A Modern Judge on Portia’s Judgment
The Home Secretary lately ventured to assert that Lord Bramwell entertained so vast a reverence for all kinds of property that if he had been called upon to decide the legal dispute in “The Merchant of Venice,” he would infallibly have declared that Antonio’s pound of flesh must be given to his creditor. Lord Bramwell, with the frankness which usually characterizes him, has met Sir William Harcourt’s little joke by an answer delivered from the judicial bench. In the course of an Appeal Court case the learned judge took occasion to respond to the witty illustration of the Home Secretary. Far from expressing the slightest shame or penitence for the views which he holds as to the sacredness of property of all descriptions, Lord Bramwell actually seems to glory in them. The session of the Court of Appeal was probably the earliest opportunity that was presented to him of answering Sir William Harcourt’s banter; but at all events, he seized on the opportunity and turned it to the best account. Portia’s statement of the case would, Lord Bramwell tells us, have induced him to give the pound of flesh to the usurer, except for one little flaw in her argument. The flesh had not been “appropriated,” and could not, therefore, be regarded as property to which Shylock had a good legal right until it had been cut from Antonio’s quivering body. Supposing Lord Bramwell to have been sitting in banco with the Doge of Venice on the occasion of the famous trial, and the pound of flesh had been lying on a table ready cut; in that case the decision of the English judge would have been in favor of the plaintiff’s claim to the possession of the horrible piece of “property.” But then, as Lord Bramwell truly remarks, in order to get the flesh, assault, and even murder, would have had to be committed, and therefore the contract was null and void from the beginning. The moment Shylock had advanced toward his victim, knife in hand, he would have been technically guilty of an assault with intent, and would have been obliged to appear at the police court of the period next morning to hear what the sitting magistrate thought of the offence.