UNDER CROSS-EXAMINATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 430, 30 January 1875, Page 3

UNDER CROSS-EXAMINATION.

(From the '• World," Oct.)

"If," said an eminent Frenchman, "I were accused of stealing the towers of Notre Dame, the first thing I should do would be to runaway," and unless lawyers can be brought to understand what are the rights of witnesses under cross-ex-amination, every Englishman who receives a supbeena to attend in a witness-box will incontinently take ship and flee across the sea.

The legal mind, with some few brilliant exceptions, is, from the highest dignitary on the Bench to the humblest "junior," essentially a narrow one. Like the scholiasts of the Middle Ages, lawyers can reason acutely within certain limits ; but beyond these limits they are children. Who has not been astonished on meeting some light of the law in private life, to hear him talk half nonsence when he discusses the ordinary topics of everyday life, for which a charity-school boy would be whipped ? The man whose intelligence in some difficult " case," either of law or fact, has excited admiration, becomes, when stripped of his gown, almost a natural. Without his wig he is as powerless as Samson without, his hair. The cause is, that he has passed his existence in carefully -acquiring certain artificial aids to reasoning, withoutwhich heishelpless as a cripple without crutches.- Facts must be brought to his knowledge in a conventional manner, in order that he may use them to his advantage.

In a court of law he is master of the situation. When he examines a witness he tries to confuse him, and frequently succeeds. His object is to obtain' a forensic victory ; and not only does he fight with his antagonist with weapons of his own choosing, but he insists upon the contest being waged according to certain rules which have been invented for his special benefit. The jndge, who ought to prevent these unfair advantages being assumed by one of the combatants, has himself passed many years of his existence at the bar, and believes that they are the perfection of wisdom. Thus in England a court of law is seldom a court of justice; and an individual — be he plaintiff, defendant, or witness — has far more chai cc when he appears defore a city alderman, who acts upon the dictates of the shrewd common sense which he has learnt in his own private affairs, than when a Gamaliel robed in ermine, sits in judgment. The object of cross-examination is to test the truth of a witness, bnt it has become a means for a clever lawyer to obtain replies which may, if the questions be put with sufficient adroitness, be taken in a double sense : and thus, in the final speech, the witness is made to appear to have admitted or denied much which he never intended either to admit or deny. The lawyer asks a question : the witness attempts to reply by a statement of facts, or he ventures to ask in what sense he is to understand some word in the question which has a dozen meanings. " Answer me at once, sir ?" shouts the lawyer ; and he looks severely at the witness to imply that, of course, his natnral disposition is to perjure himself, but that this must be prevented. The witness again commences his plain unvarnished tale. You are not replying to the question," Bays th judge. "Surely," cries the council, " you can answer Yes or No." " Let us have none of this," echoes the judge ; " answer Yes or No." Now,-i£-l*wyers. would not ta&e it for granted that every~speclea or tuiij- u*~t has grown up in their profession must be right becaxise it has grown up, and because it forms part of the lore on the knowledge of which they pride themselves,:,, they would beawarethat many questions cannot be answered by a simple " Tes" or " No." without allowing- the questioner to affix a meaning to the -answer which may be directly the reverse of what was intended. We ourselves venture to say, that we would ask either the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Chief Justice half a dozen questions upon almost any act of their lives, which would allow the answer " Yes " or " No" to be given them, but the reply to which, if made in either of these words, might be perverted into a different meaning from that which they intended. A man who goes into a witness box is performing a public duty, as one of a community that prefers to be governed by law rather than to fight out its quarrels ; that, in the performance of this dutr, he should subject himself to be asked any question which it may enter the head of a lawyer to put, is perhaps a necessary evil ; but that the lawyer should insist not only upon the right to ask questions, bnt to dictate the words of the answer and that he' should be supported in this outrageous pretension by the judge Appears to us a monstrous perversion of Ufltiod. ;