controversy respecting the Nestorian or Chaldean Christians, recounting the same political events as are found in Mr. Layard's octavos, from which they are often taken almost verbatim. Mr. Fletcher then returns by way of Aleppo, Antioch, and Latakia, to Europe; and, although the work contains by no means sufficient to give it a claim to its title, "Notes from Nineveh," which is decidedly a pious fraud upon the public, yet, as the well-written diary of a clerical traveller, it deserves the attention of such as would pass a leisure hour in light reading.

ART. VI. Circuit Leagues Exposed: in a Letter to the Lord Chancellor. By CHARLES RANN KENNEDY, Professor of Law at Queen's College, Birmingham. London: George Bell. 1850.

6

"GENTLEMEN of the Jury-There are certain epithets which custom has assigned to certain classes of professional men, and which courtesy prompts us to use without burdening our consciences to enquire how far such conventional phrases may be strictly appropriate to any given individual. For example, we speak of the worthy magistrate,' though, peradventure, moral worthiness and the particular functionary named may be wide as the poles asunder; we say the learned counsel,' though, it may be, scarcely a ray of sound learning has illuminated the head which wears a wig, as a sign, it is surmised, of the wisdom within; and lastly, whenever we have occasion to mention a practitioner in another branch of the legal profession, we are in the habit of calling him the 'respectable attorney;' whereas, in truth and in fact, respectability may have no more affinity to the said scrivener than light has to darkness."

Such was the commencement of a very forcible address to a jury which many years ago we heard delivered by the late Mr. Justice Taunton, then one of the leaders of the Oxford circuit. The passage we have quoted, and accurately quoted -for Taunton's periods of pure English, "well spoken with good accent and good discretion," made the reporter's task an easy one has often recurred to our memory; and it was' brought back once more to our minds, "much meditating " over the letter which stands at the head of this article. The author is Mr. Charles Rann Kennedy, one of the clever and erudite sons of the late Mr. Kennedy, second master of King

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Edward the Sixth's Grammar School at Birmingham, and who has just been elected Professor of Law at Queen's College in that thriving town. The Cambridge University Calendar records Mr. Charles Kennedy's academical triumphs in rapid succession and rich abundance; and we believe the suffrages of the most competent judges of law learning in Westminster Hall would confirm the selection which the Birmingham corporation have made of a law professor for their new college. But a success commensurate with his great merits has not as yet crowned Mr. Kennedy's efforts at the bar. Let us, however, encourage Mr. Kennedy to trust that the hour of deserved success is only postponed.

Meanwhile Mr. Kennedy has been exposed to a mean persecution by the barristers of the Midland circuit, which has led to the publication of the pamphlet before us which discloses the following facts:-In the autumn of last year Mr. Kennedy was elected to the office of Professor of Law at the Queen's College, Birmingham. Conceiving that the person who held that office ought to be a practising barrister, Mr. Kennedy declined a situation of a different kind which he might have held with his professorship, because, in his opinion, with which we entirely concur, and can quote the authority of John Dunning, Lord Ashburton, in confirmation of Mr. Kennedy's and our own views of the importance of a lawyer's continuity of attention to practice who wishes to be thoroughly up to his work, conceiving that the efficiency of a lecturer would be greatly diminished if he entirely neglected to attend courts of law and to keep up his legal practice. Having become a resident in Birmingham, it became necessary for Mr. Kennedy to abandon the Home circuit, which he candidly informs his readers he had attended without success, and rendered it desirable for him to attach himself to the Midland, in which Birmingham is situated. How his application for admission to the confederation of barristers who afford the Midland counties the benefit of their learning was received by that community, will be seen from the following letter from Mr. Humfrey, Q.C.:

"Warwick, Tuesday Morning. "My dear Sir-I am sorry to say that the circuit last night determined by an unanimous resolution that you could not be permitted to join us. You will see, by what I have said, that I concurred in the opinion thus pronounced. Mr. Whitehurst, the leader, brought before us a resolution of our own deliberately adopted, by which Mr. Davison, now of the Welsh circuit, but who proposed to change to ours, was, from liis length of standing at the bar, and his having for several years

been a member of another circuit, held to be inadmissible. When I saw you at Coventry I was not aware of this case; but it was so exactly in point that it was impossible for us not to be governed by it. "I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,

"C. R. Kennedy, Esq."

"L. C. HUMFREY.

Mr. Humfrey, Q.C., having neglected to date his letter, the habit of young ladies and careless gentlemen, we referred to our Almanac and Circuit Spring Assize List for this year to verify the dates; and find the Warwick resolution of Whitehurst and Co.-(traders these barristers are, and therefore in trading language do we write of them and their low mercenary measures)-was passed on the 1st of April, and we therefore conclude that the Midland circuiteers, by way of exquisite fun, made Mr. Kennedy their poisson d'Avril, for Mr. Humfrey, Q,C., had "shortly before (we quote Mr. Kennedy's own words) declared to me in private that I ought to be admitted and promised strenuously to support me!"

In the course of a social experience, extending over fifty years, we have encountered many social anomalies; but few, if any, have more perplexed us than the amiability, learning, and general intelligence of barristers individually, and their narrow-mindedness, precedent-muddle-headedness (if we may Benthamize for the nonce) of the same individuals in their collective or circuit capacity.

