may generally be said to be present in court, known to one or more persons who conceal it: the object is to bring it to light. Of the various tests of truth, with which the experience of lawyers have made them long familiar, we do not propose to speak. We intend to confine our remarks to those tests only which have become useful by reason of the evidence of interested parties being made admissible.

It sometimes happens that, when two persons, both interested, and both from their character or from circumstances equally unworthy of credit, contradict each other in their evidence, the truth, or the probable truth, may be elicited from their statements, by the process of comparing admissions inadvertently made by one against his interest, with admissions inadvertently made by the other against his interest. Sometimes, too, admis sions against apparent interest are not inadvertent, and are mixed up with false statements for the purpose of giving them a show of candour, or a tinge of honesty. Admissions often supply a clue which may lead to the discovery of the truth, and they are sometimes elicited from a party by effective crossexamination, or by a concluding examination by the judge himself, acting on materials elicited by the counsel in their examination of the parties or witnesses.

Points of this sort have always been of especial importance in the County Courts, in which, from their first establishment, the parties interested have been examined as witnesses. They become more important, because available in a more important judicial sphere, from the time a change of the law rendered the evidence of interested parties admissible in the Superior Courts.

In the County Courts, too, these points were, from the first, of great importance, because questions of fact have always in those courts been generally decided by the judges, the parties seldom having recourse to juries. A judge who can, with sufficient skill, collate admissions made by interested parties, each against himself, so as to arrive at the truth, or probable truth, might find it difficult to suggest, much more to explain to a jury such a course of reasoning, and impossible to direct them, or even give them effectual assistance in the application

of it to the questions under investigation. As it may be thought that some of the judges of the County Courts have derived from their past experience, so it may be considered certain that the judges of the Superior Courts will derive from their future experience, powers of analysing evidence, the greater from their minds not being disturbed in the application of the appropriate tests, by the necessity of finding words by means of which to express to juries the difficult points to be considered. It may be hoped that some of our judges may now have an opportunity of becoming, in the history of their profession, the rivals of Sir William Scott, the great master of the art of discovering truth through the veil of falsehood. Lolip

-If we might venture a suggestion to the learned persons for whom we are now contemplating a new sphere of utility and fame, we would suggest the necessity for curbing any feelings of impatience, leading to too early an expression of the effect which is being made by evidence on the mind. From this fault, juries have been usually free, by reason of their habitually passive demeanour. It is a fault to which an active-minded judge may be found very liable, unless he is most careful to avoid it. The more immediate bad effect of impatience or hastiness on the part of a judge may be that, at an early part of the trial, parties or witnesses may be exposed to censure, which further investigation or reflection may show them not to deserve. The more real bad effect is the embarrassment produced on the mind of the judge himself, if, before having heard all the evidence, he makes known the impressión made on him by a part of it. A judge, who too soon makes known what is passing in his mind, may not only raise on the one side hopes, and on the other side fears, either of which may needlessly embarrass the party subject to them in the conduct of the cause, but may impose on himself the embarrassing necessity, firstly, of rectifying expressed opinions, and, secondly, of finding terms by means of which fitly to express the change which his opinions undergo. It is an undignified position for a judge to find hims self obliged to unsay what he has spoken from the bench, and injurious to his reputation to be often obliged to do so; but, moreover, the thing itself is so difficult to do well as materially

to impair the efficiency of a judge in the particular cause in which it becomes necessary. The process is hardly consistent with the calmness necessary for the right conduct of a judicial inquiry. The last act of the trial, the delivery of the judgment, when all the proofs and arguments have been heard, and considered, is, generally speaking, the earliest period at which a judge can safely give utterance to his opinions or his feelings, and then, so far as is right for the purpose of making known the grounds of his judgment, his place is plainly and fearlessly to declare his opinions and his feelings. We do not say that exceptions will not occur to the rule we are insisting on, that a judge must carefully guard himself against every disposition to impatience. Roguish claims are sometimes made, and roguish defences are sometimes, attempted, which cannot be expected to receive from a man of right feeling any other regard than that of scorn, or any other treatment than that of being summarily crushed. Cases of this sort happen from time to time, but they are comparatively of rare occurrence, and the safest course for a judge is to be slow to perceive them. It is a fatal error to be too ready to stop causes. Injustice, or the sense of injustice, thus caused, may be irreparable. On the other hand, a cause stopped on safe grounds is an excellent precedent, deterring other suitors from attempts to practise imposition on courts of justice.

