Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/637

 to some eminent firm of provincial solicitors, prefer the certainty of making a decent livelihood in a busy manufacturing town to the keener competition of the Metropolis.

They are somewhat looked down upon by their brethren in London, the work in the provinces being of an inferior kind, mainly confined to the police courts, county courts, and quarter sessions.

The occupation of the local barrister, in fact, does not commend itself to the majority of the Bar, notwithstanding that a few are able to make their £2,000 or £3,000 a year.

The Parliamentary Bar, probably the most lucrative branch of the profession, is engaged in Private Bill business before Parliamentary Committees. A popular Parliamentary Q.C. will make as much as £20,000 a year, and sometimes even those figures are exceeded. The leading "silks" have always a great number of cases going on at the same time before Committees of the Lords and Commons, and they spend their day in walking from one committee-room to another, opening a case here, replying on a case there, and cross-examining witnesses whose evidence-in-chief they have never heard. This perambulatory practice led to such abuse that in 1861 the committees decided not to allow a barrister to cross-examine who had not been present during the whole of the examination-in-chief, and recently Mr. Hanbury has endeavoured to enforce this rule. No doubt it is, generally speaking, a wholesome regulation, for the reiteration by successive counsel of the same questions leads to an inordinate waste of public time and money. It ought, however, to be enforced with moderation, for it by no means follows that a counsel who has not heard the examination-in-chief is the less able to cross-examine effectively. One of the objects of cross-examination, it should be understood, is to elicit fresh facts, and in that respect it is not necessarily dependent upon evidence-in-chief.

Undoubtedly cross-examination is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most important of a counsel's duties, and a barrister who makes his mark in this particular function is pretty certain to be in general request. It is no less important to know what questions to put than what to refrain from asking. Many counsel are too apt to imagine that by browbeating a witness, and overwhelming him with a multitude of questions, they are conducting their cross-examination effectively. Baron Alderson once withered up an advocate of this character by remarking: "Mr. So-and-so, you seem to think that the art of cross examination is to examine crossly."

The Parliamentary Bar certainly numbers within its ranks several highly-talented counsel, not the least eminent of whom are Mr. Pope, Mr. Bidder, Mr. Littler, and Mr. Pembroke-Stephens, of whom we give portraits. We have already referred to the great incomes that are made in this department of the Bar, and when it is remembered that the work is limited to the time during which Parliament is sitting, it becomes apparent that the fees paid to leading