solitary labours of the desk-but the necessity of taking whatever business is offered, throws him into a totally dissimilar line. He becomes a nisi-prius, or motion-lawyer, upon compulsion; strains his lungs in open court to a pitch, that neither nature nor himself had ever designed; and ascertaining by experience that this is to be his way of "getting on," resigns his original studies as unproductive toil, and concludes a prosperous career without having ever given an opinion upon a title, or settled the draft of a deed of assignment. Another starts upon the strength of his oral qualifications. Full of confidence and ardour, and fired with admiration of preceding models, he is all for eloquence-and eloquence of the highest order. He studies blackletter, and technicalities as a painful effort, but his cordial meditations are over the defence of Milo, and the immortal productions of the Athenian school. In his ambitious reveries, he sees before him a brilliant perspective of popular occasions, with the usual accompaniments of crowded galleries, spell-bound juries, an admiring bench, an applauding bar-but let him take heed. It is at all times in the power of two or three friendly attornies, who are in any business, to get him into Chancery, and keep him there, and with the best intentions imaginable (if he only prove competent to the tasks assigned him) to blast his fame for eloquence for ever.* It does not, however, appear to me, that Mr. Wallace is one of those to whom any cross-purposes of this kind have assigned a final destination that can be reasonably lamented. The cases in which he is in most request, are, perhaps, those in which he was originally, and still continues more peculiarly fitted to excel. Judging of him from his professional attributes and his collateral pursuits, I am led to infer that the early and strongest propensity of his mind was for the discovery of truth; or in other words, that he was more of the philosopher than the sophist; and it will, I apprehend, be generally found true, that such an intellect, however competent to seize, is less prone to retain and manage a large mass of the multiform propositions of English law, where the terms in most familiar use are often subtle deductions from distant principles that are no longer visible to those who employ the terms with most effect, and where, in fact, the process of argumentation may be likened to the working of an algebraic equation, in which the final result is ascertained by the juxtaposition of signs rather than by a comparison of

* I could cite more than one example of persons, whose talents for public-speaking have been thus suppressed. I know of only one exception; or to speak more strictly, of an instance of very uncommon powers of cratory, breaking out long after the enthusiasm of youth had passed away, and in despite of a long subjection to habits of an opposite tendency. It was that of an Englishman, the present Mr. Justice Burton. He had been disciplined in all the severity of his native school, and forced his way at the Irish Bar, entirely by his legal superiority. It was only, when in the regular course of seniority he came to address juries, that it was first discovered by others, and probably by himself, that there lay in the depths of his mind a mine of rich materials that had never been explored. To the last he had to dig for them. For the first half hour he was nothing; it took him that time to reconnoitre bis subject, and get thoroughly heated: after that he was-not an accomplished speaker-for he never affected the externals of oratory-but in its great essentials-unity of purpose, and bold, rapid, and impassioned reasoning, enforced by the vigorous practical tones and gestures of real life, possessor of an energy, that at times, and often for a long time together, was quite Demosthenic.

ideas. He has also indulged in too constant a sympathy with the concerns of general humanity, to have ever shrunk into a mere technical proficient. To form the true "Leguleius, cautus atque acutus," a man must make up his mind to remain for years and years profoundly indifferent to all that passes beyond the precincts of his immediate calling. He must take the course of legislation as he would the course of the stars, as things above him; and never venture, even in his most private reflections, to pry into the policy of an Act of Parliament, saving so far as the preamble may be pleased to enlighten or perplex him on that point. If questions on the Currency rage around him, he must take no part, except in hoping that the decision will not diminish the exchangeable value of the counsel's fee. If he chances to hear that a bog has burst from its moorings, or that a blazing comet threatens to pounce upon our planet, he must leave them to be treated of by the curious in such matters, and go on with his meditations over a special demurrer. He must bring himself, in short, to take no interest, direct or indirect, in aught that does not come home to his learned self. His bag must be to him the true sign of the times; and as long as it continues in high condition, he is to rest satisfied that human affairs must be running a prosperous career.

