BY THE WAY.

Evening Star, Issue 9831, 21 October 1895, Page 1

BY THE WAY.

—Let yonr sense be clear, Nor With a Weight of words fatigue the eat. Horace.

The Lords have been fairly rilnhing a-muok at the Liquor Bill, and Sir Robert Stout is .very wroth with the Lords. “ I would serve the Bill,” he said, “as the House of Commons once served a measure similarly treated by the Lords —throw it. on the floor of the House and trample on it.” My recollection of the historical incident is that it was the Speaker of the House of Commons Who, anxious to show his zeal on 'the popular side* threw the obnoxious Bill oh the floor iff the House and jumped on it. That, however, is hat to my present purpose. I really can’t think that the spectacle of seventy-four persons—if the clerks and messengers followed suit of course the number would be much greater—jumping on a Liquor Bill on the floor of the House would do much for the Prohibitionist cause. I have heard of men jumping on their hats when they were in a towering rage; in fact, I saw a man do, it once, but we only laughed at him. Few things are more amusing to the calm onlooker than real, genuine, demonstrative, blind, impotent rage. And then it would surely be a great waste of time to jump upon the Bill when the House might with more effect be jumping on the unhappy for that is an amusement to which it'can, through the (ioverhfnent, always resort without the concurrence of the Lords. 1 have a fancy, though, that the Government isn’t on. If there is any man in New Zealand who is capable (without being noticed) of winking the other eye all the time that he is moving the second reading of a stiff anti-liquor Bill I should say that man was my old friend Richard Seddon. When the same' Richard (the name is used in affection rather than disrespect) was receiving the congratulations of the Temperance party upon the thoroughly up-to-date and straightforward character of his legislation I was—well, laughing. So 1 suspect was he.

I don’t pretend to know anything, not the least bit in the world, of the ethics of the legal profession; but, unhappily, I can’t find anyone who knows much more than myself. I wish I had taken the opinion of the “ Old Stager ” on it last Saturday night. The question is : Is a lawyer ever justified in divulging a secret committed to him in confidence by his client j and,- if so, under what circumstances ? Where is he tot draw the line ? Ought Sir Julian Salomons to have divulged Meagher’s statement tohim, or ought he not ? Sir Julian himself thought it his duty to do so, and he was backed up by the Chief Justice aud other authorities in New South Wales. But Mr Pilcher, who defended Dean before the Commission, thinks otherwise; yet he is an M.L.C., a Q.C., and a man apparently of much calmness and propriety of speech. Mr Pilcher made a short speech after Sir Julian Salomons sat down, and here is an extract from it:— He (Mr Pilcher) might be old-fashioned, but that was his idea of what was right. He would refuse to-morrow to disclose any communication made to him.in his legal capacity, except under a few circumstances : he would not allow an innocent man to be kept in gaol, aud be would not allow an innocent person to go to the gallows without saying what he knew. Sir Julian Salomons: What difference is there between that and leaving an innocent woman under a gioss imputation ? Mr Pilcher; That was begging the question. There was no mistake about a man's being condemned, and there was no mistake when a rope was fitted round a man’s neck. He would not hold his tongue then. But this was quite t a different matter, and he did not think he would have been justified in disclosing a confidence under these circumstances.

What should a man have done who knew the facts. Dean was being acclaimed, feted, promoted. Mrs Dean was starving, shunned, and practically condemned of a base conspiracy against her husband’s life. Will someone advise me ?

“Under the influence of vanity,” says a sententious philosopher, “ a man demands much, gives little, is easily offended, apt to be dishonest in conversation, and is pron- 3 to bo small-minded, restless, and unjust.” I put the matter in shorter phrase, and say that under the influence of vanity a roan makes a terrible fool of himself. What could tempt Meagher to entrust Salomons with his terrible secret? is the question I have heard asked a dozen times by persons who have taken an interest in this extraordinary ease. Meagher at the same time that he told Salomons of the confession was also confessing that he himself had played the part of a scoundrel, and was up to the neck in a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice, to exalt the guilty and condemn the innocent. And he was confessing it to a man hot ou the other side, and “thick” with the Attorney-General and the Crown. Why on earth did he blurt the business out ? Alas ! it was all due to human vanity. A political paragraph in a newspaper which began “Mr Meagher, whose failure to expose the singularly weak case against George Dean,” etc., was quite sufficient to set his vanity aflame to his own undoing. He was ready to sacrifice not only Dean, but himself, if only he could get it known that he had really been very smart over the case. Here is Sir Julian Salomons’s description of Meagher’s style: — Meagher at the time thought he had done a wonderfully clever thing, and thought he would be an attorney at the top of the tree if he could show that not only had he not bungled, but that be had in fact saved a man who was guilty, and through a royal commission got him off.

What a price he has had to pay for that bit of vanity ! It is a singular fact, but I have noticed it all the world over, that a man would any day rather be considered a rogue than a fool. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t myself ! . Nemo.