DAYS IN COURT.* THOUGH it is now a century and

a quarter since our American cousins severed the "last link" which bound them to the Old Country, two ties, impalpable yet indestructible, unite the great Republic of the West with the little island in the North Sea. We speak the same language, and we live under the same legal system. Law in the United States has developed so much on the same lines as here at home that American decisions are cited in the Supreme Court of Judicature and before the House of Lords. Our text-books are used in the American law schools, and American treatises are essential to the equipment of every English lawyer's library. A

common esprit de corps animates the legal profession on

both sides of the Atlantic, from the highest grades of the profession downwards; the same habits of thought are fostered, and the procedure and the laws of evidence are still substantially the same. Mr. Francis Wellman's entertaining book on advocacy will be studied with the same profit by the English law student as by the young Americans for whose benefit it was originally composed, and its maxims are enforced by examples from Curran and Scarlett, from Sir Henry Hawkins and Sir Charles Russell, quite as freely as from Clay or Lincoln or Rufus Choate.

All the same, we are reminded from the outset of the great distinction between the practice of the law in the two countries. In the United States there is no hard-and-fast line

between what are rather invidiously known " on this side " as the upper and lower branches. Mr. Wellman's opening chapter is devoted to a contrast between the advocate and

the "office lawyer," and it is instructive as showing that the barrier between barrister and solicitor which is here main- tained by law and custom is being slowly built up in America by nature and common-sense. The two branches of the pro-

fession, says Mr. Wellman, require not merely different but opposite faculties, which cannot well co-exist in the same

individual ; and he notes a growing tendency in the larger cities of his own country, especially in New York, to adopt, perhaps unconsciously, the English system. It would seem, indeed, that the more subtle distinction between " silk " and " stuff " is gradually establishing itself :—

" In New York City," we are told, " there are about twenty-five or more advocates who devote themselves almost exclusively to trial work ; many of these seldom see any of their witnesses, but for this purpose have junior trial lawyers associated with them. The junior trial lawyers do all or moat of the work of the prepara- tion for the trial itself. In this way by far the best results are obtained both for the client and for the Courts."

The personal supervision of the witness by counsel in the

sense of "taking his proof " is entirely foreign to our legal etiquette, though in cases where everything depends on the credibility of the plaintiff or defendant the prudent barrister will generally insist on a personal interview. In America this is classed by Mr. Wellman among the most necessary of an advocate's duties. Scarcely less strange to our notions is his dictum that "before the trial actually begins perhaps the most important part of an advocate's whole work is the selection of his jury it matters not how good a case one may have,—unless he selects the proper kind of men to decide it, he is bound to have a mistrial or a defeat." And in Massachusetts, where the right of cross-examining the jury before they are sworn is strictly limited, the unfortunate advocates " have to rely entirely upon the personal appearance of the jurors and upon their examination of the jury list before the term opens Any one having an important case usually has the whole list of jurors looked up by some detective agency." Mr. Wellman makes the suggestion that there is no better way to study a jury than to serve on one :—

" I have often thought that any man who is going to become an advocate would wisely serve many terms as a Juror before he is admitted to the Bar and thus becomes disqualified. In any event it is a wise practice for beginners to talk with their jurymen after their cases have been decided, and thus learn, by experience, the juryman's point of view of a case. I think it would amuse the inexperienced trial lawyer if he could overhear the deliberations of the jurors before whom he has presented his facts."

Mr. Wellman in his apprentice days was given a coign of vantage in the New York Court House from which the voices of the jurymen were audible as they considered their verdict.

• Days in Court; or. The Salle Arts of Great Advocates. By Francis L. Wellman. of the New York Bar. London: Macmillan and Co. [8a. 6d. nett

On one occasion they were discussing a case where a lady had

fallen on a side-walk and had sued the city for personal injuries. He heard the foreman begin in pompous tones :

"Now, gentlemen, before we consider the evidence there are

some important questions of law for us to decide," when some one loudly called out : " Oh, to hell with the law. How much will we give the girl P " Anxious to ascertain how the jury in another case had returned a flagrantly unjust verdict, Mr.

Wellman received the following answer: " We didn't believe the witnesses on either side, so we made up our minds to disregard all the evidence and decide the case on its merits." American juries are evidently ticklish cattle, though most

barristers could parallel the experience just quoted. An English lady, we are reminded by our author, once asked the then Chief Justice (we imagine it was Lord Coleridge) what was essential for victory in Court. "First you need a good case," was the reply, " then you need good evidence, then you need good witnesses, then you need a good Judge, then you

need good luck." To these requisites Mr. Wellman would add a good Court manner. The "Jury droop" of Sir Fitzroy Kelly has been immortalised in Little Dorrit, and the elder members of the present generations can remember the exquisite cajolery of Mr. Henry Hawkins, Q.C., and that tender solicitude for the jury's comfort which Baron Haddlestone exhibited both at the Bar and on the Bench.

Sir John Holker, though in a different fashion, was inimitable in his power of identifying himself with the good men and true in the box, and we cannot resist quoting from these pages the classic picture of Mr. Rufus

Choate in Court:— "The appeal to the jury began long before the final argument ; it began when he first took his seat before them and looked into their eyes. He generally contrived to got his seat as near them as was convenient, if possible having his table close to the bar, in front of their seats, and separated from them only by a narrow space for passage. There he sat, calm, contemplative, in the midst of occasional noise and confusion, solemnly unruffled; always making some little headway either with the jury, the court, or the witness, never doing a single thing which could by possibility lose him favour ; ever doing some little thing to win it ; smiling benignantly upon the counsel when a good thing was said; smiling sympathisingly upon the jury when any juryman laughed or made an enquiry; exercising from the very first moment an indefinable sway and influence upon the minds of all before and around him. His manner to the jury was that of a friend, a friend solicitous to help them in their tedious investigation; never that of an expert combatant, intent on victory, and looking upon them only as instruments for its attainment."

In America the same decay is overtaking forensic oratory, we are told, as has befallen it in the English Courts. And to the impassioned eloquence of Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster has succeeded the clear, logical, luminous statement, combined with ingenuity and judgment, together with a happy facility for dealing with tangled or complicated facts. The speeches of American, and in this we include Canadian,

advocates are still somewhat florid and ornate according to English standards, but they are toning down with every decade.

Of the good stories with which the book abounds we have space for only one. Mr. Edwin James, of unhappy memory, after being disbarred at home, practised for a time in the

States, and appeared shortly after the end of the Civil War against a soldier who was suing to recover a loan of eighteen hundred dollars. " When did you loan it P " said James tc the plaintiff. "In 1866." "Where did you get it?" "1 earned it, Sir." " When did you earn it P " " During the war, Sir." " What was your occupation during the war P" " Fighting, Sir":— "Up to this point the case had been somewhat in doubt, but the jury turned at once to the side of the soldier who, in the words of his counsel, had guarded their liberties and risked his life to save the nation. ' That war speech of yours did it,' said James the next day to his adversary, and it was all the fault of my cross-examination.' ' Ah,' was the reply, 'the mistake that you made was that you didn't find out that my client was a Confederate soldier, or you would have changed the whole verdict.'" Mr. Wellman was well advised in giving permanent form to these lectures. But the book would be the better for an index, or at least a table of contents, and he makes one slip

which should be corrected in a future edition,—John Clerk of Eldin who defended Deacon Brodie is a very different

person from John Scott, Earl of Eldon. The Sir Albert Pell, we may add, whom Brougham credited with "polio- queues," as distinguished from eloquence, is better known to English readers as the Serjeant than as the Knight.