The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1875-03-30
HALLIDAY AND ShEARMAN.
The Disroputable Tactics of Jim
EiSk7S LAWYER.
Correspondence PHILADELPHIA Times.


1 wrote to you that some Of the evidence
put in for MIR. Bcecher had mystified me.
Yesterday, after hearing the Assistant
Pastor of Beecher's church testify by the
aid of the lawyer clerk Of the church,
Tom shearman, have backs|id. This
ASSISTANT named Halliday. He is an
old, bald, hook-nosed man, with an ex.
hortative grey eye, cold as an empty
Congl css.watcr bottle. He bears the ap-
pearance Of one created to attend funcr.
ais and add to their desolation by drop
ping in the clods and making the hope
less prayers. Beneath this obduratc,
hard exterior he failed to conceal a lively
conccit Of his own Importance, and JUS
tice does not subdue his desire to harangue
the Court, illumine the jury and make
record in this trial as the unusually
knowing witness. He is the curate of
the church, the personal stipendiary of
Mr.. Beecher, who orders him to be paid
the handsome sum, for a clergyman Of no
talents, of $4,000 per annum. This, /
believe, is very nearly the full salary of a
Methodist bishop.
If Mr.. Halliday had answered the gen.
eral expectation Of his meek relation to
the Church, and his mediocrity other
wise, and testified simply, candidly and
with docility, he would have assisted to
relieve the Plymouth Society of the i'm
putation which Beecher's indictment and
Shearman's unscrupulousness have put
upon it. We should have said: ssThere
is a good, humble old man, whose I'M
affected picty must guide his story In
stead, VIC saw All uncandid, ambitious,
arrogant old parasite arguing with the
Judge, refusing to answer questions
without paraphrases, lodging the truth
and still neither wise nor witty. Shear
man completed the picture Of Halliday S
hypocrisy by asking protection Of him as
a clergyman. Considering who Shear
man is-the most unprincipicd and
unmannerly person around the
New York bar, dwarf
legal attendant of the late Jim Fisk the
appeal for the clergy was complete. Mr.
Shcarman is singular object to be the
official clerk of great orthodox congre-
cation. He is an Englishman by birth or
extraction, about forty-fivc years Of age,
and par re1eue in every gesture and act.
He has decidedly Hebraic features and
complexion, is slight, low and.wiry, and
one OF his brothers is said to be a Nor
mon at Salt Lake. and one of the Godby
faction of spiritualistic apostates there.
Shcarnan's ruling qualities are rapacity
and desire Of prominence. He went into
rich and democratic religious society
like Plymouth church for the latter pur-
pose, and as it's clerk has managed this
case. as an investigation and as trial,
with the same intrigue and sinister
practice that he has instanced in
Fisk's cases. The church records
were fixed, and garbled papers
published from them. and at this mo.
ment they are held inviolate by subce.
nae. Showing into the case as it's attor-
ney proper, Shearman has guided the de-
Tense solely to acquit in form, without
any consideration for such all acqutal in
honor as Beecher's age, fame and calling
| should require. 1t is for this reason that
worldly.eyed men look with suspicion up
on his witnesses, and observe that he is
ever conspiring to prove conspiracy; in
short, that what Iilton and Moulton are
charged with the clerk of Plymouth
Church is doing-saving Beecher by a
| plot as they were said to have plotted to
destroy him.
!
out such evidence as he pleased from the
Church investigation, suppressing other
evidence. AS attorney. he led that bru-
tai newspaper crusade against Tilton last
July, the injustice of which, whatever
the facts, inspired many a fair-spirited
man to leap in the dark to the other side
If three-fourths Of the American press is
against Beecher to-day he owes it to
Shearman, who cast sinister and tyr
aAnous character over all the initial pro.
ccedings, and has repeated in this trial
the very tactics he used in the suits he
defended for Fisk. There, also, he &C.
cused Stokes of blackmail, which cost
Fisk his life, and he demanded a bill of
particulars there, which was the only
American precedent for asking for bill !
of particulars in the present case.
There are persons of good Judgment
who do think this course Of Tilton was
begun in conspiracy for money, but they
are staggered when they know that Shear !
man made the suggestion.
If Judge Nelson entered upon the case
with a particle of bias, it may have been
| because Shearman had indicted his Judi !
clal purity by seeking for two days to |
take the case from his hands and have it |
tried by one McCue, the same who had !
granted the bill of particulars. And i'll
Bcecher is acquitted by the Jury and
still not acquitted by the great majority
of his countrymen, it will be because this
man Shearman is incapable of under
standing moral verdict and of thinking
it worth while obtaining. There is
gipsey and impecunious style about his
| witnesses, which always SUGGESTS subordi.