 | CHAPTER III. Dukesborough tales |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
“Can't we get through with the docket by Friday night?”
“There's business enough here to occupy the whole week, and more
too. You'll have to sit an adjourned term to get through with it.”
“I shall do no such thing; and what is more, I shall adjourn the
court Friday night.”
Mr. Sandidge smiled with wonted complacency. “I don't think we
can hardly get to the Appeal before Wednesday dinner; and it looks
like a pity but what some of them cases that's been continued so long
could be tried. We lawyers aint like judges, to go and draw our salaries
every three months, but have to wait until the cases are disposed
of, and sometimes a long time getting them then.”
This excellent joke put him on a broad grin. The Judge did not
seem to appreciate it much, though he smiled in faint commendation.
Let us contemplate this judge a little. He was fifty years old,
twenty-five of which had been spent in the practice of the law, in which
he had risen to a fourth rank. As a set-off to this professional eminence,
he had remained as he had begun, poor in purse. Three years
before this an election was being held for the office of Judge of the
Superior Court of that circuit. Let us remember that at that time the
Judge of the Superior Court was the only high judicial officer in the
circuit. He was both judge and chancellor. His discretion was
uncontrolled and uncontrollable in all cases regarding the security, the
property, and reputation of citizens; and even his construction of the
Constitution of the State was unalterable by any human power. Three
years before, politics had taken one of its turns, and the party to which
the fourth-rate lawyer of twenty-five years' practice belonged unexpectedly
found itself with a small majority in the legislature. The incumbent
of the Bench, being a member of the minority, was of course to
share its fate and retire from office. There were two prominent candidates
from the party in power; one a retired member of Congress, who
was finding it difficult to recover the practice which he had given up
fifteen years before, and the other a man of ten years' connection with
sought the office for the éclat and the power which it would confer upon
him. Several ballots had been made without an election. Mr. Elam
Sandidge, for certain reasons of his own, had consented to represent
his county in the Senate, and was one of the party in minority. A
more amused man it was seldom any one's privilege to see than was
he, when on the repeated counting out of the votes the presiding officer
announced that there had been no election. He looked to this and to
that one on either side of the house, and went about whispering to
some and winking at others.
“What is that dirty old rascal doing on our side of the aisle?” inquired
a majority member of his neighbor.
“I can't tell; but some rascality brings him here, you may swear to
that.”
While the votes were being counted out for the fifth time, Mr Sandidge
walked quickly over to that side. A dozen anxious, pitiful looking
members gathered around him.
“Put him up next! put him up next time!” he said, and walked
back again, taking in with a sweeping wink the whole of his own party.
When the result was announced, and directions given to prepare for
another balloting, “Mr. President! Mr. President!” screamed a voice
from the majority side, “I announce the name of Littleberry W. Mike,
Esq., from the county of —.” This announcement was followed by
roars of laughter from the minority, and by hisses and cries of “Who
is he?” from the other. Immediately, however, the leaders of both
were busy as bees. Threats and criminations were heard among the
friends of the two prominent candidates; then entreaties from both to
the opposition. “Take him down, for Heaven's sake.” “It is a shame
by blood.” “Don't put him on us, if you please.” “Anybody else,”
etc. All to no purpose. The nominee was elected on the next ballot.
“Why, how did you get elected, Berry?” slyly asked Mr. Sandidge
of the judge elect, as on the dispersion of the members he met him,
trembling and pale as a corpse, at the foot of the gallery, and shook
his cold hand. “It appears like you must have got some votes from
our side of the house.” The newly elected pressed the hand of his
friend, and they went together to the hotel, on the way to which he
was forced to hear from among the crowd many a bitter jest of which
he was the subject.
This election was an instance of that miserable policy yet adhered
hesitate to contribute all they can to make them do the greatest amount
of harm to public interests. Men may say what they will of caucuses,
but until there is a higher standard of public and private virtue
amongst us, they will be indispensable.
