ship be thrown into the balance. Besides, it has been the invariable and unquestioned custom of the Law Officers of the Crown for generations past to retain and, if possi ble, increase their clientela. Even party rancor is unable to deny that in defending the house of Walter before Sir James Hannen and his colleagues, Sir Richard Webster conformed to the most literal interpretation of the rules of professional etiquette. But there are two observations which have been made, and which in our opinion may be made without unfairness, upon the conduct of the Attorney-General in regard to the Parnell Commission. It may well be doubted how far it was prudent of the first Law Of ficer of the Crown to identify himself, and in the imagination of the public, hot only himself but the Unionist Government and the Unionist cause, with a deliberate and most damaging attack upon the fame of his political adversaries. It may also be re gretted that Sir Richard Webster did not entirely abandon private practice during the progress of the trial. That he must have greatly reduced the list of causes in which he was engaged is extremely probable, and that he honestly mastered his brief no one who knows his history and character will question for an instant. But those who honor and cherish his professional reputa tion most highly will never believe that, with an entire abstraction from other work, the Attorney-General could not have opened the case with at least as much ability as Sir Henry James displayed in closing it. The course which we venture to think Sir Richard Webster might with advantage have adopted, was not altogether without a parallel. In 1856 William Palmer, nominally a sur geon, but in reality a racing and betting blackleg, at Rugeley,1 in Staffordshire, was 1 The feeling against the prisoner in his own county was so strong that an act was passed (19 Vict. c. 16) in order to enable the trial to be removed to London. It is said that a deputation from Rugeley waited on Lord Palmerston, and urged that the name of the
brought to trial at the Central Criminal Court for having poisoned his friend and patient, John Parsons Cook, with strychnia. That deadly alkaloid, although probably the instrument with which Wainewright had compassed the death of Miss Abercrombie, was then practically unknown in England; and the medical profession was sharply di vided both as to the symptoms which accom pany and the appearances which follow its administration. Sir Alexander Cockburn was Attorney-General, and was therefore responsible for the prosecution. He is al leged to have returned all his briefs when the Palmer case came into his hands, and to have spent the greater part of his time in studying the chemistry of strychnia in the laboratory of Dr. Swaine Taylor, whose trea tise on Medical Jurisprudence is a standard work in all countries. The result amply jus tified the course which Cockburn is under stood to have taken. The prisoner was defended by Mr. Sergeant Shee, perhaps the foremost criminal lawyer of his day, and Mr. Grove, Q. C, an eminent man of science, now a Privy Councillor, aided by an army of medical advocates of the approved type. A determined and most ingenious effort was made to show that the tetanus produced by strychnia, traumatic tetanus, idiopathic or constitutional tetanus, epilepsy, and "general convulsions " could not be distinguished with sufficient clearness to warrant the jury in finding a verdict against the prisoner at the bar; but the Attorney-General's victory was complete. His opening speech " will live forever," at least in legal literature; he com pletely destroyed in cross-examination the expert evidence for the defence, and his re ply secured the conviction of the prisoner. When the jury returned their verdict of guilty, ' the convict threw over the dock-rail to his solicitor a scrap of paper on which he had written, in the language of the turf, "The village to which the poisoner's career had given such an unpleasant notoriety, should be changed, when the Minister suggested the substitution of his own name, Palmerston.
