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1828.7 Welsh Jurisprudence, 475 
judges, advocates, or attornies, our readers shall have an opportunity of 
seeing. 
The qualifications of the first are the common qualifications of sine- 
curists—great interest and little knowledge; and we can assure our 
readers, that a “mere Irishman” is not an animal of less respect to an 
Orangeman, than is a Welsh judge to an English lawyer. In addition 
to little original aptitude to their situations, these gentlemen, when they 
descend from the dignity of the bench, are usually left but to one of two 
courses. They must either fall into the ranks of practising advocates, 
or relapse into occupations altogether foreign to the administration of the 
law. In the former case (in addition to the sensible observation of the 
present Justice Littledale on the subject, “that the habits of a counsel 
and judge are very distinct, the mind of the one being in some respects 
differently arranged from that of the other”), it may happen, and Lord 
Cawdor states it actually to have happened, that the judge may have to 
pronounce in judgment on the very case on which he has advised as coun 
sel ;.in the latter, most assuredly, the law, like Acres’s courage, will 
rapidly “ooze out at his finger’s ends.” There is not a private prac- 
titioner, who, in the desertion of the active exercise of professional study, 
does not feel his familiarity with the law gradually crumbling away 
from him. To be even passably acquainted with its subtleties, a man 
must, to some extent, be mixed up as it were with the law and its admi- 
nistration—he must be constantly on the watch for every variation or 
extension of its principles ; without this, a party affecting to preside as 
a judge, must become embarrassed with the feeling of his own insuffi- 
ciency. He will deliver himself up to the guidance of the most dex- 
terous advocates ; and, what is even worse, perhaps, than the loss of his 
confidence in himself, the loss of others’ confidence in him will come to 
complete the exhibition of his incompetence. His lordship states truly 
enough. that it must require “some courage in a Chancery barrister to 
come fresh from his practice in the Court of Equity, to sit in judgment 
on the lives of his fellow creatures ;’ but we think it would be even a 
still more absurd exhibition to see a lounger at-watering-places, or a 
gentleman-rustic,* coming fresh from their ease, to expound knotty points 
of seisin and disseisin—pleadings and demurrers—or questions of tithes 
and moduses. Moreover, we quote the language of Mr. Brougham,— 
« another and a greater objection is, that the Welsh judges never change 
their circuits. One of them, for instance, goes the Carmarthen circuit, 
another the Brecon circuit, and a third the Chester circuit—but always 
the same circuit. And what is the inevitable consequence? Why, they 
become acquainted with the gentry, the magistrates, almost with the 
tradesmen of each district, the very witnesses who come before them, 
and intimately with the practitioners, whether counsel or attornies. 
The names, the faces, the characters, the histories, of all those persons 
are familiar to them ; and out of this too great knowledge grow likings 
and prejudices, which never can by any possibility cast a shadow across 
the open, broad, and pure path of the judges of Westminster Hall.’’+ 
With respect tothe advocates, we did not want his lordship to inform 
us, “that few barristers of eminence find it worth their while to go into 
Wales.” Indeed, the dearth of barristers, of all descriptions, frequenting 
* An animal better known as a country gentleman. 
+ Speech on the present oa of the laws, pp. 21, 22. 
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