Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/297

 conviction you dared to swear in your own jury, you made every member of it actual and visible to me. You may have been uttering a profounder truth than you knew—which is one of the many prerogatives of genius—when you asserted that every one of those fearful and unhappy tradesmen had that jury within him in the jury-box. As you pointed out, we are the heirs of all the ages: the prisoner and the policeman, the advocate and the judge. And he whom you caused this jury of yours to elect as their foreman showed to me how responsible and authentic that jury was. By the magic, Mr. Northcote, in which you deal, you not only evoked that foreman in the spirit, but by some miracle you clothed him in flesh. That was a terrible achievement. It was the first occasion that the redeemer of mankind was seen to be in the occupation of a seat at the court of Old Bailey.

"I have heard all the great advocates of my time. I was present on that memorable occasion when Selwyn Anstruther made his appeal on behalf of Smith. Anstruther spoke during the whole of three days; as an orator he would, with equal opportunities, have been the peer of Gladstone and John Bright. Anstruther's tradition is such—he had killed himself with overwork by the time he was forty—that he has become almost a myth. But even this speech of his to which I allude, many phrases of which I can recall after all these years, does not compare forensically with this appeal of yours, to which we had the awful privilege of listening this afternoon.

"Nature, Mr. Northcote, as I have said, has in your case been almost wantonly lavish of her gifts.