Mr. Kennedy very briefly, but with good taste and proper feeling adverts to the cause of his abandonment of London practice and his location in a provincial town-namely, his desire to discharge diligently, faithfully, and efficiently, his office of a scientific legal instructor, and gently insinuates that a consideration for such a purpose, a desire for the furtherance of such a design, might have operated upon his learned brethren of the Midland circuit, and have led to a different result. Alas! Mr. Kennedy came to such a conclusion in deep ignorance of the trading spirit of the English bar in their collective capacity. The Cambridge medallist, imbued with the learning of Papinian, and the enlarging diffusive zeal of a classic jurisconsult, was little aware that Whitehurst and Co. were incapable of rising above their Tare and Tret. The barristers who flock periodically to Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Bristol, Exeter, York, Liverpool, or Lancaster, are drawn thither in pursuance of mere pelf as directly as the hucksters and pedlars who frequent those different towns and cities on market-days; but the avarice of the robed trader is more offensive than that of him in the smock-frock, inasmuch as it apes generosity, and affects a sublime indiffer

ence to pounds, shillings, and pence. The barrister's fee is honorarium quiddam forsooth; he himself is a gentleman travelling the country to take clients under his wing for honour's sake, like a noble Roman patron. He must pay a guinea a-night for his lodgings in each circuit town, or, at all events, a sum nearly amounting to that communibus annis: he must not travel thence to the next circuit town by coach or public conveyance-at least, he was forbidden so to do while stagecoaches existed; and, though the rail has wrought changes and levelled distinctions in this as in other things, we have ourselves heard it gravely debated whether barristers upon circuit ought to be permitted to travel in a second-class carriage; and we know that the leaders of some circuits look coldly upon young barristers who are economical enough, we boldly add are wise enough, to do so. Again: if a barrister belongs to the circuit-mess, which he must if he would be a member of the circuit, he must dine thereat, or pay a fine of five shillings for his absence, though he might be prudently disposed to dine at his lodgings for one. A variety of other things there are which a circuit barrister must either do or not do, and all to vindicate his gentility, and make simple folks believe he has no hankering after gold. Fame is the bride he woes: he is a gentleman on circuit, not a trader going his rounds. Upon some circuits, the Oxford especially, -upon which and its cabals a word presently-a barrister must not lodge at an inn lest he should hug the attorneys! But, upon that said Oxford circuit, attorneys are hugged by rising barristers, and by those who wish to rise, in many a form of caress, though decorum forbids the embrace to be conferred at an inn. So soon as a circuit town is reached, etiquette permits the barrister to promenade the public streets, which the prudent most diligently pace, until every barmaid, barber, lodging-house keeper, and waiter, of the place knows that Mr. H, Mr. B—, or Mr. C, has arrived and lodges at such or such a house. Speaking of barbers, the disuse of powder to bar wigs, and the consequent dispensing with a hairdresser's services, has deprived the bar of very active touters. This was felt so fearfully by the prudent, in the early days of unpowdered wigs, that we know many stuck to flour and grease that they might have an excuse to tip the accustomed Mr. Puff, who doubtless failed not to impress the minds of rural attorneys with a high notion of Mr. So-andSo's sound law learning:-"No fashion-hunter, sir; loves old customs, sir; sticks to Coke upon Littleton and powder, sir." But clerks are the touters now. The pilot-fish is no

surer avant courier of the shark than is the bustling clerk of the rising barrister. A good clerk will help a barrister upwards to the bench more rapidly than either eloquence or learning; for, indeed, without a bustling clerk, a young barrister will have little chance of displaying his possession of either. We remember, several years ago, the clerk of a deceased barrister, who would have certainly been a judge had he lived, offering his services to a barrister who now occupies a judicial position; and his special ground of qualification, according to his own showing, and in his own language, was "I am so well in with the clerks of all the leaders." The gentleman to whom this clever jackall first tendered his valuable assistance as a circuit purveyor did not accept his services, but a brother barrister on the same circuit did, and he now sits on high in Westminster Hall, enthroned among the fifteen judges of the land. None competent to estimate them will gainsay that eminent personage's acuteness, deep learning, and talents; but none thoroughly versed in circuit tactics will deny the helping efficacy of his clever clerk, whom his lordship still gratefully retains near his right hand. The depressing or exalting influence which a leader's clerk can exercise upon a young barrister's circuit prospects is much greater than may be generally suspected: for instance, a brief is brought to the lodgings of a leader, with the name of the junior endorsed upon it, if the attorney is an independent or honest man: the clerk looks at it, purses up his lips, and pompously exclaims, "We do not like Mr. as our junior: why not employ Mr. ?" naming some favoured one, the master probably of a clerk "well in with the clerks of the leaders." The we in the clerk's remonstrance above may strike some of our readers as burlesque; but it is the ordinary form of speech of these gentry, when referring to their principal, by whose name they are invariably addressed on circuit by their brother clerks and knowing attorneys who wish to be "well in" with these potential subordinates. Thus, while Whitehurst and Co. were discussing at the White Hart or the Swan the policy of excluding Mr. Kennedy from the Midland circuit, the respective clerks of the several members of that firm were, perhaps, debating the same question at the Pig and Whistle or the Cat and Gridiron. Mr. Whitehurst, Mr. Humfrey, and Mr. Mellor, spoke at the aristocratic hotel and their doppel-gangers, under the self-same names, spouted at the humbler alehouse. Which are the masters, and which are the men ? It is not for us to indicate: we think it better to adopt the flexible formula of the accommodating showman "Whichever you please, my darlings."