Sketches from the Parliament House.
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SKETCHES FROM THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE. V. LORD RUTHERFURD CLARK. By A. Wood Renton. LIKE Baron Moncrieff, Lord Rutherfurd Clark is connected by descent with the profession both of theology and of law. His father was an eminent divine, the Rev. Thomas Clark, D.D.; and his uncle, the Right Hon. Andrew Rutherfurd, was a sen ator of the College of Justice. Mr. Clark was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1849; was sheriff of Inverness, Hadding ton, and Berwick successively, SolicitorGeneral for Scotland, and Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. After a distinguished forensic career, he was made a Lord Ordi nary of the Court of Session, and in time by progress of seniority reached the bench in the Second Division of the Inner House. Lord Rutherfurd Clark was as advocate, and is as judge, the Huddleston of Scotland. He was reputed to be the best speaker, and is credibly asserted to have made the largest income among his contemporaries at the bar. His forensic skill was unquestioned and un questionable. His gift of exposition and his independence of judgment make his deci sions well worth reading; and the only judi cial weaknesses that he displays are a ten dency to argue, and a certain constitutional indolence which prompts him to deliver judg ment in the simple formula, "I concur." Reg. v. Jessie Maclachlan (1862) and Reg. v. Pritchard (1865), the leading causes ce-lebns in which Lord Rutherfurd Clark was engaged as counsel, have already been no ticed in the preceding paper. It may be pos sible, however, to refer to them again without traversing the old ground to any great extent. On the night of 7th July, 1862, Jessie Macpherson, the housekeeper of a Mr. Fleming, an accountant residing in Sandyford Place, Glasgow, was murdered in her
bedroom. Her body was found next morn ing lying on the floor, and so mangled that it was evident both that the murder had been committed with a hatchet and that the deceased had offered a desperate resistance. The accountant and his family were at the seaside on the night in question; and the only inmates of the house were Mr. Fleming, his father, an old man of eighty-seven years of age, and a Mrs. Jessie Maclachlan, who before her marriage had been a servant to the Flemings, and who was on most friendly terms with the deceased woman, Macpher son. Suspicion not unnaturally fell upon old Mr. Fleming. He was arrested and im prisoned. But it was soon discovered that some plate, which had been missing since the night of the 7th July, had been pawned by Mrs. Maclachlan under the alias of " Mary Macdonald," and she was at once fixed upon by the Crown as the proper object of a criminal prosecution. Old Fleming was re leased, and examined as a witness on behalf of the Crown. The case came on for trial at the Glasgow Autumn Assizes, 1862. Mr. (afterwards Lord) Gifford, then advocate de pute, prosecuted; Mr. Clark defended; the late Lord Deas presided. We cannot refrain from pausing to make a few comments upon this great judge. The son of humble par ents, Judge Deas raised himself at the bar and ultimately to the bench, by virtue of sheer hard work. He had great intellectual gifts, — a faculty of homely yet persuasive speech, a power of grasping and welding into intelligible shape masses of complicated facts, insight into men and things, and an accurate knowledge — laboriously acquired — of legal principles and practice. His want of refinement was often mistaken for mere