When a man of inferior parts is raised to an office of great authority,
he is apt, unless he has great virtue and very amiable dispositions,
to exert that authority, as far as is compatible with safety, in enforcing
a regard which those parts have been inadequate to secure. Cowardly
as this is, it is not more injurious to truth, and justice, and reason, than
when such a man is led by such an elevation to look upon himself as
having been heretofore depreciated, and to consider the elevation,
whatever were the circumstances which effected it, as the decree of
infinite justice in his favor, determining at last to give to merit its just
reward. Sometimes he is in one, and sometimes in the other of these two
states alternately; never being able to determine exactly whether he
ought to occupy his position or not, but ever attempting to resolve the
doubt by such a vigorous exercise of authority as will at least foreclose
all doubts in the minds of others as to his actual possession of it. Of
such a character was the newly elected judge. He had long had his
heart set upon the Bench. He looked up to it as a mighty eminence
— mighty enough to satisfy the most eager ambition. Yet his desires
were not actuated wholly by ambition. He wanted the salary. He
needed it. He was poor and had a family; and pitiful as the salary
was, it was twice as much as he made by his practice. Ashamed as
he was to know how the people regarded the notion of his being Judge
of the Superior Court, he never, even for one moment, gave us his
desire to become so, but kept himself always, yet in a quiet way, in
candidacy for it. And though to the leading members of the Bat he
had never presumed to speak of the matter, knowing that he would be
laughed at if he did, they yet well knew what his thoughts and his
hopes were. Nor had he publicly announced his candidacy at the
meeting of the Legislature. He knew well that his only chance of
election depended upon the fact, whether true or false it made no material
difference with him, that he was considered the weakest and
shabbiest of the candidates of his party. While the prominent ones
of these were making interest with the leaders of the party in the Legislature,
he had quietly, and in a way known only to himself and them,
and very probably to Mr. Sandidge, obtained the promise of assistance
votes under the direction of him and Mr. Sandidge, to defeat the election
of any one until a suitable opportunity should occur for the name
to be presented. We have seen with what result this was done.
With the recollection of all the circumstances, Judge Mike thanked
two objects for his elevation: first, his own lucky genius, and secondly,
Mr. Sandidge. He was, doubtless, quite inclined to indulge in kindly
and grateful feeling towards the latter from habit; for he was under a
pecuniary indebtedness to him of several hundred dollars, under a writ
of fieri-facias which Mr. Sandidge three or four years before had been
kind enough to “lift,” to have transferred to himself, and to forbear
enforcing payment thereof, in consideration of sixteen, which he called
a living per-centum of interest. What sacrifices the indulgent creditor
was always making, when at every renewal of the note for the extra
interest he solemnly avowed his need of the money, and of his submission
to go without it, for no earthly reason than to oblige his friend!
On that friend's accession to the Bench, when first they were alone
together, he took the last note of renewal from his pocket-book, and
handed it to him without saying a word. The Judge appearing surprised,
Mr. Sandidge, with smiling solemnity, protested that he never
could exact usurious interest from a Judge of the Superior Court of the
State of Georgia. He hoped he had too much respect for the dignity
of the office to do any such thing as that. The Judge, after feeble remonstration,
took the note, looked at it, sighed, and tearing it slowly
to pieces, felt already one of those palpitating and almost painful joys
which only men in office have. It was a small matter, but it touched
him, and he felt as if henceforth he could live.
But to return to the conversation with which this chapter began, and
which took place in the Judge's room at the hotel, on the Sunday night
before the sitting of the court.
“How does that smart chap, Mobley, get on?”
“About like he was.”
“Knowing everything but law, I suppose, and knowing nothing
about that?”
“Just so. The fellow studies like rip; but, Judge, he don't study
right. He studies books instead of men.”
Mr. Sandidge delivered this sentiment with contemptuous pity.
“He thinks if we had a Supreme Court he would do something
grand.”
“He's for a Supreme Court, is he?” inquired the Judge, with a
frown.
“Warm, warm. Has been from the first.”
“It will be some time before he gets it, I'm thinking.”
“That's what I tell him.”
“Thank God, it's only these book-men that want a Supreme Court.
