“Good God, man—it cannot be possible that you count on such assistants in a trial for a human life!” “Not count on it, ’Squire Dunscomb! I count on it from an action of trespass on the case, to this indictment—count on it, quite as much, and a good deal more rationally, than you count on your law and evidence. Didn’t I carry that heavy case _for_ the railroad company on that principle altogether? The law was lead against us they say, and the facts were against us; but the verdict was in our favour. That’s what I call practising law!” “Yes; I remember to have heard of that case, and it was always a wonder with the bar how you got along with it. Had it been a verdict _against_ a corporation, no one would have thought anything of it—but to carry a bad case _for_ a company, now-a-days, is almost an unheard-of thing.” “You are quite right, sir. I can beat any railroad in the State, with a jury of a neighbourhood, let the question or facts be what they may; but, in this instance, I beat the neighbourhood, and all through the faith the jury had in _me_. It’s a blessed institution, this of the jury, ’Squire Dunscomb!—no doubt it makes us the great, glorious, and free people that we are!” “If the bench continue to lose its influence as it has done, the next twenty years will see it a curse of the worst character. It is now little more than a popular cabal in all cases in the least calculated to awaken popular feeling or prejudice.” “There’s the rub in this capital case of ours. Mary Monson has neglected popularity altogether; and she is likely to suffer for it.” “Popularity!” exclaimed Dunscomb, in a tone of horror—“and this in a matter of life and death! What are we coming to in the law, as well as in politics! No public man is to be found of sufficient moral courage, or intellectual force, to stem this torrent; which is sweeping away everything before it. But in what has our client failed, Timms?” “In almost everything connected with this one great point; and what vexes me is her wonderful power of pleasing, which is completely thrown away. ’Squire Dunscomb, I would carry this county for Free Sile or ag’in it, with that lady to back me, as a wife.” “What, if she should refuse to resort to popular airs and graces?” “I mean, of course, she aiding and abetting. I would give the world, now, could we get the judge into her company for half an hour. It would make a friend of him; and it is still something to have a friend in the judge in a criminal case.” “You may well say ‘_still_,’ Timms; how much longer it will be so, is another matter. Under the old system it would be hopeless to expect so much complaisance in a judge; but I will not take it on myself to say what a people’s judge will not do.”