Perhaps it had something to do with his lordship's removal, a few weeks afterwards, to the Chancery Court, where his eccentricities, as the _Daily News_ remarked at the time, will no longer endanger the liberty and lives of his fellow-subjects.
When I cited Fox's Libel Act and asked that my copy, purchased from the Queen's printers, might be handed to the jury for their guidance, his lordship sharply ordered the officer not to pass it to them.

"I shall tell them," he said, "what points they have to decide," as though I had no right to press my own view.

He would never have dared to treat a defending counsel in that way, and he ought to have known that a defendant in person has all the rights of a counsel, the latter having absolutely no standing in court except so far as he represents a first party in a suit.

"May they not have a copy of the Act, my lord ?" I inquired.

"No," replied his lordship, "they will take the law from the directions I give them; not from reading Acts of Parliament." This is directly counter to the spirit and letter of Fox's Act; and I suspect that Judge North would have expressed himself more guardedly in a higher court.