HE records of every country abound in remarkable cases of persons being judicially put to death for crimes of which they were entirely innocent. A mistaken resemblance to the actual perpetrator, the fact of having been seen near the spot where the crime was committed, or some other suspicious circumstance, has contributed to bring the guilt and punishment on the wrong party. At one time cases of injustice were also committed by condemning individuals for murder when it was not proved that a murder had been perpetrated. The now well-recognised principle in criminal law, that no murder can be held as having been committed till the body of the deceased has been discovered, has terminated this form of legal oppression. Another, and perhaps one of the most common causes of injustice in trials of this nature, is the prevarication of the party charged with the offence. Finding himself, though innocent, placed in an awkward predicament, he invents a plausible story in his defence, and the deceit being discovered, he is at once presumed to be in every respect guilty. Sir Edward Coke mentions a melancholy case of this kind. gentleman was charged with having made away with his niece. He was innocent of the crime; but having, in a state of trepidation, put forward another child as the one said to have been destroyed, the trick was discovered, and the poor gentleman was executed a victim of his own disingenuousness.

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The following interesting cases of loss of life from too great a leaning on circumstantial or presumptive evidence, we select from various authorities, English and foreign.

WILLIAM SHAW.

In the year 1721 there resided in Edinburgh an upholsterer named William Shaw, who had a daughter, Catherine Shaw, I who lived with him. This young woman, it appears, encouraged the addresses of John Lawson, a jeweller, to whom William Shaw declared the most insuperable objections, alleging him to be a profligate young man, addicted to every kind of dissipation. He was forbidden the house; but the daughter continuing to see him clandestinely, the father, on the discovery, kept her strictly confined.

William Shaw had for some time urged his daughter to receive the addresses of a son of Alexander Robertson, a friend and neighbour; and one evening, being very urgent with her thereon, she peremptorily refused, declaring she preferred death to being young Robertson's wife. The father grew enraged, and the daughter more positive, so that the most passionate expressions arose on both sides, and the words barbarity, cruelty, and death, were frequently pronounced by the daughter. At length he left her, locking the door after him.

The greater number of the buildings in Edinburgh are tall and massive, divided into flats or floors, each inhabited by one or more families, all of whom enter by a stair leading to the respective floors. William Shaw resided in one of these flats, and a partition only divided his dwelling from that of James Morrison, a watch-case maker. This man had indistinctly overheard the conversation and quarrel between Catherine Shaw and her father, and was particularly struck with the repetition of the above words, she having pronounced them loudly and emphatically. For some little time after the father was gone out all was silent, but presently Morrison heard several groans from the daughter. Alarmed, he ran to some of his neighbours under the same roof; these entering Morrison's room, and listening attentively, not only heard the groans, but distinctly heard Catherine Shaw two or three times faintly exclaim, "Cruel father, thou art the cause of my death." Struck with this, they flew to the door of Shaw's apartment; they knocked-no answer was given. The knocking was repeated-still no answer. picions had before arisen against the father; they were now confirmed. A constable was procured and an entrance forced : Catherine was found weltering in her blood, and the fatal knife by her side. She was alive, but speechless; but on questioning her as to owing her death to her father, was just able to make a motion with her head, apparently in the affirmative, and expired. At this critical moment (as represented in the cut at the head of our paper) William Shaw returns, and enters the room: immediately all eyes are on him. Seeing his neighbours and a constable in his apartment, he appears much disordered;

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but at the sight of his daughter he turns pale, trembles, and is ready to sink. The first surprise and the succeeding horror leave little doubt of his guilt in the breasts of the beholders; and even that little is done away on the constable discovering that the shirt of William Shaw is bloody.

He was instantly hurried before a magistrate, and, upon the depositions of all the parties, committed to prison on suspicion. He was shortly after brought to trial, when in his defence he acknowledged the having confined his daughter to prevent her intercourse with Lawson; that he had frequently insisted on her marrying Robertson; and that he had quarrelled with her on the subject the evening she was found murdered, as the witness Morrison had deposed; but he averred that he left his daughter unharmed and untouched, and that the blood found upon his shirt was there in consequence of his having bled himself some days before, and the bandage becoming untied. These assertions did not weigh a feather with the jury when opposed to the strong circumstantial evidence of the daughter's expressions of "barbarity, cruelty, death," and of "cruel father, thou art the cause of my death," together with that apparently affirmative motion with her head, and of the blood so seemingly providentially discovered on the father's shirt. On these several concurring circumstances was William Shaw found guilty, and executed at Leith Walk in November 1721.

Was there a person in Edinburgh who believed the father guiltless? No, not one, notwithstanding his latest words at the gallows were, "I am innocent of my daughter's murder." But in August 1722, as a man who had become the possessor of the late William Shaw's apartments was rummaging by chance in the chamber where Catherine Shaw died, he accidentally perceived a paper fallen into a cavity on one side of the chimney. It was folded as a letter, which on opening contained the following:-" Barbarous father, your cruelty in having put it out of ry power ever to join my fate to that of the only man I could love, and tyrannically insisting upon my marrying one whom I always hated, has made me form a resolution to put an end to an existence which is become a burden to me. I doubt not I shall find mercy in another world, for sure no benevolent Being can require that I should any longer live in torment to myself in this. My death I lay to your charge: when you read this, consider yourself as the inhuman wretch that plunged the murderous knife into the bosom of the unhappy-CATHERINE SHAW."

