THE GIANT OF THE BENCH.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 13

THE GIANT OF THE BENCH.

Lord Cockburn, in hie Memorials, describes the giant of the Bench in hie day to have been Lord Braxfield : "His very name makes people start yet. Strong built, and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lipsj and a low, growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. Hie accent and his dialect were exaggerated Scotch; hie language, like his thoughte, 6kort, etrong, and conclusive." As a lawyer, in every matter depending on natural ability and practical sense, he was very great; but he waa illiterate, coarse in his manners, and rough and indecent in his humour. "Almost the only story of him," says Cockburn, "1 ever hear that had some fun in it, without immodesty, was when a butler gave up hie place because his lordship's wife was always scolding him. 'Lord!' he ' exclaimed, 'ye've little to compain o' ; ye may be thankfu' ye're no married to her.' " But Braxfield, as a criminal Judge, was a disgrace to the age. He woidd tauntingly repel the laet despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and send him to Botany Bay, or the gallows, with an insulting jest, over which he would chuckle the more from observing that correct people were shocked. "Yet," -save Cockburn^ "thie wae not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but irom cherished coarseness." In the political trials of 1793 and 1794, "he waa the Jeffreys of Scotland." "Let them bring prisoners, and I'll find them law," was' openly stated as his sentiment. Mr. Homer, who was one of tho jurors in Muir'a case, was passing behind the Bench to get into the box when Braxfield, who knew him, whispered : "Come aw», Majster Homer— come awa, and help me to hang ane o' those damned eqoondrols." (Hang was his phrase for all kinds of punishment.) The reporter of Gerald's; caeo could not venture to make the prisoner say any more than that "Christianity was an innovation." But the full truth is that, in etating hie view, he added that all great men were reformers, "even our Saviour himself." "Muckle he made of that," chuckled Braxfield, in an undervoice: "He was hanget!" Braxfield once said to an eloquent culprit at the Bar, "Ye're a vera clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hanging."