Common Pleas; the
noble chief not unfrequently announcing that he considered himself a
judge only while he wore his robes." The sort of law dispensed by this
fire-eating judge might be easily conceived even without the aid of such
an anecdote as the following: "A nonsuit was never heard of in his time.
Ill-natured people said it was to draw suitors to his court." Toler's
reason for it was that he was too _constitutional_ to interfere with a
jury, Be that as it may, a nonsuit was a nonentity, 'I hope, my Lord,'
said counsel in a case actually commanding one, 'your Lordship will, for
once, have the courage to nonsuit? In a moment the hair-triggers were
uppermost. 'Courage! I tell you what, Mr. Wallace, there are two sorts
of courage--courage to shoot, and courage to nonshoot--and I have both;
but nonshoot now I certainly will not; and argument is only a waste of
time.' "I remember well," says Mr. Phillips, when speaking of another
judge, Mr. Justice Fletcher, "at the Sligo summer assizes for 1812,
being counsel in the case of 'The King _v._ Fenton,' for the murder of
Major Hillas in a duel, when old Judge Fletcher thus capped his summing
up to the jury: 'Gentlemen, it's my business to lay down the law to you,
and I will. The law says, the killing a man in a duel is murder, and I
am bound to tell you it is murder; therefore, in the discharge of my
duty, I tell you so; but I tell you at the same time, a _fairer duel_
than this I never heard of in the whole _coorse_ of my life.' It is
scarcely necessary to add that there was an immediate acquittal." By way
of giving some idea of the character of society then, the following
enumeration is supplied by the memory of Mr. Phillips:--

"Lord Clare, afterwards Lord Chancellor, fought Curran,
afterwards Master of the Rolls. So much for equity; but common
law also sustained its reputation. Clonmel, afterwards Chief
Justice, fought two Lords and two Commoners,--to show his
impartiality, no doubt. Medge, afterwards Baron, fought his own
brother-in-law, and two others. Toler, afterwards Chief Justice
of the Common Pleas, fought three persons, one of whom was
Fitzgerald, even in Ireland the 'fire-eater,' _par excellence_.
Patterson, also afterwards Chief Justice of the same court,
fought three country gentlemen, one of them with guns, another
with swords, and wounded them all! Corry, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, fought Mr. Gratt