JUDGES AND COUNSEL.

Dunstan Times, Issue 622, 20 March 1874, Page 3

JUDGES AND COUNSEL.

o The marked improvement both in the manner and tone of Dr Ivenealy’s address to the jury in the Tichbome case since the Lord Chief Justice felt it necessary to administer to the learned counsel a solemn reproof and warning, affords another example of the beneficial influence of that discretionary power over the course of judicial proceedings with which our judges are invested. No one who has read from time to time the reports of this protracted investigation can fail to have been struck with the necessity for some chock in the interest of the public upon the privileges of the bar, which in the eyes of some critics appear to be paramount over all oilier considerations, '1 he privilege, for example, of speaking freely m ((leading without fear of an action for libel, might easily be made an intolerable nuisance without some restraint more powerful than the “ sense of prnfes sional honor,” which experience has unhappily shown to be sometimes an insufficient guarantee for decency and model alien When the character of witnesses are assailed without reasonable ground—when imputations of base and unworthy motives are made upon “ no tittle of evidence,” it is not only the right but the duty of a judge to interpose a protest, and, if need be a severe censure. It would otherwise be very easy for an uuscrupulouscounael practising at the criminal bar to establish a sort of terrorism sufficient to deter all hut persons of the strongest nerves from entering the witnessbox, and io is obvious that any ceuns 1 who had acquired a reputation for scaring away inconvenient witnesses in this way would not likely to want business of a certain sort. But the public have a deep interne in the protection of honest witnesses; and the judge who, mindful of this fact, interferes on their behalf, will as- , snredly carry with him the sympathy |of all decent persons. : '" 1