“Very well,” said the Recorder; “you, Brown, the actual thief, and you, Jones, his accessory in the very act, not having been convicted before, I am sorry to say, cannot be sentenced to more than two years’ imprisonment with hard labour, and I reduce the sentence in your cases to that; but as to you, Robinson, yours is a very bad case.  The jury have found that you were mixed up in this robbery, and I find that you have been convicted of stealing apples.  True, it’s a good many years ago, but it brings you within the purview of the statute, and therefore your sentence of five years will stand.”

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE NEW LAW ALLOWING THE ACCUSED TO GIVE EVIDENCE—­THE CASE OF DR. WALLACE, THE LAST I TRIED ON CIRCUIT.

I should like to make an observation on the recent Act for enabling prisoners to go into the witness-box and subject themselves, after giving their evidence, to cross-examination.

It must be apparent to every one, learned and unlearned in its mysteries, that no evidence can be of its highest value, and often is of no value, until sifted by cross-examination.  I was always opposed to this process as against an accused person, because I know how difficult it is under the most favourable circumstances to avoid the pitfalls which a clever and artistic cross-examiner may dig for the unwary.

It did not occur to me in that early stage of the discussion on the Bill that a really true story cannot be shaken in cross-examination, and that only the false must give way beneath its searching effect.

I had to learn something in advocacy; indeed, I was always learning, and the best of us may go on for ever learning, as long as this wonderful and mysterious human nature exists.

However, I am not writing philosophical essays, but relating the facts of my simple life, and I confess that the case that came before me on this occasion totally upset my quiet repose in all the comfortable traditions of the past.  Human nature had something which I had not seen:  it arose in this way.  A doctor was accused of a terrible crime against a female patient.  I need not give its details; it is sufficient to say that if the girl’s statement was true penal servitude for life was not too much, for he was a villain of the very worst character.  Taking the ordinary run of evidence, if I may use the word, and the ordinary mode of cross-examination, which, in the hands of unskilled practitioners, generally tends to corroborate the evidence-in-chief, the case was overwhelmingly proved, and how sad and painful it was to contemplate none can realize who do not understand anything below the surface of human existence.

I had watched the case with the anxious care that I am conscious should be exercised in all inquiries, and especially criminal inquiries, that come before one.  I watched, and, let me say, especially watched, for any point in the evidence on which I could put a question in the prisoner’s favour.