A word remains to be said of the witnesses. Perhaps the rarest thing connected with the administration of justice all over the world, is an intelligent, perfectly impartial, clear-headed, discriminating witness; one who distinctly knows all he says, fully appreciates the effect of his words on the jury, and who has the disposition to submit what he knows solely to the law and the evidence. Men of experience are of opinion that an oath usually extracts the truth. We think so too; but it is truth as the witness understands it; facts as he has seen them; and opinions that, unconsciously to himself, have been warped by reports, sneers and malice. In a country of popular sway like this, there is not one man in a thousand, probably, who has sufficient independence of mind, or sufficient moral courage, to fancy he has seen even a fact, if it be of importance, differently from what the body of the community has seen it; and nothing is more common than to find witnesses colouring their testimony, lessening its force by feeble statements, or altogether abandoning the truth, under this pressure from without, in cases of a nature and magnitude to awake a strong popular feeling. It is by no means uncommon, indeed, to persuade one class of men, by means of this influence, that they did not see that which actually occurred before their eyes, or that they did see that which never had an existence. Under no circumstances do men congregate with less meritorious motives than in meeting in and around a court of justice. The object is victory, and the means of obtaining it will not always bear the light. The approaching Circuit and Oyer and Terminer of Duke’s was no exception to the rule; a crowd of evil passions, of sinister practices, and of plausible pretences, being arrayed against justice and the law, in two-thirds of the causes on the calendar. Then it was that Timms and saucy Williams, or Dick Williams, as he was familiarly termed by his associates, came out in their strength, playing off against each other the out-door practices of the profession. The first indication that the former now got of the very serious character of the struggle that was about to take place between them, was in the extraordinary civility of saucy Williams when they met in the bar-room of the inn they each frequented, and which had long been the arena of their antagonistical wit and practices. “I never saw you look better, Timms,” said Williams, in the most cordial manner imaginable; “on the whole, I do not remember to have ever seen you looking so well. You grow younger instead of older, every day of your life. By the way, do you intend to move on Butterfield against Town this circuit?” “I should be glad to do it, if you are ready. Cross-notices have been given, you know.”