' 'Wasna Jemmie----leein'?' 'Oh no, my lord.' 'Ye're quite
sure?' Oh yes.' 'Then just write out what you want, and I'll sign it; my
faith, but I made Jemmie stare.' So the decision was dictated by the
clerk, and duly signed by the judge, who left the bench highly diverted
with the fright he had given his young friend." Such scenes enacted in
court _now_ would astonish the present generation, both of lawyers and
of suitors.
We should not do justice to our Scottish Reminiscences of judges and
lawyers, if we omitted the once celebrated Court of Session _jeu
d'esprit_ called the "Diamond Beetle Case." This burlesque report of a
judgment was written by George Cranstoun, advocate, who afterwards sat
in court as judge under the title of Lord Corehouse. Cranstoun was one
of the ablest lawyers of his time; he was a prime scholar, and a man of
most refined taste and clear intellect. This humorous and clever
production was printed in a former edition of these Reminiscences, and
in a very flattering notice of the book which appeared in the _North
British Review_, the reviewer--himself, as is well known, a
distinguished member of the Scottish judicial bench--remarks: "We are
glad that the whole of the 'Diamond Beetle' by Cranstoun has been given;
for nothing can be more graphic, spirited, and ludicrous, than the
characteristic speeches of the learned judges who deliver their opinions
in the case of defamation.
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