their choicest smirks, while the most influential country-gentlemen (excepting those who have received a college education, or who have been to Cheltenham) are cautious and complimentary in their converse with one who can take either side of any question extempore, divide it, by merely crossing his fingers, into three distinct points of view, and bring half a dozen knockdown arguments to bear upon each.

jackall to the barrister; but an attorney in good practice, who has many lawsuits to carry on, has it in his power to help a clever young barrister, by employing him as junior counsel in such suits-there ordinarily being at least two barristers on each side in every civil or Nisi Prius trial. The attorney "gets up the case"-prepares the brief or statement of facts and evidence, with references to points of law, and previous decisions of the Courts also-fixes the amount of fees to counsel, and pays the money on delivery of the brief; there being the anomaly that, while the barrister's fee is not recoverable by law, the attorney's bills of costs are, and their amount is fixed by rules of Court, and taxed by proper officers. There is no instance on record of a barrister's ever having become an attorney. Several of the best men at the bar (among whom Lord Truro now stands) have commenced as attorneys. To effect this change the man must cease to be an attorney, by having his name struck off the Courtroll, before he can enter as a student at one of the Inns of Court, where, after four years' delay, as above mentioned, he may be called to the bar. Should it be discovered that a barrister has professionally acted without being "instructed" by an attorney, or that he has an understanding to the effect of sharing profits with an attorney, he would be disbarred—that is, turned out of the profession.-M.

The most striking scenes upon an Irish circuit are to be found in the criminal courts. The general aspect of the interior, and the forms of proceeding, have nothing peculiar; but scarcely a case occurs that does not elicit some vivid exhibition of national character, or afford matter of serious reflection upon the moral and political condition of the country. I would add, that the very absence of such reflection on the part of the spectators, is itself an observable phenomenon: for instance, the first morning that I entered the Crown Court at

I perceived the witness-table covered by a group of mountain-peasantry, who turned out to be three generations of one family, grandfather, father, and three or four athletic sons. Their appearance, though decent, was wild and picturesque. They were all habited in a complete suite of coarse blue frieze. The eldest of the party sustained himself upon a long oaken staff, which gave to him a certain pastoral air, while each of the others, down to the youngest, a fine, fierce, black-haired, savage-eyed lad of seventeen, was armed with a formidable club of the same favorite timber. The old man resting upon his staff, and addressing the interpreter, was meekly and deliberately explaining, in the Irish language, for the information of the court, the object of his application. It needed no interpreter to tell me that he was recounting a tale of violence and wrong. The general purport, as he proceeded, was intelligibly translated in the kindling looks, the vehement gesticulation- -and, where any circumstance was omitted or understated—the impassioned and simultaneous corrections of the group behind him. Though he more than once turned round to rebuke their impetuosity, it was easy to perceive that his own tranquillity of manner was the result of effort; but the others, and least of all the younger portion of the party, could not submit to restrain their emotions. The present experiment of appealing to the laws was evidently new to them, and unpalatable. As they cast their quick suspicious glances round them, and angrily gave their cudgels a spasmodic clench, they looked less like suitors in a court of justice, than as an armed deputation from a barbarous tribe, reluctantly appearing in a civilized enemy's camp with proposals for a cessation of

OCCUPANTS OF THE DOCK.

31

hostilities. And there was some such sacrifice of warlike instincts in the present instance. The party, for once listening to pacific counsel, had come down from their hills to seek compensation from the county for the loss of their house and stock, . which had been maliciously burned down-they suspected, but had no proof-by "their old enemies the O'Sullivans." Yet the details of their case, embracing midnight conflagration, imminent risk of life, destruction of property, produced, so familiar are such outrages, not the slightest sensation in a crowded court. Some necessary forms being gone through, they were dismissed, with directions to appear before the grand jury; and I do not forget that, as they were retiring, the youngest of the party uttered a vehement exclamation, in his native tongue, importing-"That if the grand-jury refused them justice, every farthing of their loss should (come of it what would) be punctually paid down to them in the blood of the O'Sullivans.”

The dock of an Irish county-court is quite a study. From the character of the crimes to be tried, as appearing on the calendar, I expected to find there a collection of the most villanous faces in the community: it was the very reverse. I would even say that, as a general rule, the weightier the charge, the better the physiognomy, and more prepossessing the appearance of the accused. An ignoble misdemeanant, or sneaking petty-larcenist, may look his offence pretty accurately; but let the charge amount to a good transportable or capital felony, and ten to one but the prisoner will exhibit a set of features from which a committee of craniologists would never infer a propensity to crime. In fact, an Irish dock, especially after a brisk insurrectionary winter, affords some of the choicest samples of the peasantry of the country-fine, hardy, healthy, muscular looking beings, with rather a dash of riot about the eye, perhaps, but with honest, open, manly countenances, and sustaining themselves with native courage amid the dangers that beset them; and many of them are in fact either as guiltless as they appear, or their crimes have been committed under circumstances of excitation, which, in their own eyes at least, excuse the enormity. With regard to the

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former, there are one or two national peculiarities, and not of a very creditable kind, which account for their numbers.