66

Mr. Wallace has, however, found constant and profitable occupation in a branch of his profession, where a proficiency does not involve a corresponding waste of sensibility. He is in high repute in jury cases, and still more in those cases where issues of fact come under the investigation of the court, upon the sworn statements of the parties and their witnesses. It was said of the celebrated Malone, that to be judged of, he should be heard addressing a jury of twelve wise men;" and certainly when I consider the eminent qualifications of Mr. Wallace, distinguished as he is for a solid and comprehensive judgment; for manly sagacity rather than captious subtilty in argument; for the talent (and here he peculiarly excels) of educing an orderly, lucid, and consistent statement out of a chaotic assemblage of intricate and conflicting facts; for his knowledge of human nature, both practical and metaphysical, and, along with these, for the sustained and authoritative force of his language and delivery, which operate as a kind of personal warranty for the soundness of every topic he advances; -I should say that the most fitting place for the exhibition of such powers would be before such a tribunal as the admirers of Malone would have assigned him; but a tribunal, so constituted, is not to be found. The most discriminating of Irish sheriffs would be somewhat puzzled in his efforts to empannel a round dozen of special sages in a jury-box; but though wisdom in such numerical force is not to be met with, there is a tribunal in Ireland (a novelty perhaps) filled by persons, who for knowledge, intellect, and impartiality, may without exaggeration be denominated "four wise men," and who are most frequently called upon to serve as jurors in that description of cases in which Mr. Wallace's professional superiority is most acknowledged. Those cases (in technical parlance called "heavy motions") are more numerous in the Court of King's Bench, partly from its exclusive jurisdiction, as a court of criminal law, and also in no small degree from its present constitution, and the consequent influx of general business, by which the public confidence in its adjudications is unequivocally declared. It is accordingly in this court

that Mr. Wallace, in his ordinary every-day manner, as an advocate, may be heard to most advantage. His skill in dissecting a knavish affidavit is admirable, and renders him the terror of all knavish deponents upon whom he may have to operate. The exhibition is often amusing enough to a disinterested spectator. The party whose conscience is to undergo the ordeal of a public scrutiny, may be seen seated by his attorney; his countenance at first glowing with a defensive smirk of self-complacent defiance, but manifesting, as the investigation into his candour and veracity proceeds, the most marvellous varieties of hue and expression. An inconsistency or two are pointed out, and his smile of anticipated triumph gradually degenerates into a sub-acid sneer. A fraudulent suppression is next put up, and then he begins to look at his attorney; and, finding no refuge there, to look very grave. The counsel proceeds, inexorably accurate in his detections, and caustic in his comments. Our worthy deponent begins now to tremble for his reputation, and not without reason; for down come upon it a succession of mortal blows, every one of which the listening crowd, who desire no better sport, pronounce, by a malignant buz, to have been

:

a palpable hit." This quickly brings on the final stage. Our hero, "according to the very best of his knowledge, information, and belief," is mortified and wrathful in the extreme. He starts and frowns and shifts his posture, and compresses his lips, and clenches his fists he would give worlds (so at least says his eye; and I would believe it as soon as his affidavit) to have just one blow at the head of his merciless torturer, or to tell him in open court that he is a calumniator and an assassin. He is on the point of committing some extravagance, when his attorney throws in a word or two of cool advice, to prevent his rage from boiling over, and the paroxysm gradually works itself to rest in silent vows of indefinite vengeance, or in sotto-voce murmurings of impotent vituperation.

In such cases as the preceding, the severity of Mr. Wallace's animadversions is forgotten with the occasion; but when in the discharge of his duty he has been impelled to be equally unceremonious in his comments upon litigants of a higher order, murmurs have arisen, and questions been started, as to what are or ought to be the privileges of a barrister, in arraigning the conduct and motives of the parties to whom he is opposed. The irritated suitor of course exclaims against a license under which he has smarted, as an intolerable grievance, and in general finds many sufficiently disposed to join in his indignation; but no disinterested person, acquainted with human nature, as developed in the course of our legal proceedings, and considering alone the ends of justice, can easily bring himself to desire that the privileges complained of should be in any way abridged. The law makes a counsel personally responsible for any injurious observations upon the characters of individuals not warranted by his instructions; and that those limits are seldom exceeded may be collected from the fact, that actions for slander of this description are unheard-of in practice. But if his instructions are manifestly libellous, is he not under a paramount moral obligation to suppress the obnoxious matter? or is every just and honourable feeling of the gentleman to be merged in the conventional character of the barrister? The answer is-A counsel cannot tell whether his instructions be true or false; and though they should lean

