The “Devil’s Brigade.”

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 65, 10 November 1887, Page 3

The “Devil’s Brigade.”

The New South Wales Assembly deserves credit for having taken one step towards breaking up the senseless, grasping, thundering monoply of the “ Devil's Brigade.” When the existing Criminal Law Act was under consideration, in 1884, a determined effort was made to insert a clause by which a p risoner could select anyone—whether lawyer or layman—to defend him, but the legal cormorants of the House rolled up in force and the clause was thrown out. A man may, if he please, hire a butcher to build a fence, or a shearer to erect a house; a Ministry may entrust an almost illiterate bootmaker with the drafting of a Babbit Bill, or the nation may turn an ex-toy dealer into a Premier, and no one has any right to complain ; but if such speakers as Parkes or Vogel endeavoured to lift up their eloquence on behalf of a friend whom circumstances had placed in the dock on a criminal charge they would be at once biffed out, and the defence of the life and liberty of the accused would, in the absence of much gold, be entrusted to some legal suckling whose abilities in the way of public speaking did not go beyond a stuttering attempt to say “Your Honor, — er— er —I appear —.” Men who could aot'pav counsel have gone to life-long imprisonment or to the gallows through the wordings of a law which refused them the outside assistance which would often have been readily forthcoming, but, judging from the recent debate on tbe Bankruptcy Bill, the end of this judicial murder of the poor is approaching. When ’ the clause which permits a debtor to engage a layman to represent him in the Courts was under discussion, the •< Devil’a Brigade” rolled up as old to claim for their order the sole privilege of picking the bones of all who are in trouble, but in spite ot their best endeavors, they were defeated by at votes against 8. Of the miserable minority six were lawyers A majority of 56 refused to 'be convinced that all lawyers are apostles, and all who are not lawyers foul-mouthed ruffians. The clause was passed, and the legal tribe has started at last on the downward road which leads to enforced honesty—or else to extinction. •—Bulletin.