The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney | Page 5

the fact of Judge A ----
being on the bench. He is usually considered severe, and if exculpatory
evidence fail, your husband may run the risk of being--transported." A
word of more terrific import, with which I was about to conclude, stuck
unuttered in my throat "Have you employed an attorney?" I added.
"No; I have done nothing as yet, but apply to you, to beg of you to be
my husband's counsel."
"Well, that must be looked to. I shall speak to a local agent, to prepare
and work out the case; and we shall all do our utmost to get an acquittal.
To-morrow I will call on your husband in prison."

Many thanks were offered by the unfortunate lady, and she withdrew.
I am not going to inflict on the reader a detailed account of this
remarkable trial, which turned, as barristers would say, on a beautiful
point of circumstantial evidence. Along with the attorney, a sharp
enough person in his way, I examined various parties at the hotel, and
made myself acquainted with the nature of the premises. The more we
investigated, however, the more dark and mysterious--always
supposing Harvey's innocence--did the whole case appear. There was
not one redeeming trait in the affair, except Harvey's previous good
character; and good character, by the law of England, goes for nothing
in opposition to facts proved to the satisfaction of a jury. It was
likewise most unfortunate that A ---- was to be the presiding judge.
This man possessed great forensic acquirements, and was of spotless
private character; but, like the majority of lawyers of that day--when it
was no extraordinary thing to hang twenty men in a morning at
Newgate--he was a staunch stickler for the gallows as the only effectual
reformer and safeguard of the social state. At this time he was but
partially recovered from a long and severe indisposition, and the traces
of recent suffering were distinctly apparent on his pale and passionless
features.
Harvey was arraigned in due form; the evidence was gone carefully
through; and everything, so far as I was concerned, was done that man
could do. But at the time to which I refer, counsel was not allowed to
address the court on behalf of the prisoner--a practice since introduced
from Scotland--and consequently I was allowed no opportunity to draw
the attention of the jury to the total want of any direct evidence of the
prisoner's guilt. Harvey himself tried to point out the unlikelihood of
his being guilty; but he was not a man gifted with dialectic qualities,
and his harangue fell pointless on the understandings of the twelve
common-place individuals who sat in the jury-box. The judge finally
proceeded to sum the evidence, and this he did emphatically against the
prisoner--dwelling with much force on the suspicious circumstance of a
needy man taking up his abode at an expensive fashionable hotel; his
furtive descent from his apartments by the back stairs; the undoubted
fact of the watch being found in his trunk; the improbability of any one
putting it there but himself; and the extreme likelihood that the robbery
was effected in a few moments of time by the culprit, just as he passed

from the bar of the hotel to the room which he had occupied. "If," said
he to the jury, in concluding his address, "you can, after all these
circumstances, believe the prisoner to be innocent of the crime laid to
his charge, it is more than I can do. The thing seems to me as clear as
the sun at noonday. The evidence, in short, is irresistible; and if the just
and necessary provisions of the law are not enforced in such very plain
cases, then society will be dissolved, and security for property there
will be none. Gentlemen, retire and make up your verdict."
The jury were not disposed to retire. After communing a few minutes
together, one of them stood up and delivered the verdict: it was
_Guilty!_ The judge assumed the crowning badge of the judicial
potentate--the black cap; and the clerk of arraigns asked the prisoner at
the bar, in the usual form, if he had anything to urge why sentence of
death should not be passed upon him.
Poor Harvey! I durst scarcely look at him. As the sonorous words fell
on his ear, he was grasping nervously with shaking hands at the front of
the dock. He appeared stunned, bewildered, as a man but
half-awakened from a hideous dream might be supposed to look. He
had comprehended, though he had scarcely heard, the verdict; for on
the instant, the voice which but a few years before sang to him by the
brook side, was ringing through his brain, and he could recognize the
little pattering feet of his children, as,