London Legal Letter. to a charge of eccentricity or to the sus picion of being a mere thought-brooder. And so for the present au revoir." Then the N. P. Ghost glided from me like a bit of summer vapor, clean through the stalwart form of the unobservant janitor; while I, as the clocks tolled the knell of parting day, did proceed, like the elegiac ploughman of Thomas Gray, to homeward
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plod my weary way, leaving the Bench and Bar to blankness and to me; but giving op portunity for noting down for the GREEN Bag, beloved of Bench and Bar, the ghostly in terview. And I can never again revisit the place of interview without paraphrasing Poe's Raven, and saying, " And my soul from out that Shadow that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted never more."
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. London, June i, 1895. THERE are two features of the criminal practice in England which must excite the curiosity and wonder of the American lawyer. One is that an accused person, under indictment for felony, cannot testify in his own be half; and the other is that there is no appeal from the ver dict of a jury or the sentence of a judge. If it is a matter affecting his pocket, merely, a litigant may go into the witness box; but if his honor, his reputation, his personal liberty and even his life are at stake, his lips are sealed. It is true that Mrs. Maybrick, under indictment for the murder of her husband, did attempt to testify, but what she said was received merely as an ex parte statement. This state ment was made against the advice of her counsel, Sir Charles Russell, now the Lord Chief Justice, and not a word was addressed to her by him, or by counsel for the Crown in cross-examination. After her plaintive and pathetic statement was made, she sat down in the dock in painful silence, and it is generally considered by members of the Bar that her action in attempting to give her version of the circumstances attending her husband's death preju diced her case. Efforts have been made to remove the bar of silence, but the opposition at present is insurmountable. An innocent man, it is contended, is safe in the hands of his counsel, and a guilty man would abuse the privilege. This is, practically, what was urged against the change in the civil practice forty years ago, and although its falsity has been proved, it will doubtless be years before the ad vocates of an equally liberal construction of the criminal law are successful. Fortunately, when the Criminal Amend ment Act was passed, about ten years age, every person charged with an offense under that act was made a com petent, but not a compellable, witness on every hearing at every stage of the charge, except of course at the inquiry before the grand jury. Thus it happened that Oscar Wilde was twice a witness in the recent criminal proceedings against him which have startled and shocked the commu nity. No better test could have been made of the propriety or impropriety of putting the accused into the box. He was an educated, versatile, quick-witted and unprincipled man. His cross-examination abounded in epigrams and aphorisms, and his bright sallies and the skill with which he parried attack and made sharp thrusts in return, brought
down a house which otherwise seemed weighted with the melancholy and gravity of the situation. And yet, notwith standing his absolute and unequivocal denial on direct examination of the crime imputed to him, and the brilliancy of his self-defense on cross-examination, the jury refused to believe him, and had but little hesitation, apparently, in arriving at a verdict of guilty. That the judge who pre sided at the trial shared their views, is manifest from the fact that he imposed the maximum penalty allowed by the statute. If, therefore, this accomplished scholar and clever and experienced man of the world was not able to impose upon twelve common jurors, it would hardly seem that there is much left in the objection to opening the door of the witness box to persons accused of other crimes on the ground that the privilege of testifying in their own behalf is likely to result in a miscarriage of justice. The other defect of the English criminal practice, that of denying the right of appeal to an accused and convicted person, is likely to be much sooner remedied. At present the only resource a person who considers himself wrongfully convicted has is, theoretically, an application to Her Majesty the Queen. Practically this means an appeal to the Home Secretary, upon whose advice Her Majesty in variably acts. It is not necessary that the Home Secretary should be a lawyer, and, with1n a very recent period, a Home Secretary to whom an unusual number of appeals from convictions, which were not approved of by the people and concerning the correctness of which well quali fied lawyers had grave doubts, were made, was a layman. He had not the time to examine the voluminous records that were submitted to him in each case, and even if he could have patiently gone through them, he lacked the training necessary to arrive at a correct conclu sion. He was therefore compelled to rely upon the advice of his subordinates, to whom the matters were referred. Doubtless his predecessors had acted in the same way, and it is probable that Mr. Asquith, who is technically a Q. C. as well as officially the Queen's Counsel in these matters, must refer them to others for investigation. But the people are beginning to see the impropriety of forcing an over worked political official to become a judge of last resort in criminal matters, and accordingly, for the second time, a bill is before Parliament to provide for the appointment of
