The Reverse of the Medal

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Certainly,' said Lawrence. 'It certainly reinforces our conviction, but I am afraid it would be useless or even damaging as evidence, even if it were admissible. Had we been able to find the living man and had we been able to look into his antecedents then he would have been an invaluable witness, however hostile; but a faceless corpse, identified by no more than hearsay, no, it will not do. No: I shall have to fall back on other lines of defence. You have great influence with him, Maturin: could not you and Mrs Aubrey persuade him to incriminate the General? Even just a very little?'

  'I could not.'

  'I was afraid you would say that. When I approached the subject at the Marshalsea he did not take it at all well. I am not an exceptionally timid man, I believe, but I felt extremely uneasy when he stood up, about seven foot tall and swelling with anger. And yet, you know, it was quite certainly that grasping old man and his stock-jobbing friends who bought and bought and then industriously spread the rumour of peace; it was they who sold out at the top of the market, not Captain Aubrey; and his dealings were trifling, compared with theirs. Most of their transactions would have been made through outside dealers, who are not under the control of the Stock Exchange committee, and they cannot be traced, but intelligent men in the City tell me they probably moved more than a million of money in the Funds alone. Captain Aubrey's business, on the other hand, was mostly conducted by regular brokers, and the committee have all the details.'

  'In these matters he is not to be led,' said Stephen. 'Then again, he has a very high notion of English justice, and is persuaded that he has but to tell a plain, unvarnished, wholly truthful tale for the jury to acquit him. He has a reverence for judges, as part of the established order almost on a par with the Royal Navy or the Brigade of Guards or even perhaps the Anglican church.'

  'But surely he has had same experience of the law, has he not?'

  'Only of the interminable Chancery cases that you know about, and for him they do not represent the real law at all, but only the technical warfare of pettifogging attorneys. For him the law is something much simpler and more direct—the wise, impartial judge, the jury of decent, fair-minded men, with perhaps a few barristers to speak for the inarticulate and ask questions designed to bring out the truth, probing questions that he will be happy to answer.'

  'Yes, so I had gathered. But he must know that he will not be allowed to speak—his solicitors must have told him the nature of a Guildhall trial?'

  'He says it is all one. As an officer speaks up for a tongue-tied foremast hand, so counsel will speak for him: but he will be there—the judge and jury can look at him, and if counsel strays off course he can pull him up. He says he has every confidence in the justice of his country.'

  'It would be a friendly act to bring him to a more earthly, mundane view of things. For I must tell you, Maturin, that with no Palmer I really fear for Captain Aubrey.'

  'I have not had much more experience of these matters than Jack Aubrey. Tell me, now, how should I best blackguard the law?'

  'You could not truthfully blackguard the law, which is the best law that any nation was ever blessed with,' said Lawrence, 'but you might point out that it is administered by human beings. Some of them, indeed, can scarcely claim so high a rank. You might remind him of the number of Lord Chancellors who have been dismissed for bribery and corruption; you might speak of notoriously political, cruel, and oppressive judges, like Jeffries or Page or I am sorry to say Lord Quinborough; and you might tell him that although the English bar shines in comparison with all others, it has some members who are perfectly unscrupulous, able and unscrupulous: they go for the verdict, and be damned to the means. Pearce, who leads for the prosecution, is just such a man. He gained a great reputation as a Treasury devil and now he has a most enviable practice. A very clever fellow indeed, quick to take advantage of every turn in a case, and when I contemplate my bout with him, Quinborough keeping the ring, why, I feel less sanguine than I could wish. And if the rumours of one of General Aubrey's stock-jobbing friends turning King's evidence are true, I do not feel sanguine at all.'

  'I am concerned to hear it. May I ask what you consider the best line of defence?'

  'If Captain Aubrey cannot be induced to incriminate the General, then I shall be reduced to abusing Pearce, discrediting his witnesses as much as possible, and playing on the feelings of the jury. I shall of course speak at length about Aubrey's distinguished record: no doubt he has been wounded?'

  'Myself I have treated—let me see—oh, the dear knows how many sword-thrusts, bullet-wounds, great gashes made by flying splinters, and blows from falling blocks. Once I was within an ace of taking off his arm.'

