THE STORY OF MY LEGAL EX- POLICE CASE. [FRANCIS COWLEY BURNAND was born in London in 1337, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, was called to the bar in 1862. Burnand has, since the death of Shirley Brooks in 1874, been the editor of Punch. Mr. Burnand became known to the public as the author of "Happy Thoughts," about 1868, and is to-day one of England's most popular Humorists. He is the author of about a hundred dramatic pieces. The burlesque of Douglas Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan" achieved a "run" of 400 consecutive nights at the Royal Theatre, Dean Street, Soho, London. Wo give one of his more recent books.] My Aunt paid a Conveyancer a hundred pounds to teach me all he knew, or, at all events, so much of his knowledge as he could spare, without inconvenience to himself. The implicit confidence reposed in me, subsequently, by my Aunt, seems to render a sort of Apologia necessary, in order to "show cause" why my legal knowledge was never of any great service either to her or myself. who had invented a favourite formula for polishing off the most difficult equations. It was apparently so easy that I left it to the last, and then found that any attempt at memoria technica was utterly unsuited to my peculiar faculties. I When the time for my degree came, went in for mathematical honours, and came out in the "Pol." However, I was able to write B. A., at the end of my or twice since, to see how it looked, but which I dare say I have done once name, without any definite object. The last examination I found myself obliged to undergo was for the law. It had been determined by my uncle and a couple of aunts, that as two of my cousins were in the army, another in the navy (always going to join his ship, and perpetually being somewhere else on leave, as far as I could make out), a fourth in the City at Lloyd's (where he is always ready for luncheon with a friend) and a fifth in Liverpool, where he is making a colossal fortune out of something which requires him to be for the greater part of his time at the London club-it was decided, I say, by them, that I should become a banker. [I made a mistake in mentioning my law examination first; there's the banking to come.] On reviewing the commencement of my career, I find that we were all three mistaken in our views of the future. By all three, I mean, my Aunt, my Uncle (her The question was put to me, would I brother), and their Nephew, myself. One like to go into Buller, Fobbes and Grummistake I made at a very early period, bury's Bank? I said I thought I should: namely, at Camford, where I astonished my notion of my employment at Buller, uncle by being unable to point out Fobbes and Grumbury's being that I my name to him in the Honour List of should stand behind a counter with a the Little-Go examination. However, I copper coal shovel, and dabble in soveproved to him, that it was only owing to reigns. Everyone said that I was a lucky my having taken up a line of study totally fellow, and would be a partner with Buldifferent from that expected by the Ex-ler, Fobbes and Grumbury, or, Buller deaminers, that I had been, to speak technically, "plucked." my I had disdained to attempt the ordinary line, and, therefore, I neither came out with honours, nor without them. In short, I didn't come out at all, except out of the Senate House before the examination had concluded. After this mistake, I thought that the best thing I could do, to prevent a recurrence of that accident, was to go away and read. I chose Brown of Corpus for my tutor, or "coach," as the word is, and of course discovered afterwards that I ought to have gone to Smith of Sidney. I had a narrow squeak of it with Brown, ceased and only Fobbes and Grumbury left, I should succeed to Grumbury's vacant place, or Grumbury being gone, I should come into Fobbes' place, or both defunct, I should be all alone as Myself, late Buller, Fobbes and Grumbury. There was the opening, said my uncle, encouraging me as if I were a ferret going in to work my way up, and hunt out poor old Fobbes and Grumbury. In I went. The partners were very particular about their clerks being at the office at nine, and not leaving until the last figure had been scored, and all work done, which often didn't happen till halfpast five. At midday I would rush over to my cousin at Lloyd's, who could always spare an hour to my five minutes, and ask him to give me luncheon. I have come to the conclusion that turtle-soup and punch is not the best thing to take in the middle of the day, if you want to add up accounts. Birch's punch is A 1, and soon became A 2, and A 3. I believe my cousin went back ready to write risks for fabulous sums to the coast of the undiscovered islands, if anyone had suggested such speculations then. For my self, after one of these midday repasts, I nodded to Buller, smiled on Fobbes through the glass door, and winked at Grumbury when he came out to know whose eye it was: and on my tenth day in the bank I went wrong to the extent of thirty-thousand pounds in my account. I forget now how it was that I had to enter it, or what took me into the cashier's department: probably Birch's punch did it. At all events the cashier's clerks, with Fobbes and Grumbury into the bargain, were all kept at the bank long after office hours, utterly unable to make out where the money was lost, and I have a sort of notion that in consequence of this little error of mine, something "went up" that ought to have gone down, and something "went down," that ought to have gone up, and the Stock Exchange was, somehow, visibly affected. I was cautioned, and went on for more than a week at this sort of drudgery (for drudgery it was to a B.A.), when my cousin at Lloyd's suddenly discovered a wonderful beverage