They don't know, Sandidge, they don't know anything outside of books.”
“Not the first thing. That's what I tell 'em.”
“They think that because such a pint has been decided such a way,
by such a judge, that it should be decided so always; and they are
forever and eternally talking about settling the law, settling the law —
like it was, Sandidge, just like it was so much coffee.”
Mr. Sandidge spat all over himself, wiped his mouth with his hand,
and came very near laughing outright.
“And I would like to know how, in the name of common sense, it
ever could get settled. There aint anything to settle it by. That's
the pint; there aint anything to settle it by.” He looked inquiringly
at Mr. Sandidge, and seemed to wish that gentleman to tell what there
was to settle it by if he knew of any such thing. The latter shook his
head.
“No sir! there aint nothing to settle it by; and when Mobley is
talking about what Lord Mansfield said, and what Lord Hardwick
said, or any of them old lords and judges, it's on the end of my tongue
to stop him, and tell him that they are all dead, and consequently can't
know anything about the case at bar. And, Sandidge, it always struck
me as very curious that the laws of England should be the laws of
Georgia.”
It was a remarkable coincidence that that idea had over and over
again struck Mr. Sandidge. He, however, hinted that in some cases
(and those were cases in his opinion when the authority happened to
be on his own side) the English law was very plain and directly in
point, and it ought to be followed.
“Certainly, certainly, in such cases; and I do follow it; but I am
the judge of that myself.”
Ah, yes, that was right! Now they were exactly agreed! The
judge, if he was judge, of course ought to be the judge. If he wasn't, of
course he couldn't be, which was absurd; and Mr. Sandidge almost
frowned in the effort of elaborating this reductio ad absurdum.
“Absurd! so I think; and Mobley and such as he may study
I shall sustain them; when I don't think so, I shall overrule them.
They may get their Supreme Court if they can. It aint going to be in
my day, thank God! If it was, I just know that I couldn't and wouldn't
stand it. Before I would have an overseer over me, and I Judge of
the Superior Court, and have to be eternally looking into old books to
find out what them old English lords and judges said a hundred years
ago, when the country wasn't like this, nor the people neither — why,
Sandidge, you know, I havn't got the books, and couldn't afford to buy
them — I say before I would be put to all the trouble and expense of
reading law and nothing else, and then have my decisions brought back
on me, and treated like I was — like I was in fact a nigger — I would
die first!”
Mr. Sandidge smiled approvingly.
“Why, who would respect me?”
“Nobody.”
“How could I enforce the authority of the Court?”
“Couldn't be done.”
“If I put a fellow in jail, just like as not they would take him out.”
“Like as not.”
“If I fined one, ten to one it wouldn't stick!”
“Just so. He wouldn't stay found.”
“If I refused to grant a new trial, knowing that I am against them,
they would send a paper ordering me to grant it! Don't you see they
would, knowing I am against 'em?”
“Plain as day. Send a paper ordering the Judge of the Superior
Court!”
“I tell you, Sandidge, before I would stand it I would die first!
In fact, I would RESIGN!!”
This was capping the climax. Dying would be a poor and very inadequate
resentment. He would go beyond that. He would voluntarily
and disgustedly let go his hold upon power. The consequences
might be what they pleased, he would resign. “I tell you, Sandidge,”
he repeated once more, with fearful emphasis, “I should RESIGN!!”
“Oh my conscience, Judge, don't! don't! What would become of
the country if you were to resign?”
Mr. Sandidge, although purposing to appear alarmed, smiled notwithstanding;
and perhaps the more because he thought such a deplorable
event not very likely to come to pass; and perhaps yet more,
console himself in the midst of his own losses and grief as well as he
could by replacing the extra interest upon the fi-fa not yet paid off
and discharged.
“And what will you leading lawyers do when young men, smart
young men like Mobley, go before the Supreme Court with books in
their hands and turn you down?”
“I shan't live to see it.” And it was doubtless the prospect of a far
distant organisation of such a tribunal, rather than of his own early
decease, which gave the gratified and complacent expression to that
smiling countenance.
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