I hope you
will not go outside the lines I have pointed out to you; but,
with these remarks, I am very reluctant to interfere with any
prisoner saying anything which he considers necessary, and I
will not stop you. I hope you will not abuse the concession
I consider I am making to you.

Mr. Foote: I should be very sorry, my lord. I am only stating
what I consider necessary."

This is a very fair specimen of his lordship's manners. Unfortunately,
it is also a fair specimen of his lordship's law. When I read similar
extracts in the Court of Queen's Bench, Lord Coleridge never interrupted
me once; nay, he told the jury that I had very properly brought those
passages before their notice, that I had a perfect right to do so, and
that it was a legitimate part of my defence. Since then I have conversed
with many gentlemen who were present, some of them belonging to the
legal profession, and I have heard but one opinion expressed as to Judge
North's conduct. They all agree that it was utterly undignified, and a
scandal to the bench. Perhaps it had something to do with his lordship's
removal, a few weeks afterwards, to the Chancery Court, where his
eccentricities, as the _Daily News_ remarked at the time, will no longer
endanger the liberty and lives of his fellow-subjects.

When I cited Fox's Libel Act and asked that my copy, purchased from the
Queen's printers, might be handed to the jury for their guidance, his
lordship sharply ordered the officer not to pass it to them. "I shall
tell them," he said, "what points they have to decide," as though I
had no right to press my own view. He would never have dared to treat
a defending counsel in that way, and he ought to have known that a
defendant in person has all the rights of a counsel, the latter having
absolutely no standing in court except so far as he represents a first
party in a suit. "May they not have a copy of the Act, my lord?" I
inquired. "No," replied his lordship, "they will take the law from the
directions I give them; not from reading Acts of Parliament." This is
directly counter to the spirit and letter of Fox's Act; and I suspect
that Judge North would have expressed himself more guardedly in a higher
court. If juries have nothing to do with Acts of Parliament, why are
statutes enacted? Judge North would be ashamed and afraid to speak in
that way before his superior brother judges at the Law Courts; but at
the Old Bailey h