The letter of the Act, however, only gives the poor prisoner a solicitor and counsel and a copy of the depositions. No doubt the best is done for him that can be under these conditions, but it is not the same quality of legal defence that a rich prisoner can obtain for money. Naturally, counsel who take these cases are not men of the greatest experience, and the defending of prisoners is a difficult branch of the act of advocacy. A story is told of a Scotch prisoner, who had economically pretended he was without means in order to save counsel's fees, calling out in agony as he heard his defender addressing the jury in a very unconvincing manner: "Young mon, if ye'll sit doon at once I'll give ye a feeve poun' note." Although the Act is not everything it might be, yet, undoubtedly, it is a move in the right direction and capable, under sympathetic administration, of doing much good. The Criminal Appeal Act of 1907 has proved itself of such value already that it becomes the more amazing to read of the difficulty experienced in getting it on the Statute Book. All manner of legal interests were banded together against it. One of the two learned king's counsel who moved its rejection in the House of Commons solemnly declared that the cost of taking shorthand notes and the expense of bringing a prisoner to London from the north of England appalled him and, in his view, "the machinery of the Bill must inevitably break down ... it was absolutely unworkable." The second uttered mournful prophecies of ruin: "to substitute," he said, "this most costly machinery for the present system would deprive our criminal Courts of their principal glory in the deep sense of care, caution, and responsibility which was pervading the atmosphere of every criminal Court in the country at the present time." Many people seemed to think that juries knowing there was an appeal would take less pains and care in their duties. But a jury in a criminal case is a body of citizens called together on a special and solemn occasion to do a serious duty and the fact of appeal or no appeal would have little effect on their conduct. It was the slackness of some of the judges rather than the possible carelessness of juries that wanted looking to, especially in Courts of country Quarter Sessions where the shorthand writer and the Court of Criminal Appeal were bound to exercise a good influence. Nothing tends to good judicial work more certainly than publicity, a shorthand note, and a strong Court of Appeal easily available.