It
Gave Me Darting Pains Across The Top Of The Skull - At About The
Spot Where He Would Probably Have Belted Me With His Club Had I
Even Dared To Ask Him To Bear A Hand With My Baggage.
I had a peep into the workings of the system of which the London
bobby is a spoke when I went to what is the very hub of the wheel
of the common law - a police court.
I understood then what gave
the policeman in the street his authority and his dignity - and his
humility - when I saw how carefully the magistrate on the bench
weighed each trifling cause and each petty case; how surely he
winnowed out the small grain of truth from the gross and tare of
surmise and fiction; how particular he was to give of the abundant
store of his patience to any whining ragpicker or street beggar
who faced him, whether as defendant at the bar, or accuser, or
witness.
It was the very body of the law, though, we saw a few days after
this when by invitation we witnessed the procession at the opening
of the high courts. Considered from the stand-points of picturesqueness
and impressiveness it made one's pulses tingle when those thirty
or forty men of the wig and ermine marched in single and double
file down the loftily vaulted hall, with the Lord Chancellor in
wig and robes of state leading, and Sir Rufus Isaacs, knee-breeched
and sword-belted, a pace or two behind him; and then, in turn, the
justices; and, going on ahead of them and following on behind them,
knight escorts and ushers and clerks and all the other human cogs
of the great machine.
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