concocted by the head waiter of the Marine Insurance establishment. There was plenty of ice in it, I know that, and you sucked it through a straw, like sherry cobbler: it wasn't sherry cobbler, and it wasn't any other cobbler; but it was one of those drinks that you go on sipping and wondering what it is, and how it's made, and whether half-a-glass more would hurt you, and finally decide that there isn't a headache in half a hogshead of it. I did all this, without arriving at the half hogshead point, and the half-glass more did hurt me. I have been since informed that I offered to fight one of the customers, who, I pointed out, had insulted me, across the counter, and whose proffered cheque I scorned. Fobbes and Grumbury agreed to look over this (Grumbury was somewhat obstinate, in Buller's absence from town), and I remained in the bank; but I avoided luncheons. My evenings in town were given up to relaxation, and my mornings I, with difficulty, devoted to Buller, Fobbes and Grumbury. In fact, I may say, that, after a time, finding refreshing sleep at night incompatible with going to bed late and getting to Grumbury's at nine A.M., I devoted my evenings to the serious work of amusement, and the day time to refreshing myself with as much sleep as I could get at my desk behind the counter at Fobbes and Grumbury's. Summer and cricket came; once I stayed. away with leave and missed the train: another time I stayed away, without leave, and missed two trains. Buller frowned, Fobbes shook his head, and Grumbury observed, "It wouldn't do." Fobbes told me that "when he was a young man, he came into the City with a crust, and had to work for his daily bread. He had no cricket or amusements." I didn't know if this was meant for an argument; if it was, I had nothing to say. I pitied poor Fobbes. Grumbury chimed in that "he had been made to work; had not known what it was to have a holiday for years,' which (I am sorry to say it of Grumbury), was not the strict truth, as he never came to the bank on Saturdays and had stopped away on Mondays and Wednesdays (having a country farm) for the last twenty years. Buller only sighed. But all three partners thought I had made a mistake in coming into the bank, and so I retired, leaving the victory in the hands of Buller, Fobbes and Grumbury. "Now," said my uncle, who was very angry at the partnership prospect being obliterated: You must do something. We were at dessert at the time, and being thus addressed, I began peeling an apple: not because I wanted it, but to convey an idea that I had no wish to be idle. "The Army?" said I, inquiringly. "You're too old," was my uncle's reply; surlily. I murmured vaguely, "the Mounted Rifles," having some indistinct notion that you could enter this corps (if such an one existed, of which I had my secret doubts) up to any age: perhaps be a raw recruit at seventy. "Mounted Fiddlesticks!" said my uncle, who thought I was treating the sub ject with levity, and did not want to be, as he expressed it, "kicking my heels about at home." I couldn't help laughing at his saying "Mounted Fiddlesticks," whereupon he begged me not to play the fool at his table, whatever I might do at Fobbes and Grumbury's From which you may gather that my uncle did not possess the best of tempers: he was also, as you may have seen from his view of the future partnership at Fobbes's, a very sanguine man. "The law?" I suggested experimentally. "Yes," said he superciliously, "that's all very well: but what do you mean by the Law?" I did not know what I meant, having indeed spoken at haphazard: but I had a general idea of a long wig, bands, a gown, and being a judge, somehow. I was silent. "The Bar," asked my uncle, "or a solicitor?" Never having considered this before, I thought the dutiful course would be to refer it to him. He chose the Bar. The prospect he held out was a brilliant one. Make a speech," said he, rising with the occasion, for he was of a sanguine temperament. "Everyone says 'clever, very clever: who is he?' Then they all want to know you. Some question arises, of importance; you make another speech. Judges immediately point you out as the man: then you get into the House, make a hit there, your fortune's made, and you're Lord Chancellor-the highest dignity in the kingdom." As he had evidently made up his mind as to my future position, I could only try to see it in the same light, and reply, "Yes," though I felt that unless there should be a great change in the British Constitution, some considerable time might elapse before he would see me on the woolsack. This, however, I kept to myself, and admitted to my uncle that my elevation to the chancellorship was not such a very improbable thing after all. He then began to tell me stories of chancellors who had begun life by sweeping out offices, or as errand-boys, or by holding horses, until I secretly regretted not having chosen the sweeping profession as the true road to legal preferment. Being upon the subject, he pointed to the example of Lord Chancellor Somebody, who was at the bar for ten years without getting a brief, and was one day about to throw up the profession in disgust, and enlist, when a brief came, he spoke splendidly, and his fortune was made. I realised myself in that portion of the history where he hadn't any business; but this I kept to myself. It was decided that I should go to the bar. The entrance being obtained by either passing an examination, or attending a course of lectures, I chose the latter, having lost confidence in myself from experience in the former method. I had nearly completed the appointed number, when I made a mistake in the day. This I explained to the lecturer, and it was overlooked. But in the following week for the first time I mistook the hour, and