I'm not quite sure what is the appropriate time to feel pity for judges; certainly not now. Yet what else can one feel but something approaching pity for those who are in charge of the laundry buckets in which the very great evils of Irish society are washed? They hear things which would prevent most of us sleeping for weeks; and having heard them they must retain their wisdom and their composure, though every fibre within them shrieks for vengeance and for blood.
Deeds are perpetrated in this country which are so unspeakable that no newspaper feels able to mention them, other than in almost coded little filler-paragraphs on the side of a news page. And in those few lines of bold black type rests the dark hell of Irish life. Aside from the victim, whose plight is so abominable as to put her beyond all normal human understanding, what can one say of the position of Mr Justice Carney in the following case? "A 74-year-old Kildare man has been found guilty by the Central criminal Court of raping and indecently assaulting his granddaughter on dates between her third and ninth birthdays . . . The now 23-year-old woman told the jury that her father raped her between her 11th and 13th birthdays and had been jailed for her abuse of her."
Delivering sentence
Mr Justice Carney is the unfortunate judge who has heard things about this poor woman, raped throughout her childhood by both father and grandfather, which no-one should ever hear. Next month he must pass sentence. Yet no justice can be done her; no retrieval of the violated infancy is possible; no restitution of the stolen life is within his gift. If he delivers a truly appropriate sentence - God knows that might be; I certainly don't - no-one will applaud him. If he is seen to blunder in any way, he will be vilified. Yet he must make this judgement alone, just as he alone must hear, day after day, tales of such suffering as to stun Solomon.
It is a hard and a solitary life, being a judge, for which of course, in this system (unlike in Europe, where one becomes a judge at the outset of one's career) judges have no proper training. Instead they pass through the bizarre and indulgent apprenticeship of an often lavishly rewarded career in which incomes can reach dizzying multiples of even handsome salaries; a good barrister today can easily earn a million pounds a year; a very good one will get twice that. And then, at a certain age, the call from above comes: "You are to be a judge". Whatever the power of that siren call, it seems to be well-nigh irresistible, and the Senior Counsel of one day is next day tramping the circuits as a judge.
Solemnity
It is an odd and isolated world, for judges can have few friends beyond the bench. Aloofness, austerity and emotional sclerosis seem to be occupational diseases, the miner's phthisis of the legal coalface. The freedoms which the rest of us take for granted are forfeit; solemnity becomes not an occasional mood but a perpetual habit. Yet the ordinary appetites of a human being do not wither the moment one becomes a melud; sexually, emotionally, physically, they retain the same suite of biological instincts and needs which propel the rest of us, and which we can all admit freely in our daily lives. Not so judges.
And now the wigged ones know that their time has come; as so many areas of Irish life have passed under the microscope of public scrutiny, so now are they to be examined closely. They will feel the intrusion of public inquiry into things they thought secure and private - though of course, virtually nothing is these days, as they should know better than any of us. It will probably do them and their profession a world of good. Simultaneously, the rest of us might acknowledge the wretchedly low salaries of the meluds, not compared with the barristers they had been, but with the bankers, consultants and business executives who are their peers.
Volumes of evidence
Some things will not alter. Whatever changes occur to bar and bench, there will always be some men or woman sitting above the rest of us making judgements which we call on them to make. And while holding the cornerstone of civilisation, our judges will often have to read and assess inhuman quantities of evidence - the Flood Tribunal, for example, already fills 23 volumes. Furthermore, they will be called on to hear what should never be heard, stories of abuse and torture which will cause juries to tremble and weep for their short duration in court but which will be judges' regular portions for the rest of their careers. Their insight into human nature is uniquely terrible.
Is there such a thing as a laughing judge? Barely. And would we trust one that did laugh? We would not. Yet conversely, we still want our judges to be human in their possession of amiable virtues, but not in the everyday deficiencies of humanity. To conceal those deficiencies they must perforce withdraw, and in that emotional departure must take with them whatever agreeable characteristics might be theirs.
Who would be a judge, perpetually unthanked, invariably unloved? Oh not me, melud, not me.