  'That will be useful. And I have no doubt that Mrs Aubrey will attend, looking beautiful. But the trouble is, a Guildhall jury is made up of City men, and broadly speaking, money is far more important in the City than sentiment, let alone patriotism; and then again, if I am compelled to call any witnesses—I shall try to avoid it, but witnesses may be forced upon me—then Pearce will have the right of reply, and he will have the last word with the jury. And whether or no, Lord Quinborough will of course sum up, probably at great and vehement length, and these merchants will retire with the impression of his words rather than mine. I dread the result. Pray do make this clear to Captain Aubrey: he will attend to you, as a friend for whom he has a great respect. And pray let him know that Pearce will rake up anything and everything that may be to his disadvantage, anything that may lower him and through him his friends and connexions, and that the prosecution will have all the resources at the ministry's command to help in the raking. Aubreys name will be dragged in the mud. And it is most unfortunate that the man charged with him, the only important alleged conspirator who has not disappeared or whose dealings were not hidden ten deep behind men of straw, Cummings—'

  'One of the General's guests at Button's on that unhappy evening?'

  'Yes, the buffoon Cummings: he has a past made up of dubious joint-stock companies, fraudulent bankruptcy and many other things, and of course this will come out, spattering all his associates. Captain Aubrey is in deep water, and his confidence is misplaced.'

  'If the worst comes to the worst, what is likely to happen to him?'

  'A heavy fine for certain: perhaps the pillory, perhaps imprisonment. Perhaps both.'

  'The pillory? Do you tell me so? The pillory for a naval officer?'

  'Yes sir. It is quite a usual punishment in the City for fraudulent dealings and so on. And of course he would be dismissed the service.'

  'God between us and evil,' said Stephen. He was moved beyond his usual calm and he did not recover even the appearance of it until he was walking up the steps of his club.

  'I am sorry to be late, Blaine,' he said, 'but my interview with Lawrence lasted longer than I had expected, and it was far, far more distressing. Now that Palmer cannot possibly be brought forward, Lawrence has no hope. He did not say so directly, but it was evident. He has no real hope at all.'

  'I do not suppose he has,' said Sir Joseph. 'Appearances are so very much against poor Aubrey. If his worst enemy had contrived this scheme he could not have done him more harm.'

  'You too think he will be condemned?'

  'I should not go so far as that. But this is a political trial, with all the furious passion that implies: it is aimed against General Aubrey and his Radical friends, and so long as their reputations are blasted the rest does not signify. The end justifies the means in these matters. How Sidmouth and his people must have welcomed such an opportunity! Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to wonder whether some zealous follower may not have engineered it, anticipating their wishes and perhaps at the same time meaning to enrich himself. It is a specious theory, though I do not believe it.'

  There was a silence, during which Stephen looked at the carpet and Sir Joseph contemplated his friend, whom he had never seen so perturbed.

  'As I was coming here,' said Stephen at last, 'I reflected on what I should do in the event of a c
ondemnation. Jack Aubrey, dismissed the service, would go stark mad on land; and I have no great wish to stay in England either. I therefore think of buying the Surprise, since Jack will no longer have the means of doing so, taking out letters of marque, manning her as a privateer and desiring him to take command. May I beg you to reflect upon this and give me your considered opinion tomorrow?'

  'Certainly. On the face of it, I should say it is an excellent scheme. Several unemployed naval officers have turned privateer, continuing their war independently and sometimes causing havoc among the enemy's trade at great profit to themselves. You are away?'

  'I must go to the Marshalsea: I am already late.'

  'You must take a hackney-coach,' said Blaine, looking beyond Stephen at the clock. 'You must certainly take a hackney-coach, though even then you will have very little time before the gates are locked.'

  'It is all one—there are beds to be had in the coffee-house on the debtors' side. God bless, now.'

  'I shall tell Charles to fetch a coach,' Sir Joseph called after him as he ran up the stairs to his room.

  The coach, an unusually rapid vehicle, took him the shortest way, by Westminster Bridge, but when it set him down at the gates of the prison the man said, 'Just five minutes to go before the lock is on. Should you like me to wait, sir?'

  'Thank you,' said Stephen, 'but I believe I shall stay the night.' And to himself 'God help me—I am far behind my hour—I shall be reproved.'

  In the event, however, Jack was playing such an energetic, hard-fought game of fives in the courtyard that he had lost count of the time, and when the last point was over he turned his scarlet, streaming, beaming face to Stephen and said in a gasping voice, 'How glad I am to see you, Stephen,' without a hint of blame. 'Lord, I am out of form.'