This letter being shown, the handwriting was recognised and avowed to be Catherine Shaw's by many of her relations and friends. It became the public talk; and the magistracy of Edinburgh, on a scrutiny, being convinced of its authenticity, ordered the body of William Shaw to be taken from the gibbet, and given to his family for interment; and as the only repara

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tion to his memory and the honour of his surviving relations, they caused a pair of colours to be waved over his grave in token of his innocence-a poor compensation, it will be allowed, for an act of gross cruelty and injustice.

THE FRENCH REFUGEE.

THE following singularly involved case is given in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1754, with the initials of a correspondent, who states it to have been extracted from some minutes of evidence made by his grandfather in criminal causes in which he was counsel on the part of the crown in the reign of Charles II.

Jaques du Moulin, a French refugee, having brought over his family and a small sum of money, employed it in purchasing lots of goods that had been condemned at the customhouse, which he again disposed of by retail. As these goods were such as, having a high duty, were frequently smuggled, those who dealt in this way were generally suspected of increasing their stock by illicit means, and smuggling, or purchasing smuggled articles, under colour of dealing only in goods that had been legally seized by the king's officers, and taken from smugglers. This trade, however, did not, in the general estimation, impeach his honesty, though it gave no sanction to his character; but he was often detected in uttering false gold. He came frequently to persons of whom he had received money with several of these pieces of counterfeit coin, and pretended that they were among the pieces which had been paid him: this was generally denied with great eagerness; but, if particular circumstances did not confirm the contrary, he was always peremptory and obstinate in his charge. This soon brought him into disrepute, and he gradually lost not only his business but his credit. It happened that, having sold a parcel of goods, which amounted to £78, to one Harris, a person with whom he had before had no dealings, he received the money in guineas and Portugal gold, several pieces of which he scrupled; but the man having assured him that he himself had carefully examined and weighed those very pieces, and found them good, Du Moulin took them, and gave his receipt.

In a few days he returned with six pieces, which he averred were of base metal, and part of the sum which he had a few days before received of him for the lot of goods. Harris examined the pieces, and told Du Moulin that he was sure there were none of them among those which he had paid him, and refused to exchange them for others. Du Moulin as peremptorily insisted on the contrary, alleging that he had put the money in a drawer by itself, and locked it up till he offered it in payment of a bill of exchange, and then the pieces were found to be bad; insisting that they were the same to which he had objected. Harris now became angry, and charged Du Moulin with intending a

fraud. Du Moulin appeared to be rather piqued than intimidated at this charge; and having sworn that these were the pieces he received, Harris was at length obliged to make them good; but as he was confident that Du Moulin had injured him by a fraud, supported by perjury, he told his story wherever he went, exclaiming against him with great bitterness, and met with many persons who made nearly the same complaints, and told him that it had been a practice of Du Moulin's for a considerable time. Du Moulin now found himself universally shunned; and hearing from all parts what Harris had reported, he brought an action for defamatory words, and Harris, irritated to the highest degree, stood upon his defence; and in the meantime having procured a meeting of several persons who had suffered the same way in their dealings with Du Moulin, they procured a warrant against him, and he was apprehended upon suspicion of counterfeiting the coin. Upon searching his drawers, a great number of pieces of counterfeit gold were found in a drawer by themselves, and several others were picked from other money that was found in different parcels in his scrutoire: upon further search, a flask, several files, a pair of moulds, some powdered chalk, a small quantity of aqua regia, and several other implements, were discovered. No doubt could now be entertained of his guilt, which was extremely aggravated by the methods he had taken to dispose of the money he made, the insolence with which he had insisted upon its being paid him by others, and the perjury by which he had supported his claim. His action against Harris for defamation was also considered as greatly increasing his guilt, and everybody was impatient to see him punished. In these circumstances he was brought to trial; and his many attempts to put off bad money, the quantity found by itself in his scrutoire, and, above all, the instruments of coining, which, upon a comparison, exactly answered the money in his possession, being proved, he was upon this evidence convicted, and received sentence of death.

It happened that, a few days before he was to have been executed, one Williams, who had been bred a seal-engraver, but had left his business, was killed by a fall from his horse: his wife, who was then pregnant, and near her time, immediately fell into fits and miscarried. She was soon sensible that she could not live; and therefore sending for the wife of Du Moulin, she desired to be left alone, and then gave her the following

account::

That her husband was one of four, whom she named, that had for many years subsisted by counterfeiting gold coin, which she had been frequently employed to put off, and was therefore intrusted with the whole secret; that another of these persons had hired himself to Du Moulin as a kind of footman and porter, and being provided by the gang with false keys, had disposed of a very considerable sum of bad money by opening his master's