ed in a
better cause--(bang again--and another look). My learned friend has,
indeed, laboured to make the worse appear the better cause--to convert
into a trifle one of the most outrageous acts that ever disgraced a
human being or a civilised country. Well did he describe the importance
of this case!--important as regards his client's character--important
as regards this great and populous county--important as regards those
social ties by which society is held together--important as regards
a legislative enactment, and important as regards the well-being and
prosperity of the whole nation--(bang, bang, bang). I admire the
bombastic eloquence with which my learned friend introduced his
most distinguished client--his most delicate minded--sensitive
client!--Truly, to hear him speaking I should have thought he had been
describing a lovely, blushing young lady, but when he comes to exhibit
his paragon of perfection, and points out that great, red-faced, coarse,
vulgar-looking, lubberly lump of humanity--(here Bumptious looked at
Jorrocks as he would eat him)--sitting below the witness-box, and
seeks to enlist the sympathies of your worships on the Bench--of you,
gentlemen, the high-minded, shrewd, penetrating judges of this important
cause--(and Bumptious smiled and bowed along the Bench upon all whose
eyes he could catch)--on behalf of such a monster of iniquity, it
does make one blush for the degradation of the British
Bar--(bang--bang--bang--Jorrocks here looked unutterable things). Does
my learned friend think by displaying his hero as a fox-hunter,
and extolling his prowess in the field, to gain over the sporting
magistrates on the Bench? He knows little of the upright integrity--the
uncompromising honesty--the undeviating, inflexible impartiality that
pervades the breast of every member of this tribunal, if he thinks
for the sake of gain, fear, favour, hope, or reward, to influence
the opinion, much less turn the judgment, of any one of them." (Here
Bumptious bowed very low to them all and laid his hand upon his heart.
Tomkins nodded approbation.) "Far, far be it from me to dwell with
unbecoming asperity on the conduct of anyone--we are all mortals--and
alike liable to err; but when I see a man who has been guilty of an act
which has brought him all but within the verge of the prisoners' dock; I
say, when I see a man who has been guilty of such an outrage on society
as this ruffian Jorrocks, come forward with the darin