Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/765

 THE GREEN BAG Some one asked Erskine later in life how he dared to face Lord Mansfield when he was clearly of a different way. He beauti fully replied, " I thought of my children as plucking me by the robe and saying, ' Now, father, is the time to get us bread!" His business went on rapidly increasing until he had an income of £12,000 ($60,000) a year. In maintaining the rights of juries in the great case of the Dean of St. Asaph, to which our learned and great hearted President, Mr. Lehman, alluded a few evenings ago, Lord Campbell declares that Erskine's addresses to the court, in moving, and afterwards in supporting his rule, display beyond all comparison the most perfect union of argument and eloquence ever exhibited in Westminster Hall. Of his speech in defense of Stockdale, said the Edinburgh R vuw. "Whether we regard the wonderful skill with which the argument is conducted — the soundness of his principles laid down, and their happy application to the case — the exquisite fancy with which they are embellished and illustrated — or the powerful and touching language in which they are conveyed, it is justly regarded by all English lawyers as a consummate specimen of the art of addressing a jury." Erskine made few mistakes in the con duct of his cause. Never would he have committed the blunder of Lord Denmam, when, after his magnificent defense of the chastity of Queen Caroline against the cruel persecution of her husband, George the Fourth, in the last sentence he implored for her the compassion accorded by the Saviour to Magdalen. That he had his detractors, is true. " He wins no friends, who wins no foes." "Woe unto you," saith the Scripture, "when all men speak well of you." In that class of cases, — alas, too frequent then as now, — in which the cruel and un principled rive the bond of matrimony, lay waste the happiness of homes, and drive

hope from faithful hearts, his indignant eloquence wrung from the jurors of England damages in the most astonishing punitive amounts. Holding that the rights he sought to vindicate were incalculably more valu able than all property, and that no adequate return in money could be made, he was constantly awarded verdicts in pounds sterling, amounting to twenty-five, forty, and even fifty thousand dollars. In such cases, scenes of domestic endearment and felicity, which had been blotted from exis tence, were described with the utmost delicacy and tenderness, and with the most fiery indignation was his invective directed upon those who had ruthlessly invaded and destroyed them. In the case of Dunning v. Sir Thomas Turton, where a loving husband was the victim, Erskine depicted the emotions of the agonized soul in colors which will endure forever. He pronounced the passage from Othello with all the thrilling and winning effect of his musical accents: "But oh, what damned minutes tells he o'er, — who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet fondly loves." And contin uing, he exclaimed: "When suspicion is realized into certainty, and his dishonor is placed beyond the reach of doubt, despair assumes her dominion over the afflicted man," and well might he exclaim from the same page: — "Had it pleased Heaven To try me with affliction; had He rain'd All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head; Steeped me in poverty to the very lips; Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes; — I should have found in some place in my soul A drop of patience. Hut alas! —"

He stopped, and the effect in sympathetic tears was visible in every eye in court. Nor was his recourse to that unfailing treasury of the orator inspired, the sacred Scriptures, one whit less felicitous. " It is not an enemy that hath done me this dis honor, for then I could have borne it. Neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me; for then, per