arrived when the door was shut, the last lecture given, and the Professor gone into the country for his vacation. A friend said "Oh, go in for the Exam. Easy as possible." I suggested that there were legal difficulties which would pose me. His answer was confidently, "Not a bit. All law is founded upon the principles of common sense. Reduce any apparent legal difficulty to first principles, and there you are." (I subsequently tried this; and certainly there I was, but didn't get any farther.) "But technical terms one must get up," I objected. He was quite indignant. "Technical terms," he replied, " can be mastered in a week's reading." His theory was that hardly any lawyers know anything of law: that the men who get on best know the least; which is, to the beginner, encouraging as a theory, but fails when reduced to practice, or, more strictly speaking, when you, as a barrister, are reduced to no practice. However, what man dared I dared, and in I went. I read my paper through carefully: it didn't seem to contain much law that I was acquainted with; but remembering my friend's advice about "first principles " and "common sense," I settled down to one question. It was this: "Why is notice of a prior incumbrance, &c., which ought to be, but is not, registered in a County Registry, effectual to observe priority?" I tried to reduce this to principles of common sense. After much thought, it| struck me that perhaps if I commenced the answer on paper it would come right of itself somehow. So I began slowly on a large sheet and with a big B up in one corner, "Because- "—yes, exactly, because why? It looked like the answer to a riddle. I glanced round at my neighbours; they were all scribbling away at various rates, heads down, well at their work. The examiner had his eye on me, so I made a feint to be thinking deeply, and scratched out "Because," slowly, and then wrote it again, in a different character, on another sheet of paper. After a few minutes I found that I had only been sketching fancy portraits of little examiners with big heads all about the page, with an occasional reminiscence of the lineaments of Buller, Fobbes & Grumbury. This I felt wouldn't pass me, so I made a bold jump to number seven, in consequence of recognising the word "mortgage." No. VII.-Why is a person taking a mortgage of property and knowing that it was subject to an equitable mortgage, postponed to the latter?" It was necessary to write something, so I commenced by saying that "By the word mortgage we must understand this I scratched out, and on reconsideration began again thus:-"To enter into this subject as fully as it deserves, we must reduce the technical question to the first principles of common sense." There I stopped. It was no good. An attempt to hit off an original definition of Constructive Fraud" was also, I have reason to believe, a failure. 66 As an example of Constructive Fraud I ventured upon the instance of a builder who had undertaken to erect an habitable and solid house and who had "scamped" his work. I have since ascertained that this is not what the examiners meant by "Constructive Fraud." A short-pointed question, evidently framed by a brisk examiner, caught my eve. "No. X.-What is Replevin?" I did not like to reply on paper that it was made up of the words "Re" and "plevin," which was the only answer that suggested itself to me after looking at it for five minutes; so I put this on one side, and, like a Mazeppa among the examination questions, again I urged on my wild ca reer. Page 3. On the second paper: Criminal Law. "If a prisoner has received judgment, and the sentence be afterwards reversed by a Court of Error, can he be again indicted for the same offence?" Here I was at home at last. "No," I wrote boldly. "He could not be indicted for the same offence, because,"—now came an opportunity for a specimen of my style; the examiners could judge from this what an acquisition I should be to the bar as an advocate,-“ because it is the glorious privilege of a native Englishman, of one whose birthright is to call himself free and never to know slavery," this was, I felt, a too evident paraphrase on the chorus of "Rule Britannia;" but it looked well, and would succeed admirably if declaimed,-"to be charged only once with the same offence; and being convicted, or unconvicted, it mattered not, he could never, never,"-" Rule Britannia" again: I ought to have given my attention to maritime law "be again placed at the bar before twelve of his fellow-countrymen, ready to take his stand for the of fence once committed, and "-here I felt I was getting weak, and might lapse into unconscious verbiage, so pulled up with"in fact it was totally against the principles of English law, and English common sense, on which all law was founded,"this came in well,-" to try a man twice for only one offence." After this effort I paused. What was the next question? The next was a pendant to the former, and ran thus: "Give the reason for your answer." This took me aback. It involved reading my answer over again. I could see no reason for it. The more I thought of it the less reason I could see. In fact the whole case came gradually to assume a totally totally different complexion. Why shouldn't a man be tried twice if he deserved it, or could be caught again? "Caught again!" That suggested a new train of thought. Perhaps the question turned upon this supposition. Yet, if so, it was absurdly like the receipt attributed to Glasse in her cookery book, of "First catch your hare," and I couldn't very well write that down, as it might look like impertinence towards the examiner or benchers, or whoever they were who had to read these papers. "Give the reason for your answer.' No, I could not see any. There was no reason for it, except |