A GREAT ADVOCATE

Evening Star, Issue 17923, 20 March 1922, Page 3

A GREAT ADVOCATE

"Hifl blind eyes are set in tho lean face of a zealot, and he has tho vehement faith of a Covenanter." Such is the character sketch by a- correspondent of tho Sydney 'Sun,' who critically watched the progress of the trial at Melbourne of Boss, who was convicted of what is known as the Gun Alley murder. Mr G. A. Maxwell, M.H.R., tho famous barrister, has attained his position at the Bar through the faculty of concentrating his mind on tho one point of tho defence ■which, made belief poesible._ When a Bwagsman killed a mate, cut his body into pieces, and took possession of his horso and cart, Mr Maxwell won from the jury a verdict of manslaughter by pleading passionately for the ignorant, hot-headed man who had" slain his companion—not wilfully, but in fierce quarrel. A dwarf girl, who had poisoned her invalid mother with dosen of mercury (she confessed to the murder before she herself died), was acquitted by tho jury when Mr Maxwell, with vibrant emotion, called heaven to witness that there was an accomplice and promoter of the crime who should have etood in the dock beside the dull-witted girl. When Mr Maxwell addresses a jury his feelings are real; ho has made belief in his argument possible to himself, and conveys his own emotion .to the jurymen. In a way he is a John Milton of the Melbourne Bar. The same terrible affliction of blindness has.befallen him; in his temperament is Milton's stern Puritanism; and, like Milton, he brings high passion into his advocacy of any cause.