The Club Smoking Room.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 8, 25 August 1909, Page 4

The Club Smoking Room.

By

HAVANA

Why Pantomime is Popular. PANTOMIME,” remarked a veteran playgoer, “is still as popular as ever, judging by the crowded houses it attracts. There still lingers a kind of popular theory that it is intended to please the children, but I fancy it is quite as popular with the grown-ups. We get tired of problem playa, and even the excitement of melodrama palls in time, but catchy music, gorgeous scenery, well arranged ballets, and pretty girls, will always attract. To my mind, the pantomime is better than most musical comedies, and vastly superior to the majority of plays staged at the present day. Somehow, we don’t seem to get any really good songs now, and the comic interludes are often feeble in the extreme. But for spectacular effects, we are far ahead of the past generation. I often wonder, by the way, when we are going to produce a really great dramatist? The success of spectacular pieces is largely due to the fact that the majority of our dramas are pure rubbish. It is difficult to sit some of them out.”

The Drama of Life. “The drama of real life,” said the la wyer, "is often far more interesting than anything presented on the stage. I often get enough material in a day to make half-a-dozen really good plays. Take any sitting of our Supreme Court, and note the tragedies enacted between the four walls of the hall of justice. There is a great element of luck about our methods of criminal procedure. You never have the faintest idea what a jury is going to do. I never abandon a case as hopeless, for the simple reason that verdicts seldom depend exclusively on the evidence. I remember a case in the Old Country, where a man was tried for theft. He had been caught in the act with the stolen goods in his possession. Pretty desperate, eh? But he got off, though his counsel was an absolute duffer, and the Judge naturally summed up dead against the prisoner.” “How did that happen?” queried the cynic. “I assume from your deacrip-

tion that you were the counsel in question. Did the jury pity him for his choice of a defender?” A Curious Verdict. “Not at all,” replied the lawyer. “I was not the defending counsel. I was merely a spectator. The counsel was the local squire, and the jury were mostly men who were in one way or other dependent on him. He advanced the astonishing plea that his client had stolen the goods in a fit of absence of mind. It was, of course, an utterly absurd defence, and the Judge disdained to comment on it, beyond making a few sarcastic references to people who wasted the time of the Court. The jury retired, and returned in a few minutes. In reply to the usual question whether they found the prisoner guilty or not guilty, the foreman said that they knew nothing about guilty or not guilty; they found for the squire. The Judge refused to accept this very unusual verdict, and explained that the squire was only defending the prisone-. The twelve good men and true thereupon acquitted the prisoner, and the squire had gained a bril-

liant victory. I have read of cases even more absurd, but that was the funniest I ever came across personally.” British Justice. “I often think,” put in the MJ., “that our British justice is not all it is cracked up to be. What chance has a poor man of gaining an acquittal? Precious little as things are at present. You take a man who is absolutely ignorant of the methods of a Court of Law, and put him in the dock, and tell him he is at liberty to defend himself. The very fact that he ia in the dock is against him; his ignorance is still more against him. To oppose him, you get the best lawyer you can find—a man who has spent his life in the atmosphere of Courts, and who is an expert in the art of marshalling facts, and examining witnesses. The Crown pays all its witnesses and all its own costs of the trial. The unfortunate prisoner has to pay all his costs out of his own pocket. You know the thing is most grossly unfair. 1 have

known a perfectly innocent man to be fifty or sixty pounds out of pocket. If the Crown pays the cost of the prosecution, it ought to pay the cost of the defence. It is in the public interest that justice should be done, and under our present law there are frequent miscarriages of ■ justice.” Wliere Was the Money? “You are quite right,” answered the lawyer, “but it seems to be a matter in which nobody takes much interest. The expenses of a good defence are often very heavy. I remember a barrister telling me that a man came to him to defend him on a charge of stealing fifty sovereigns. The barrister undertook the case for £5O, east in advance. His client went away, and returned in a few hours with the money in gold. The man of law secured an acquittal by representing that his client had never shown any sign of being in possession of a large sum of money. If the sovereigns had been taken by him, where were they? The man was quite a pauper, and there was no evidence that he had been flush of cash, and so on. It was ingenious, and succeeded with the jury.” “Which goes to show,” commented the cynic, “that lawyers may be the best promoters of honesty, since their rapacity in the matter of fees makes pilfering decided unprofitable. They probably get the lion’s share of the profits, whether the case is civil or criminal. If you wish to make money out of crime, it is better to be a lawyer than a professional burglar. It is also safer.”