baser sort oí lawyers, whose convict clerics, learned in every trick and quibble of the code, enjoyed nothing so much as bringing off the skin of his teeth a client of their own kid ney. They had access to the gaols, where they worked up cases on principles of their own; they played the mischief with witnesses, never scrupling to put a dangerous one out of the way; they swore hard, and would slip out of court while a trial was in progress, to buy, for a pint of rum, witnesses to character who had never set eyes on the prisoner till .they beheld him in the dock. A finished specimen of the convict clerk was one Williams, who had been an attorney in Liverpool. While in practice there, he did a desperate piece of forgery by which the inheritance of a considerable property was altered. So gross was the case that Williams was sentenced to transportation for life. His troubles were at an end, however, when he descended in Botany Bay, for he was as signed forthwith to a young solicitor named Allen. Allen had been starving for want of a practice, but from the day that Williams en tered his office business began to pour in upon him. Williams conducted it all behind the curtain, and was soon taken into part nership by his grateful master. His wife joined him, and, while his crime and convic tion in England were still fresh in the public mind, he was driving a very neat turn-out in Sidney. That other adept, James Watt, was his bosom friend; and it was Williams who prepared the case for the defence when the able editor was put upon his trial. "A sink of corruption and iniquity, "de testable profligacy and disgusting filth." are among the expressions used by the chronicler already referred to in his description of "the whole system of the law courts, and the ac tual state of the Legal Profession in New South Wales." The jury-box and its occupants, on the oc casion of almost any trial of importance, were a sight grotesque enough to provoke the humor of a Swift. Trial by jury was intro duced experimentally, with the objects of "elevating the tone of public feeling, and of holding out to the convicts an inducement to
reform. These objects the Government set about realizing in the topsy-turvy fashion which, upon paper, seems an anticipation of the Gilbertian form of comic opera. The "tone of public feeling" was to be "elevated" by the admission of felon jurors to the panel, and the old "leg" in trouble was to be "in duced to reform" by being privately assured by counsel of the stamp of Williams that the "right sort of men" would be put into the box. The right sort of men" were the brotherhood of the felonry, and of such was the jury of New South Wales. Ex-murder ers, burglars, swindlers, forgers, grown into Carlyle's respectability of gighood and the possession of property, took their places in the box, to hold out, in the teeth of evidence, for the acquittal of an old friend, or for the conviction of a prisoner whose innocence was so plain that, as gaol-birds, they could not but regard him with contempt. There was no persuading them to convict the guilty, or to acquit the innocent. A convict, well known in the colony, was charged with the murder of his wife. The prosecution produced a case without a flaw, and the judge gave the jury to understand that they could not decently acquit the pris oner. But there were four "legs" in the box, who told the foreman "they'd be d—d if they hanged the wife-killer. One of them pulled off his boots in the jurors'-room, and swore he would eat shoe-leather till the rest of the jury were of his mind. He added, by way of encouraging them, that he had "eaten leather for a fortnight in the bush." Verdict: Not guilty. On the same day an emancipated felon was arraigned before the Supreme Court. He challenged one juror only in the box. Asked to explain his objection, he said he "didn't know exactly—the gentleman was quite un known to him—he didn't like his appear ance." This was the only juror in the box who had not done time. Convicted cattle-stealers were considered capital jurors for cattle-stealing cases. A famous cattle-lifter was summoned on the jury in a case of this kind. He was out on bail on a charge of horse-stealing, but that'
