Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt:... overruled, hear the objecting counsel in loud and supercilious manner demand that his exception shall be noted; and if scanning the court room the feet of the bar on the bar tables are the most prominent objects, and these, though not at all diminutive, scarcely discernible in the smoke that rises from cob pipes and villainous cigars, it will require no painter to depict the disgust that such a scene will excite. For such a court neither bar nor public will have any respect, neither does it deserve any. Mr. President, both sketches have been true to life in some of our greatest States; they are not thefigments of disordered imagination. Thank God we have about left the last to a merited oblivion. I presume you have never seen it in this grand "Old Dominion,' ' and doubtless you never will. When We consider that it is in the person of the mlsi prius judge we expect the dignity of our courts to be preserved; that it is to him we look to preserve at all times the true relation between litigants, counsel, witnesses and jurors in his court; that he is expected to see that crime is punished in his circuit and the innocent protected, notwithstanding the clamor of the rabble; when we demand of him expeditious trials, and to track the law, though surrounded by attorneys burning with zeal and eloquence for their clients, and to hold on to the golden cord of justice in all the mazes and labyrinths into which astute and able counsel seek to lead him, do I announce any heresy when I say that the nisi prius judge ought to be no less learned and equipped than the supreme judge, and that the public weal would be better subserved by having him even an abler, firmer and rearlier man than the appellate judge? If such he always were, it...