Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/296



CURRENT TOPICS. "The Net of Law." — Under this title, James Jeffrey Roche has the following in " Life" : "The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong, They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery! Big fish alone can creep through thee!" accompanied by a cut of a big law book, on which two mice are feeding, and of a spider's web. Un consciously the poet has borrowed from an old philosopher — Rochefoucauld, perhaps — who said the same thing substantially about the spider's web and small and large flies, but he phrased it better than Mr. Roche, for he said the small and weak flies are fatally enmeshed, while the large and strong ones break through. The attribute of force, rather than cunning, as the means of escape is superior, because the weak may as well possess cunning as the strong. The mystery of big fish creeping through small meshes without force is too improbable for credence. A Religious Lawyer. — The Chairman is moved to print the following letter, addressed to him, not through vanity, but on account of the surprise it affords him in the discovery that his old and too partial friend has so much religious faith. His sentiments may be recommended to a too material profession : — "I always knew that you had a large and brilliant intellect, which was generally stored with common sense, unlike many of the great minds to which yours might be compared. I always admitted the greatness of your mind; I now bow reverently to the common sense that springs out of it! That, as your quick perception has doubtless already conjectured, means what in fact it is : That I have read in the Green Bag for March your flaying of Bob Ingersol! I need not tell you, dear Irving, how much I enjoyed the keen rapier stabs that you thrust into the thick hide of the brilliant agnostic! If I understand him, he asserts that the divine origin of Christ, His coming, and His declarations or insinuations that the soul — whatever that is — survives after its body has been consumed by worms, and lives for all time in the presence of God — has not been convincingly proven! Possibly not! But if any

thing is, or can be proven by human intellect and sound reasoning, Plato has proven it beyond questioning, by logic, that human reason cannot refute, to say nothing of the death of Christ, and the millions of Christians who have since passed away, expressing with their last breath, their belief in God and immortality! Why does Ingersol wish to destroy our hope, our trust and our faith? Where poor Pandora could no longer resist her burglarious curiosity, and let out so many evils upon us, she succeeded in retain ing Hope. Robert urges Hope to fly away also, and thus leaves the heart as desolate and sad as Niobe; and yet Bob is one of the brightest and best bad men that I have ever known. Hit him again when you have a little leisure."

Too Great a Price. — In a recent number of our excellent contemporary. The Law Journal, we find the following : — "What trifles determine, or seem to determine, the bias of human lives, lawyers and laymen alike! The future Lord Eldon rides as a boy in a stage-coach from Newcastle to London, and the motto catches his eye ' Sat cilo, si sat bene,' and there, from the little seed so sown, we have the secret of the great Chancellor's weakness as well as his strength — his doubts, his delay, his ' hearing without de termining,' coupled with that slow and sure deliberation by which he laid deep and strong the foundations of equity. Or take Lord Langdale. As he and his brother John, when mere children, were returning one evening from a visit to their grandmother they found in the road a large log of wood, which they dragged home with considerable difficulty, thinking it would make an excellent plaything. ' Where did you get it? ' asked their mother as they trium phantly showed their prize. ' We found it in the road,' was the reply. 'Then it is not yours,' she said, •so you must take it back again and replace it where you found it.' The lesson was never forgotten. Lord longdate often related it in after years, and it led to the adoption of his significant and appropriate motto, ' Suum cuique.' Oddly, a similar incident is recorded of the youth of another eminent lawyer, only this time it was a stone, not a log, which the boy had brought from the road as a present to his grandmother, who had a hobby for minerals. These stories are not coincidences. They are typical of the strict integrity, the scrupulous conscientiousness, of a past generation — an integrity fostered by the then severity of our criminal code." But the question thrusts itself upon us : Was not this integrity in small things rather dearly purchased by the sufferance of capital punishment for one hun dred and seventy offences? 2(X)