  'You were always grossly obese,' observed Stephen. 'Were you to walk ten miles a day, and eat half what you do in fact devour, with no butcher's meat and no malt liquors, you would be able to play at the hand-ball like a Christian rather than a galvanized manatee, or dugong. Mr Goodridge, how do you so, sir? I hope I see you well.' This to Jack's opponent, a former shipmate, the master of HMS Polychrest and a fine navigator, but one whose calculations had unfortunately convinced him that phoenixes and comets were one and the same thing—that the appearance of a phoenix, reported in the chronicles, was in fact the return of one or another of the various comets whose periods were either known or conjectured. He resented disagreement, and although in ordinary matters he was the kindest, gentlest of men, he was now confined for maltreating a rear-admiral of the blue: he had not actually struck Sir James, but he had bitten his remonstrating finger.

  Upstairs, when Jack had changed his shirt and they were sitting by the fire, Stephen said 'Did I tell you of Lord Sheffield, Jack?'

  'I believe you have mentioned him. In connexion with Gibbon, if I don't mistake.'

  'The very man. He was Gibbon's particular friend. He inherited many of his papers, and he has passed me a very curious sheet expressing Gibbon's considered opinion of lawyers. It was intended to form part of the Decline and Fall, but it was withdrawn at a late stage of page-proof for fear of giving offence to his friends at the bar and on the bench. Will I read them to you?'

  'If you please,' said Jack, and Sophie folded her hands in her lap, looking attentive.

  Stephen drew a sheaf from his bosom: he unfolded it; his expression, formed for reading the grave, noble, rolling periods, changed to one of ordinary vexation, quite intense and human vexation. 'I have brought Huber on Bees,' he said. 'In my hurry I seized upon Huber. Yet I could have sworn that what lay there on the right of the pamphlets was Gibbon. How sorry I shall be if I have thrown Gibbon away, the rarity of the world and a jewel of balanced prose, taking him for a foolish little piece on Tar Water. And I did not commit much of it to memory. However, the gist of it was that the decline of the Empire—'

  'There is the bell,' cried Sophie as a remote but insistent clangour reached them. 'Killick, Killick! We must go. Forgive me, Stephen dear.' She kissed them both, a rapid though most affectionate peck, and darted from the room, still calling 'Killick, Killick, there.'

  'She and Killick are going down by the evening coach, so they must not be locked in,' said Jack 'She wants to fetch some things from Ashgrove'

  'As for Gibbon, now,' said Stephen when they were settled by the fire again, 'I do remember the first lines. They ran "It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations to men who have learned from their profession to consider reason as the instrument of dispute, and to interpret the laws according to the dictates of private interest; and the mischief has been felt, even in countries where the practice of the bar may deserve to be considered as a liberal occupation." He thought—and he was a very intelligent man, of prodigious reading—that the fall of the Empire was caused at least in part by the prevalence of lawyers. Men who are accustomed over a long series of years to supposing that whatever can somehow be squared with the law is right or if not right then allowable—are not useful members of society; and when they reach positions of power in the state they are noxious. They are people for whom ethics can be summed up by the collected statutes. Tully, for example, thought himself a good man, though he openly boasted of having deceived the jury in the case of Cluentius; and he was quite as willing to defend Catiline in the first place as he was to attack him in the second. It is all of a piece throughout: they are men who tend to resign their own conscience to another's keeping, or to disregard it entirely. To the question "What are your sentiments when you are asked to defend a man you know to be guilty?" many will reply "I do not know him to be guilty until the judge, who has heard both sides, states that he is guilty." This miserable sophistry, which disregards not only epistemology but also the intuitive perception that informs all daily intercourse, is sometimes merely formular, yet I have known men who have so prostituted their intelligence that they believe it.'

  'Oh come, Stephen. Surely saying that all lawyers are bad is about as wise as saying that all sailors are good, ain't it?'

  'I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.'

  'Certainly there are low attorneys and the like, that give the law a bad name, but I have met some very agreeable barristers, perfectly honourable men—several of the members of our club are at the bar. I do not know how it may be in Ireland or upon the Continent, but I think that upon the whole English lawyers are a perfectly honourable set of men. After all, everyone agrees that English justice is the best in the world.'