heavily upon an individual of previously unblemished reputation, he is not on that account to take it for granted that they are calumnious. It is a matter of daily experience, that litigation makes strange discoveries in the characters of men. Persons of unsuspected integrity no sooner become plaintiffs or defendants in a cause, than, blinded by self-interest, or inflamed with the silly desire of obtaining a victory, they are found resorting to every knavish artifice to establish an unjust, or resist an equitable demand. How, then, in any given case, alleged to be of this description, can the counsel assure himself beforehand that the result will falsify his instructions? Is he in defiance of them to be incredulous and forbearing; and from his conjectural doubts and misgivings, to put forward a statement so tame and wary as to deprive his client of the benefit of that honest indignation in the court or jury which the real facts of the case might justify? The present Chief-justice Best once said, in conversation, of a barrister,-" That man is unfit to conduct a case at the Quarter Sessions: he believes what his client tells him." There is equal truth in the converse of the proposition—a barrister, who should make it a rule to act upon the disbelief of what his client tells him, would prove equally incompetent. But still, it is constantly urged, the privilege thus contended for produces much unwarrantable vituperation. To this it may be replied, that custom has given to language a peculiar qualified forensic sense, just as it has a Parliamentary one; and that, thus understood, the invectives of counsel are purely hypothetical, and go for nothing unless corroborated in proof, and sanctioned by a verdict. If cleverly thrown off, they may for the moment gratify the bystanders or ruffle the temper of the party against whom they are directed-but they leave no stain upon his reputation, if twelve men upon their oaths pronounce him to be an honest man. The " daggers" that a counsel "talks," are merely weapons handed up to the jury-box: if any of them draw blood, the jury must strike the blow. And it may be further observed, that this latitude of speech is indirectly of no small service to the ends of justice, by the terrors it holds out to persons who would have no compunction in speculating upon the chances of fraudulent litigation, but are sufficiently worldly and sensitive to shrink from a public and unrestrained exposure of their iniquity.

In judging of an Irish barrister's capacity for the higher orders of forensic eloquence, it is but just to remember, that in that country great occasions are extremely rare-and hence no doubt a habit that prevails there of speculating upon the effects that particular individuals would produce, were they only supplied with opportunities commensurate with their powers. It was thus when the Queen's case was raging, that the national pride of the Irish Bar broke out in vain regrets that one of their crown officers, a man of surpassing qualifications for the conduct of such a cause, should not have been afforded such an opportunity of rising to the highest summit of what I may call the conjectural fame that he enjoyed in his profession. They pictured to themselves Charles Kendal Bushe, appearing at the Bar of the House of Peers, as the presiding counsel for the Crown, upon the trial of that imperial issue, and uniting to every solid requisite for the discharge of such a duty, a collection of peculiar attributes, that seemed as if expressly designed for swaying the decision of such a tribunal on

such an occasion. They saw him there with his matured professional skill and chastened eloquence-his fine imposing presence--his rich sonorous voice-his masterly powers of countenance, whether he spoke or listened--his profound unremitting bye-play, now refuting by an indignant start, now enforcing by a moral shudder-his elevated courage and natural grace of gesture, tone, sentiment and diction, in not one of which the most finished courtier of them all could have detected a provincialism. Considering all these, and the subject and the auditory, the admirers of this eminent and accomplished person completed (and perhaps not unjustifiably) the ideal picture, by representing to themselves as the final issue the torrent of popular indignation successfully stemmed, and the imperial diadem wrested from the brow of the royal defendant. A similar feeling prevailed among many with respect to Mr. Wallace, upon the occasion of the only political case of any moment that has in latter years occurred in Ireland--the trial of the rioters at the Dublin theatre. It was one of the singularities of that case, that the popular feeling was all on the side of the prosecution, and that, with the exception of the Attorney-general, none of the counsel for the Crown were animated by a warmer sentiment, than a determination to perform an unwelcome duty. That duty, the Solicitorgeneral, who spoke to the evidence, performed with legal ability, and unquestioned integrity. No one could accuse him of the insidious suppression of any doctrine or argument that bore upon the case; but it was impossible for him to be eloquent. All his passions and prejudices were against his cause, and he had not the flexibility of temper to assume a tone of indignant energy, of which he was unconcious. It is, therefore, easy to account for the general wish, that such a man as Mr. Wallace had supplied his place. He would not have allowed himself to have been entramelled by any personal or official restraints, but giving the fullest scope to all his powers, and superadding his authoritative denunciations as an individual to his invectives as an advocate, would have the jury feel (and this was what was wanted) that they were themselves upon their trial, and must be held by the public to be accomplices in the factious proceeding against which they should hesitate to pronounce a verdict of conviction.

The personal determination of character and practical efficiency of talent for which Mr. Wallace is so distinguished, have been confined almost exclusively to his professional exertions; but the mention of those qualities brings to my recollection one rather memorable occasion upon which they were called into action, and with a suddenness of result that cannot be duly appreciated by any who were not actual witnesses of the scene. In the beginning of the year 1819, the friends of the Catholic cause, considering that the time had arrived when the sense of the Protestant inhabitants of the Irish metropolis might be safely taken upon their question, determined, after much anxious deliberation, that a public meeting of that portion of the community should be convened for the purpose of recording their sentiments in the form of a petition to Parliament for Emancipation. Though pretty confident of success, they foresaw that the Orange faction would rise, en masse, to interpose every kind of obstruction to so new and obnoxious an experiment. To prevent this, or at the worst, to be prepared for it, preliminary measures were taken for giving the proposed assemblage