IN HUMOROUS MOOD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20103, 9 May 1935, Page 10

IN HUMOROUS MOOD

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Lord Hewart, Lord Justice of England, was in humorous mood when he responded to the toast “The Bench and the Bar,” at the annual dinner in Brighton of the Sussex Law Society (reports the “Daily Telegraph”). “It is good to be here,” he said. “It is always pleasant to take part in the austere festivities of laborious lawyers, even though—forgetting the wise example of the Law Society—they suffer, and make others suffer, the pains of after-dinner speech. “As I look into your patient faces I am reminded of the too-much-neglect-ed virtue of those who think themselves worthy of great things, being worthy. “How sincerely, to be sure, the public love you! How agreeably, while they denounce you in private, they praise you in public; and how eagerly, though they avoid you in times of prosperity, they rush to you whenever they are in trouble! “You remember the happy thought of the man in Arundel Street —that attractive little street which connects the Strand on the north with the Embankment on the south: “‘At the top of my street the lawyers abound, And down at the bottom the barges are found; Fly, honesty, fly, to some safer retreat — There is craft in the river and craft in the street.’ “But his considered reply was: " ‘Why should honesty fly to some safer retreat? From lawyers and barges, 'od rot'em! Fer the lawyers are just at the top of the street. And the barges are just at the bottom!” "And I am sure that we all vote in that lobby. “When I was wondering what precise form my impromptus ought to take, I happened to pick up, for the 84th time, that inexhaustible allegory, ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ You remember that Robert Louis Stevenson, having described Mr Utterson, the lawyer, as ‘a man of rugged countenance, went on to say that, nevertheless, ‘at friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye.’ “What an attractive word that word •beacon’ is, like the thing which it represents ! Indeed, I am rather tempted to persuade an old friend of mine to introduce in that eminently fair and discrimmating assembly, the House of Lords, a one-clause Bill for the purpose of changing the name of this society. The clause might run—might it not?—in some such way as this:— “Be it enacted that, after the passing of this Act, the society, heretofore known as ‘The Sussex Law Society,’ shall always be known and referred to as ‘Brighton’s Beautiful Beacons,’ and any order, regulation, or caprice of the said ‘Beacons’ shall have the same force and effect as if it were enacted in this Act, and shai' not be questioned in any court by proceedings in mandamus, certiorari, prohibition, or by case stated, or otherwise in any manner whatsoever: Provided always that any such order, regulation, or caprice shall, at any time after ten years next following the perpetration thereof, be laid upon the table of either House of Parliament as an unopposed return, and shall thereupon be deemed to be obsolete and unintelligible."