irritability toward counsel both in criminal and civil cases. It must be very exasperating to an experi enced judge to be forced to sit and appear patient while listening to an exposition of the most elemen tary principles, and to the " damnable iteration "of matters which would be sufficiently impressed by one telling. We once heard a lawyer explain to the New York Court of Appeals, for half an hour, the inferiority of negative to positive evidence. If we were a judge of that court, and any lawyer should so much as open his lips to say that the testimony of the witnesses who did not hear the engine bell ring or the whistle sound, was weaker than the testimony of those who did hear it, we should find it very diffi cult 10 restrain ourselves from throwing an inkstand at his head, although it may be conceded that it would be more dignified to fold our gown about us and stalk off the bench. Then again, it must be extremely irritating to be compelled to listen to genuine wit on the part of advocates and appear stupid and as if we did not understand it. It is one of the unwritten laws of the bench that counsel ought not thus to try the court All jokes should be sub mitted in the printed brief alone, and there counsel may dare to be as funny as they can. (Jiolmes — for fear Mr. Dana may take us up. ) This is really a very foolish regulation. Law is certainly no more serious than religion, and when the clergyman says a good thing in his sermon, it is permitted, 1ndeed he expects, that the hearers will rustle in the pews and smile. He usually pauses at this point, mops his marble brow, and takes a ladylike sip of water. But judging is certainly a very irritating business. It must irritate a judge terribly to see that counsel take it for granted that he does not know anything, and still more to be obliged to confess to himself that the inference is only too well founded. It must irritate a judge to hear counsel pretending to quarrel, knowing that it is merely Pickwickian, and that they will drink together most amicably at recess. It must irritate a judge to hear counsel floundering awkwardly in some matter with which he happens to have been perfectly familiar before said counsel was born. It must irritate a judge to hear counsel cite such-and-such a case as the "leading case," when he knows that it is founded on a case of his own twenty years earlier It must irritate a judge to be cau tioned how he decides this case — that the eyes of the community, and particularly of the counsel are upon him. It must irritate a judge to have to listen hour after hour, and day after day, and year after year to interminable beatings of the same old straw. And so on ad infinitum. But the Bench has certain oppor tunities for vengeance. Thus Mr. O'Conor, who was too apt to lecture the court, and caution them about the awful consequences of deciding against his
view of the law — which, of course, in the nature of things must always have been the right view — irri tated the Court of Appeals (or at least Judge Allen) in the famous Tweed case about cumulative sen tences, and Judge Allen irritated that great lawyer a great deal more by quoting from a former argument of his in another case to the direct contrary, and adopting that as the infallible rule of law. Mr. O'Conor would not speak to the court as they passed by, for a long, long time. We must not be too hard upon our judges. They are not angels, not even Jobs. Frequently when they appear im patient, and are really irritated, it is because of a manifest waste of public time by unwise counsel. It may be that in the multitude of counsel there is safety; there certainly is tediousness. As we gen erally kick our judges up to the bench in order to get rid of their rivalry at the bar, and divide their busi ness, we should be very long-suffering with them. If poets and judges are an irritabile genus, we must put up with them patiently
"Conv1nced Aga1nst H1s W1ll." — The inter esting editorial writer of the New York " Law Journal " quotes : — "A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still." Now a man cannot be " convinced against his will," and if he could be, he would not be "of the same opinion." What the poet said was : — "He that complies against his will Is of his own opinion still."
NOTES OF CASES. Novel Cla1ms of L1bel. — There have been two recent singular complaints of libel in the English courts. One was by a Mr. Monson, who complained that his figure was represented in a waxwork show. Of this the " London Law Journal " says : — "Though members of the Royal Family, His Holiness the Pope, and His Eminence Cardinal Vaughan stand, by their counterfeit presentments, in the same place, and, as we learn on the same authority, submit without complaint to thus furnish instruction to the public and profit to the proprietor, Mr. Monson's wrath is not assuaged by the pre cedent, or soothed by the company which it secures him. He breathes of wax and threatens litigation; but will the law avail for his redress? To make the image of a man in wax is, beyond doubt, a cause of action if the melting the wax before a fire, or sticking pins into its substance, should cause the man himself to fade away or suffer wounds; but this species of damage has now for some centuries past been classed as too remote. It is plain libel, too, to pic
