The trial of Maharaja Nanda Kumar : a narrative of a judicial murder / by H. Beveridge.

  • Henry Beveridge
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The trial of Maharaja Nanda Kumar : a narrative of a judicial murder / by H. Beveridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in the eyes, and his highest idea of a touching scene is that of a judge listening to a criminal! Sir J. Stephen has been a very successful man, and his talents and industry have deserved success, but perhaps it is because he has been so successful that he cannot perceive that his abilities are limit- ed. He has the air of believing that, because he has become a Judge of the Queen’s Bench Division, he must he right and every other person wrong. I think that we may, without injustice, apply to himself the exaggerated language in which he has spoken of Impey, and say that he has had an excellent legal education, that he is a man of remarkable energy and courage, and that he has a great deal of rather common-place ability. But such mortal weapons will avail little in a contest with the gods ! or, to drop metaphor, mere talent will not avail in a contest with the genius of Edmund Burke, on a subject to which that genius devoted years of intense labour. Sir J. Stephen looks at great questions from the point of view of the mere practising lawyer, and in con- sequence he cannot grasp them : witness his dreary letters on the Afghan question and the Ilbert Bill! The notion which he seems to entertain, that the Nauda Kumar question can be settled by one who has applied to it only a knowledge of English Criminal Law, is about as grotesque as that of pedants “ who think to climb Parnassus by dint o’ Greek.” His rashness has even led him into mistake in his own particular department. Did he not write comments on the Criminal Procedure Bill, which his successor declined to publish from tenderness to the learned Judge’s reputation ? Queen’s Bench be grateful to him for the comparison? Judges, like Bishops, ought to have a good testimony from those that are without, and I should be sorry to think that any English Judge, in recent times, had such a reputation that a conscientious man like Cornwallis would willingly see him hanged ! Nor do I think that any other Chief Justice would have had so little respect for himself or his office as to go on writing by every mail for seven years to a brute such as Thurlow (Sir William Jones called him a beast, though ho did it in Greek) without receiving a single letter in reply. (Story of Nuucomar, I, 33.)
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