i8o APPENDIX, 



established that a barrister, in defending a case, has a right 

 to make use of all fair and even what may appear to the 

 witness unfair means for the defence. Nothing can tend 

 more to lower a witness in the opinion of the Court and 

 jury, or diminish the value of his evidence, than the mani- 

 festation of a disposition to deal with his examiner as if he 

 were a personal enemy, to evade the questions put, or to 

 answer them with flippancy or anger. All such exhibitions 

 invariably end in the discomfiture of the witness. It has 

 been suggested that medical men on these occasions might 

 take a lesson from lawyers, and observe how little they allow 

 forensic differences, which they put on with their professional 

 costume, to influence them in their intercourse with each 

 other or with an adverse judge or ]\\ry. 



License of Counsel. 



Medical men have complained, and on many occasions 

 justly, of the li'cejise of counsel. On this subject it may be 

 well to consider what has been said by one of the highest 

 authorities on the Bench, Chief Justice Erie: — "The law 

 trusts the advocate with a privilege in respect to the liberty 

 of speech which is in practice bounded only by his own 

 sense of duty ; and he may have to speak upon subjects 

 concerning the deepest interests of social life, and the inner- 

 most feelings of the soul. The law also trusts him with a 

 power of insisting upon answers to the most painful ques- 

 tioning, and this power again is in practice only controlled 

 by his own view of the interests of truth." (Judgment in 

 Kennedy v. B7'ou7i, 1862.) Thus it will be seen that almost 

 unlimited powers of interrogation are intrusted to counsel by 

 the law, and it is a serious question whether the unrestricted 

 use (which it has been justly remarked means only the fre- 

 quent abuse) of these enormous powers, is necessary or even 

 favourable to the administration of justice. 



One of the most severe reprimands on this abuse came 