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It will be perceived that we anticipate great advantages to the judicial character from the practice, if it should prevail, of dispensing with juries. We are also sanguine enough to hope for still greater advantages to the character of the English advocate. Sophistry, passion, apart from reason, rhetoric without logic, will no longer be effective weapons. Fluency, verbiage, iteration, will be valueless. Clamour, and abuse of parties and witnesses, and personal display, will not serve as substitutes for argument. Those men who, now at the Bar, adorn their profession by their real eloquence, their skill in argument, by their appeals to the feelings, when the feelings are fairly interested, by language deriving real strength from its gravity and moderation, will meet with more ample rewards and honours, and will find many imitators. Then will be felt the truth of the prin

ciple, too often unheeded, that the advocate is properly the assistant of the judge, bound to say all that he can fairly say for the party for whom he is retained, but not justified in attempting to mislead the Court or jury by the distortion of facts, or by any artifice inconsistent with a regard for truth. Those persons who, in the struggle for success, have hitherto sometimes more or less habitually yielded to the temptation to say that for their clients which a man would not, consistently with honesty, say for himself, will, when addressing a single judge trying questions of fact, find that such practices must be given up, as unavailing in each particular case, and as destructive of the character of the advocates who have recourse to them. We feel assured, not without some experience to warrant the assertion, that an advocate, properly qualified for his office, will find his services useful to his clients, in proportion to the candour with which, urging all that may be fairly urged, he abstains from addressing to the Court arguments tainted with falsehood. It is no fanciful contrast to draw, that on the one side of the high-minded pleader of causes, the advocate, in the true sense of the word, who, scorning unworthy artifice, renders good service in the administration of justice; and, on the other side, of the mere hireling, who, with no other object than that of obtaining verdicts, whether rightly or wrongly, habitually distorts the facts, and is an unworthy disturber of what, but for him, might be the pure stream of justice. We believe that the first class is, in these times, becoming more numerous, the latter class more rare. We firmly believe that the more frequent trials of questions of fact by experienced judges, instead of inexperienced jurymen, become, the sooner will the class of unworthy hirelings vanish from our tribunals, and the sooner shall we see realized the theory, that the advocate is an assistant judge. Need we dilate on the consequent advantages to the judge, to the litigants, and to the community?

We have yet one suggestion to make to the learned judges; the importance of a summing up, a statement of the grounds of each decision. We have reason to believe that the suitors will be better satisfied, if a judge, who, deciding questions of fact, will state the grounds of his decision, than if he pronounces

a bare “Judgment for the plaintiff," or "Judgment for the defendant," like the verdict of a jury, for the plaintiff, or for the defendant. But we should not have adverted to this point, were it not that we have still greater reason for believing that the losing party likes to know why he loses, and is pleased if he can gather from the judgment, that all facts and arguments, making apparently in his favour, have received due consideration. But this, and similar points, occupy doubtless the thoughts of those who have now cast on them a new class of duties. To the discharge of those duties they will bring those qualities which make them worthy of their high position, rendered still higher and more useful by their becoming now, more than ever, the real arbiters of questions and disputes arising among the inhabitants of this great country. J. F.

ART. III.-LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX: HIS PROFESSIONAL AND PARLIAMENTARY CAREER.1

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(Continued from Vol. LII. No. CIV. p. 40.)

ARLIAMENT having met on the 1st of February, 1816, Mr. Brougham, in the ranks of the opposition, was now, by reason of his experience, bolder and more self-possessed, if

! We would, at the outset, correct an error into which we find we had inadvertently fallen with reference to the birth-place of Lord Brougham. The reader may recollect that we, misled by vague statements, and misapprehending expressions which were reported by the public press to have fallen from the lips of Lord Brougham himself, considered his lordship to be a native of Westmoreland. In this conclusion we were mistaken. We have the satisfaction of thinking that the following letter, dated 31st August, 1854, and addressed to "the Editor of the LAW MAGAZINE," precludes, for the future, the possibility of any doubt as to Lord Brougham's birth-place.

Sir, In a note on page 2nd of your last number you say, that Lord Brougham long ago satisfactorily settled the question as to the place of his birth, by his having stated at York, in 1830, that he was a Westmorelandman by birth. Permit me respectfully to say, that it is an indisputable

VOL. LIII. NO. CVI.

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