le Mr. Philip Sharp converses earnestly with the criminal in
confidential whispers, I will entertain the sagacious reader with a few
admirable lines I have just cut out of a newspaper: they are headed

"SUPPRESSION OF TRUTH AND EXCLUSION OF EVIDENCE.

"Lawyers abhor any short cut to the truth. The pursuit is the thing for
their pleasure and profit, and all their rules are framed for making the
most of it.

"Crime is to them precisely what the fox is to the sportsman: and the
object is not to pounce on it, and capture it at once, but to have a
good run for it, and to exhibit skill and address in the chase. Whether
the culprit or the fox escape or not, is a matter of indifference, the
run being the main thing.

"The punishment of crime is as foreign to the object of lawyers, as the
extirpation of the fox is to that of sportsmen. The sportsman, because
he hunts the fox, sees in the summary destruction of the fox by the hand
of a clown, an offence foul, strange, and unnatural, little short of
murder. The lawyer treats crime in the same way: his business is the
chase of it; but, that it may exist for the chase, he lays down rules
protecting it against surprises and capture by any methods but those of
the forensic field.

"One good turn deserves another, and as the lawyer owes his business to
crime, he naturally makes it his business to favour and spare it as much
as possible. To seize and destroy it wherever it can be got at, seems to
him as barbarous as shooting a bird sitting, or a hare in her form, does
to the sportsman. The phrase, to give _law_, for the allowance of a
start, or any chance of escape, expresses the methods of lawyers in the
pursuit of crime, and has doubtless been derived from their practice.

"Confession is the thing most hateful to law, for this stops its sport
at the outset. It is the surrender of the fox to the hounds. 'We don't
want your stinking body,' says the lawyer; 'we want the run after the
scent. Away with you, be off; retract your admission, take the benefit
of telling a lie, give us employment, and let us take our chance of
hunting out, in our roundabout ways, the truth, which we will not take
when it lies before us.'"

* * * * *

As I perceive that Mr. Sharp has not yet made much impression upon the
desponding prisoner, suffer me to recommend to your notice another
sensible leader: the abuse which it would combat calls loudly for
amendment. There is