Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/175

 Such an advocate has been thus described by an eminent lawyer who had occasion to watch his career:—

"'No advocate had a greater command over facts. His statement of his client's case, and even his reading from the evidence in the cause, would enchain the attention, and often extort the admiration and astonishment of his adversaries and the court—as if it were a romance.'"

An advocate of this type may be expected to get more honour and more profit than an advocate who, in the exercise of his duty, if he is entrusted with the defence of a prisoner for murder, and on examining the evidence sees that the crime cannot be proved, will get off the criminal by showing that the crime cannot be proved, but will not utter a single word which he knows to be an untruth. Such an advocate has very small chance of being Lord Chancellor. The Reverend Sydney Smith says in a letter to a son who was writing a life of his father, and applied to Sydney Smith for assistance as one of his father's friends:—

"'Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, 'You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers.' This was the fault or the misfortune of your excellent father; he never knew the use of red tape.'"