Crime and the State 397the order in which they would testify, and to give them instructions as to how to
behave in court. On such occasions, he thought, these solicitors were likely to
exaggerate the seriousness of the crime in order to impress upon the witnesses
that sizeable rewards would accrue if they won a conviction. This was not be-
cause they themselves expected to share in such bounty; indeed, they wanted
their bills settled before the trial took place.^93
One of the author’s complaints about the solicitors was the effort they made
to persuade prosecutors that ‘they cannot be brought into Court, without being
introduced by a Sollicitor, nor be heard if they do not speak his Language’, by
which I take it he means if they do not have command of legal terminology.^94
What solicitors might have done in the courtroom, however, he does not say—
and indeed was not likely to say since his main point was to defend trial proced-
ure that had no need for such men.
The author’s unhappiness with the involvement of solicitors in the pre-trial
process derived in part from what he considered to be their exorbitant charges
(always ‘more unreasonable than a Taylor’s’ bill).^95 But his central concern was
the effect they would have on the established form of trial. Here his ideas were
derived from the second volume ofWilliam Hawkins’s treatise on criminal law,
published in 1721.^96 His intention in writing, he said, was to explain to victims of
property crimes in London the steps they needed to take to get their cases into
court, and in particular to make it clear that there was no need for elaborate
preparation. The courts did not expect prosecutors to be lawyers, he said, ‘nor
is their Wisdom or Strength ofJudgment the Case, but their Truth and Honesty,
which, when they make appear, they are sure ofJustice’.^97 This echoes Hawkins’
view of the advantage he thought the innocent defendant enjoyed by appearing
in court entirely unprepared and unaided: their innocence would be clear when
the jury saw their immediate, natural response to the evidence.^98 Honest pros-
ecutors had the same advantage when they told their stories plainly in court.
Having said there was no need for elaborate preparation, the author seriously
compromises this optimistic picture of the courtroom by complaining about the
‘Errors and Mistakes’ too commonly made by prosecutors and the way that
most of them are only saved from ‘Confusion, Circumlocution, and Tautology’
by the patience of the judges who take it upon themselves to draw out the facts
of the case.^99 It was precisely this off-hand, incoherent, and ineffectual presen-
tation of evidence that had encouraged the government to engage solicitors in
the first place; and, if this interesting, if frustratingly vague, polemic is any guide,
a number of ordinary prosecutors must have been doing so too by the late 1720 s.
But this critic hints at other problems developing in the administration of the
law besides the complexities being introduced by lawyers. These seem to be
(^93) Ibid., 3 – 4. (^94) Ibid., 5. (^95) Ibid., 4.
(^96) William Hawkins, A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown, 2 vols. ( 1716 – 21 ). See above, pp. 263 – 4.
(^97) Directions for Prosecuting Thieves, 5 – 13. (^98) Hawkins, Treatise, ii. 400.
(^99) Directions for Prosecuting Thieves, 13.