  'The temptation is the same whatever the country: it is often to the lawyer's interest to make wrong seem right, and the more skilful he is the more often he succeeds. Judges are even more exposed to temptation, since they sit every day; though indeed it is a temptation of a different sort: they have enormous powers, and if they choose they may be cruel, oppressive, froward and perverse virtually without control—they may interrupt and bully, further their political views, and pervert the course of justice. I remember in India we met a Mr Law at the dinner the Company gave us, and the gentleman who made the introductions whispered me in a reverential tone that he was known as "the just judge". What an indictment of the bench, that one, one alone, among so many, should be so distinguished.'

  'The judges are thought of as quite great men.'

  'By those who do not know them. And not all judges, either. Think of Coke, who so cowardly attacked the defenceless Raleigh at his trial and who was dismissed when he was chief-justice; think of all the Lord Chancellors who have been turned away in contempt for corruption; think of the vile Judge Jeffries.'

  'God's my life, Stephen, you are uncommon hard on lawyers. Surely there must be
some good ones?'

  'I dare say there are: I dare say there are some men who are immune to the debasing influence, just as there are some men who may walk about among those afflicted with the plague or indeed the present influenza without taking it; but I am not concerned with them. I am concerned with shaking your confidence in the perfect impartial justice of an English court of law, and to tell you that your judge and prosecutor are of the kind I have described. Lord Quinborough is a notoriously violent, overbearing, rude, ill-tempered man: he is also a member of the Cabinet, while your father and his friends are the most violent members of the opposition. Mr Pearce, who leads for the prosecution, is shrewd and clever, brilliant at cross-examination, much given to insulting witnesses so that they may lose their temper, conversant with every legal quirk and turn, a very quick-witted plausible scrub. I say all this so that you should not be quite certain that truth will prevail or that innocence is a certain shield, so that you should attend to Lawrence's advice, and so that you should at least allow him to hint that your father was something less than discreet.'

  'Yes,' said Jack in a strong decided voice, 'you speak very much as a friend and I am most deeply beholden to you; but there is one thing you forget, and that is the jury. I do not know how it may be in Ireland or in foreign parts, but in England we have a jury: that is what makes our justice the best in the world. The lawyers may be as bad as you say, but it seems to me that if twelve ordinary men hear a plain truthful account they will believe it. And if by any wild chance they come down hard on me, why, I hope I can bear it. Tell me, Stephen, did you remember my fiddle-strings?'

  'Oh, by my soul, Jack,' cried Stephen, clutching his pocket, 'I am afraid I forgot them entirely.'

  Chapter Eight

  For many years Stephen Maturin had kept a diary: but diary-writing was not really a suitable habit in an intelligence-agent, and although the code in which it was written had never yet been broken, the book had proved an embarrassment when he was taken prisoner by the Americans. Yet just as he had returned to opium when Diana disappeared from his life, so the returning urge to record, to communicate at least with his future self, overcame his scruples now and he indulged himself in the purchase of a comfortable green-bound quarto of blank pages that opened really flat; in this he confined himself to observations on medicine, natural philosophy and personal affairs, so that if by any remote chance the book should fall into an enemy's hands it would compromise no other agent or network but would rather tend to show that the writer had no concern with such matters. Yet what he did write was perfectly candid and sincere, being intended for his own eye alone; and it was written in the Catalan of his youth, as familiar to him as English and more so than the Irish of his childhood. Now, beginning a new page, he wrote 'I have committed two very grave and dangerous blunders these last days: God send I may not commit a third with this ship. The first was offering far too much money as a reward for Palmer. With such a sum at stake every thief-taker and writ-server and constable in London ran up and down day and night and of course word of it reached the principals, who at once knocked Palmer on the head, putting themselves out of danger and depriving Jack of his life-line. The second was my heavy-handed attempt at manipulating him. There has always been this difference of nationality between us and although it is nearly always far beneath the surface I fear I brought it up and well into sight by my foolish reiteration of English justice. He will not tolerate the least reflexion on his country, however justified, from a foreigner; and I am, after all, a foreigner. I should have known, from his tapping fingers and constrained expression, that he did not like the trend of my words, but I continued; and the only result is that he is now even more confirmed in his determination than he was before. I have not only done no good but I have done positive harm, and I dread the possibility of doing the same or even worse by buying the Surprise. However, in this case I do at least have the benefit of advising with an intelligent man who understands the matter through and through, with all its attendant circumstances, a man full of good will.'