“I don’t doubt but you’ll get him off.”
“Well;—I may do so. They ought not to hang any man on such evidence as there is against him, even though there were no moral doubt of his guilt. There is nothing really to connect Mr. Phineas Finn with the murder—nothing tangible. But there is no saying nowadays what a jury will do. Juries depend a great deal more on the judge than they used to do. If I were on trial for my life, I don’t think I’d have counsel at all.”
“No one could defend you as well as yourself, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”
“I didn’t mean that. No;—I shouldn’t defend myself. I should say to the judge, ‘My lord, I don’t doubt the jury will do just as you tell them, and you’ll form your own opinion quite independent of the arguments.’ ”
“You’d be hung, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”
“No; I don’t know that I should,” said Mr. Chaffanbrass, slowly. “I don’t think I could affront a judge of the present day into hanging me. They’ve too much of what I call thick-skinned honesty for that. It’s the temper of the time to resent nothing—to be mealymouthed and mealy-hearted. Jurymen are afraid of having their own opinion, and almost always shirk a verdict when they can.”
“But we do get verdicts.”
“Yes; the judges give them. And they are mealymouthed verdicts, tending to equalise crime and innocence, and to make men think that after all it may be a question whether fraud is violence, which, after all, is manly, and to feel that we cannot afford to hate dishonesty. It was a bad day for the commercial world, Mr. Wickerby, when forgery ceased to be capital.”
“It was a horrid thing to hang a man for writing another man’s name to a receipt for thirty shillings.”
“We didn’t do it, but the fact that the law held certain frauds to be hanging matters operated on the minds of men in regard to all fraud. What with the joint-stock working of companies, and the confusion between directors who know nothing and managers who know everything, and the dislike of juries to tread upon people’s corns, you can’t punish dishonest trading. Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from dishonest stony-hearted Rome. With such a motto as that to guide us no man dare trust his brother. Caveat lex—and let the man who cheats cheat at his peril.”
“You’d give the law a great deal to do.”
“Much less than at present. What does your Caveat emptor come to? That every seller tries to pick the eyes out of the head of the purchaser. Sooner or later the law must interfere, and Caveat emptor falls to the ground. I bought a horse the other day; my daughter wanted something to look pretty, and like an old ass as I am I gave a hundred and fifty pounds for the brute. When he came home he wasn’t worth a feed of corn.”
“You had a warranty, I suppose?”
“No, indeed! Did you ever hear of such an old fool?”
“I should have thought any dealer would have taken him back for the sake of his character.”
“Any dealer would; but—I bought him of a gentleman.”
“Mr. Chaffanbrass!”
“I ought to have known better, oughtn’t I? Caveat emptor.”
“It was just giving away your money, you know.”
“A great deal worse than that. I could have given the—gentleman—a hundred and fifty pounds, and not have minded it much. I ought to have had the horse killed, and gone to a dealer for another. Instead of that—I went to an attorney.”
“Oh, Mr. Chaffanbrass;—the idea of your going to an attorney.”
“I did then. I never had so much honest truth told me in my life.”
“By an attorney!”
“He said that he did think I’d been born long enough to have known better than that! I pleaded on my own behalf that the gentleman said the horse was all right. ‘Gentleman!’ exclaimed my friend. ‘You go to a gentleman for a horse; you buy a horse from a gentleman without a warranty; and then you come to me! Didn’t you ever hear of Caveat emptor, Mr. Chaffanbrass? What can I do for you?’ That’s what my friend, the attorney, said to me.”
“And what came of it, Mr. Chaffanbrass? Arbitration, I should say?”
“Just that;—with the horse eating his head off every meal at ever so much per week—till at last I fairly gave in from sheer vexation. So the—gentleman—got my money, and I added something to my stock of experience. Of course, that’s only my story, and it may be that the gentleman could tell it another way. But I say that if my story be right the doctrine of Caveat emptor does not encourage trade. I don’t know how we got to all this from Mr. Finn. I’m to see him tomorrow.”
“Yes;—he is very anxious to speak to you.”
“What’s the use of it, Wickerby? I hate seeing a client.—What comes of it?”
“Of course he wants to tell his own story.”
“But I don’t want to hear his own story. What good will his own story do me? He’ll tell me either one of two things. He’ll swear he didn’t murder the man—”
“That’s what he’ll say.”
“Which can have no effect upon me one way or the other; or else he’ll say that he did—which would cripple me altogether.”
“He won’t say that, Mr. Chaffanbrass.”
“There’s no knowing what they’ll say. A man will go on swearing by his God that he is innocent, till at last, in a moment of emotion, he breaks down, and out comes the truth. In such a case as this
