that terminated in the
disastrous railway panic, were ready to give scientific evidence on
engineering questions, with less regard to truth than to the interests
of the persons who paid for their evidence. Having by mendacious
evidence gravely injured a cause in which Mr. Hill was interested as
counsel, and Mr. Tite, the eminent architect, and present member for
Bath, was concerned as a projector, this witness was struck with
apoplexy and died--before he could complete the mischief which he had so
adroitly begun. Under the circumstances, his sudden withdrawal from the
world was not an occasion for universal regret. "Well, Hill, have you
heard the news?" inquired Mr. Tite of the barrister, whom he encountered
in Middle Temple Lane on the morning after the engineer's death. "Have
you heard that ---- died yesterday of apoplexy?" "I can't say," was the
rejoinder, "that I shall shed many tears for his loss. He was an arrant
scoundrel." "Come, come," replied the architect, charitably, "you have
always been too hard on that man. He was by no means so bad a fellow as
you would make him out. I do verily believe that in the whole course of
his life that man never told a lie--_out of the witness-box_." Strange
to say, this comical testimony to character was quite justified by the
fact. This man, who lied in public as a matter of business, was
punctiliously honorable in private life.

Of the simplest method of tampering with witnesses an instance is found
in a case which occurred while Sir Edward Coke was Chief Justice of the
King's Bench. Loitering about Westminster Hall, one of the parties in an
action stumbled upon the witness whose temporary withdrawal from the
ways of men he was most anxious to effect. With a perfect perception of
the proper use of hospitality, he accosted this witness (a staring,
open-mouthed countryman), with suitable professions of friendliness, and
carrying him into an adjacent tavern, set him down before a bottle of
wine. As soon as the sack had begun to quicken his guest's circulation,
the crafty fellow hastened into court with the intelligence that the
witness, whom he had left drinking in a room not two hundred yards
distant, was in a fit and lying at death's door. The court being asked
to wait, the impudent rascal protested that to wait would be useless;
and the Chief Justice, taking his view of the case, proceeded to give
judgment without hearing the most important evidence in the cause.

In badgeri