The lower orders of the Irish, when their passions are once up on the right side, are proverbially brave, disinterested, and faithful; but reverse the object, give them a personal enemy to circumvent, or an animosity of their faction to gratify, and all the romantic generosity of their character vanishes. As partisans, they have no more idea of "fair play,” than a belligerent Indian of North America. In the prosecution of their interminable feuds, if they undertake to redress themselves, armed members will beset a single defenceless foe, and crush him without remorse; and in the same spirit of reckless vengeance, when they appeal to the law, they do not hesitate to include in one sweeping accusation, every friend or relative of the alleged offender, whose evidence might be of any avail upon his defence; and hence, for the real or imputed crime of one, whole families, men and women, and sometimes even children, are committed to prison, and made to pass through the ordeal of a public trial. Another prolific source of these wanton committals is a practice, pretty ancient in its origin, but latterly very much on the increase, of attempting to succeed on a question of civil right by the aid of a criminal prosecution. Thus the legality of a distress for rent will come on to be tried for the first time under the form of a charge for cow-stealing, or the regularity of a "notice to quit," upon an indictment for a forcible and felonious dispossession.*

*These vindictive or wanton prosecutions are becoming so frequent, and the immediate and consequential evils are so great for revenge in some lawless form or other is sure to follow-that the government of the country ought to interfere. The judges, when such cases come before them, never fail to express their indignation, and to warn the magistracy to be more cautious in granting committals without thoroughly sifting the truth of the depositions upon which they are grounded; but the guilty party, the malicious prosecutor, escapes unpunished. His crime is wilful perjury-but this is an offence against which, by a kind of general consent in Ireland, the laws are seldom or never put in force-and hence one of the causes of its frequency; but if prosecutors and their witnesses were made practically to understand that the law would hold them responsible for the truth of what they swear, if the several crown solicitors were instructed to watch the trials upon their respective circuits, and to make every flagrant case of perjury that appeared the subject of prompt and

LARRY CRONAN'S TRIAL.

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But even omitting these exceptions, I should say from my own observations that an Irish jail is, for the most part, delivered* · of remarkably fine children, particularly "the boys," though from the numbers at a single birth, it would be too much to expect that they all should be found "doing well." In many the vital question is quickly decided, while in others, and it is for these that one's interest is most raised, the chances of life and death appear so nicely balanced, that the most experienced observer can only watch the symptoms, without venturing to prognosticate the issue. Such, to give an apposite example, was the memorable instance of Larry Cronan.

Larry Cronan was a stout, hardy, Irish lad, of five-andtwenty. Like Saint Patrick, "he came of dacent people."+ He was a five-pound freeholder-paid his rent punctuallyvoted for his landlord, and against his conscience— seldom missed a mass, a fair, a wake, or a row- -hated, and occasionally cudgelled the tithe-proctor-loved his neighbor—had a

vigorous prosecution, some check might be given to what is now a monstrous and increasing mischief. The experiment, I understand, was made some time ago at Cork, and, though only in a single instance, with a very salutary effect. On the first day of the assizes, a by-stander, seeing a dock friend in danger, jumped upon the table to give him "the loan of an oath." His testimony turning out to be a tissue of the grossest perjury, the judge ordered a bill of indictment for the offence to be forthwith prepared and sent up to the grand jury. The bill was found, and in the course of the same day, the offender was tried, convicted, sentenced to transportation, put on board a convict-ship then ready to sail, and, by day-break next morning found himself bearing away before a steady breeze for Botany bay. The example had such an effect, that scarcely an alibi-witness was to be had for love or money during the remainder of the assizes.

* The word "delivered," is used here in reference to the fact that, in Great Britain and Ireland, the judges of assize, who go on circuit, from county to county, are bound to make "a general jail delivery," that is, to try every prisoner, in each place, unless the inquiry before the grand jury should ignore the bills of indictment, or, 66 a true bill" being found, the trial is deferred from some legal cause. Sometimes, of course, when the crown prosecutor declines trying the accused, the "nolle prosequi" opens the prison-door, and sometimes, when the offence is not very heavy the prisoner is liberated pro tem., on giving bail for his appearance, to be tried at the next assizes.-M.

t "Saint Patrick was a gentleman,

And came of dacent people."-Irish Song.