Giles's parish scarce the fifth part come to church, and we shall have
no religion at last."
Whilst justice has suffered something in respect of dignity from the
overbearing temper of judges to counsel, from collisions of the bench
with the bar, and from the mutual hostility of rival advocates, she has
at times sustained even greater injury from the jealousies and
altercations of judges. Too often wearers of the ermine, sitting on the
same bench, nominally for the purpose of assisting each other, have
roused the laughter of the bar, and the indignation of suitors, by their
petty squabbles. "It now comes to my turn," an Irish judge observed,
when it devolved on him to support the decision of one or the other of
two learned coadjutors, who had stated with more fervor than courtesy
altogether irreconcilable opinions--"It now comes to my turn to declare
my view of the case, and fortunately I can be brief. I agree with my
brother A, from the irresistible force of my brother B's arguments."
Extravagant as this case may appear, the King's Bench of Westminster
Hall, under Mansfield and Kenyon, witnessed several not less scandalous
and comical differences. Taking thorough pleasure in his work, Lord
Mansfield was not less industrious than impartial in the discharge of
his judicial functions; so long as there was anything for him to learn
with regard to a cause, he not only sought for it with pains but with a
manifest pleasure similar to that delight in judicial work which caused
the French Advocate, Cottu, to say of Mr. Justice Bayley: "Il s'amuse a
juger:" but notwithstanding these good qualities, he was often culpably
deficient in respect for the opinions of his subordinate coadjutors. At
times a vain desire to impress on the minds of spectators that his
intellect was the paramount power of the bench; at other times a
personal dislike to one of his _puisnes_ caused him to derogate from the
dignity of his court, in cases where he was especially careful to
protect the interests of suitors. With silence more disdainful than any
words could have been, he used to turn away from Mr. Justice Willes, at
the moment when the latter expected his chief to ask his opinion; and on
such occasions the indignant _puisne_ seldom had the prudence and nerve
to conceal his mortification. "I have not been consulted, and I will be
heard!" he once shrieked forth in a paroxysm of rage caused by
Mansfield's contemptuous treatment; and forty years afterwards Jeremy
Bentham, who was a witness of the insult and its effect, observed: "At
this distance of time--five-and-thirty or forty years--the feminine
scream issuing out of his manly frame still tingles in my ears."
Mansfield's overbearing demeanor to his _puisnes_ was reproduced with
less dignity by his successor; but Buller, the judge who wore ermine
whilst he was still in his thirty-third year, and who confessed that his
"idea of heaven was to sit at Nisi Prius all day, and to play whist all
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