indicated. To induce the general adoption of the system, as a substitute for war, it is evident that the

fullest confidence should be entertained in the intelligence and impartiality of the referees, and in that their judgments should be rendered wholly independently of the decisions of the prize courts, which ought to have no further influence with either the sovereign or the tribunal of arbitration than their own intrinsic merits may demand.

SOME BAR STORIES, NEW AND OLD. Mr. Foss may be fairly termed the Plutarch of the English judges. His "Biographia Juridica" contains, in the nine volumes, a full biographical sketch of each judicial personage from William the Conqueror to the present time. We hope the day is not distant when some legal Parton shall gather up the scattered histories of the great lawyers and judges of this country, and weave a "Biographia Juridica" as complete and interesting as that of Foss.

From the latter work and the Biographical Dictionary of the same author, our excellent English contemporary the Law Magazine and Review — has gathered some anecdotes of the judges, some of which are not new to our readers, but all of which will make appropriate reading for these vacation days, and so we appropriate it.

Among the many details of the characteristics of the bench is here and there a good joke, which the proceedings of the court often occasioned. Baron Alderson, a great favorite with juries, and in his reasoning deep, solid, and acute, had a great taste for witticism. Once a counsel on applying for a nolle prosequi pronounced the penultimate syllable long. "Stop, sir," said the baron; "consider that this is the last day of the term, and don't make things unnecessarily long." At an assize town a juryman said to the clerk who was administering the oath to him, "Speak up, I cannot hear what you say." The baron asked him if he was deaf, and on the juryman answering, "Yes, with one ear," he replied, "Well, then, you may leave the box, for it is necessary that a juryman should hear both sides,"

Justice Hayes, one of the three additional judges made on the passing of the act remitting the trial of election petitions to the judges, joined with an amiable disposition a rare power of amusing his companions at the bar. His judicial career was lamentably short, dying almost in the exercise of his judicial duties in fifteen months. It is said of him-"He was, in fact, a man of infinite jest,' and if there had been an album kept in Westminster Hall, to recall the witticisms of the bar, many would have been the pages devoted to his witty pleasantries and whimsical pieces."

Justice Powell, Jr., was a profound lawyer, and much respected in private life. Dean Swift represented him

"As the merriest old gentleman he ever saw, speaking pleasant things and chuckling till he cried again. When Jane Wenham was tried for witchcraft before him, and charged with being able to fly, he asked her whether she could fly, and on her answering in the affirmative he said, 'Well, then, you may; there is no law against flying.' The poor woman was saved from the effects of her own faith, and received the Queen's pardon."

Going back above a century and a half, many stories are told of the quaint sayings of the administrators of the law, among which may be mentioned an anecdote of Baron Powys, who retired from the bench at the age of seventy-eight, in 1726. The biographer says:

"With moderate intellectual powers, he filled his office with average credit, but was commonly laughed at by the bar for commencing his judgments with ‘I humbly conceive,' and enforcing his arguments with 'look, do you see.' He is the reputed victim of Phillip Yorke's badinage who, dining with the judge, and being pressed to name the subject of the work which he had jokingly said he was about to publish, stated that it was a poetical version of Coke upon Littleton. As nothing would satisfy Sir Littleton (the baron) but a specimen of the composition, Yorke gravely recited,

"He that holdeth his lands in fee

Need neither to shake nor to shiver,

I humbly conceive; for look, do you see,
They are his and his heirs for ever."

We might here have introduced the judgment of Sir John Pratt about the woman and her settlement, reported and preserved in a catch with which our readers are familiar.

Of Sir Thomas Richardson, who was appointed chief justice of the common pleas in 1626, it is said that while attending at the Assizes at Salisbury, a prisoner, whom he had condemned to death for some felony, threw a brickbat at his head; but, stooping at the time, it only knocked off his hat. On his friends congratulating him on his escape he said, "You see, now, if I had been an upright judge I had been slain." The additional punishment upon this offender is thus curiously recorded by Chief Justice Treby, in the margin of Dyer's Reports (p. 188, b): "Richardson, C. J. de C. B. as Assizes at Salisbury in Summer 1631, fuit assault per Prisoner la condemne pur Felony; que puis son condemnation ject un Brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist. Et pur ceo immediately fuit Indictment drawn pur Noy envers le Prisoner, et son dexter manus ampute et fixe al Gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court."

Justice Shelly, in the sixteenth century, seems to have been somewhat of a humorist on the bench. In a case which he thought overlabored beyond its merits he compared it to a Banbury cheese, which is worth little in substance when the parings are cut off;

for so this case, said he, "is brief, if the superfinous trifling which is on the pleadings be taken away." Chief Justice Tindal greatly enjoyed a joke. It is related that:

"One of the learned serjeants coming too late for dinner at Serjeants' Inn Hall found no place left for him. While waiting for a seat, 'How now,' said the chief justice, 'what's the matter, brother? You look like an outstanding term that's unsatisfied.' Of another serjeant he was asked whether he thought him a sound lawyer. Well, sir,' said he, 'you raise a doubtful point, whether roaring is unsoundness.' When another stormy leader was addressing a jury in the civil court at Buckingham, he spoke so loud that the chief justice, who was delivering his charge in the criminal court, inquired what that noise was. On being informed that Serjeant - was opening a case, 'very well,' said he, 'since Brother is opening, I must shut up,' and immediately ordered the doors between the two courts to be closed. The following, though not strictly professional, will perhaps be deemed quite as good. When Lady Rolle, on her husband's death, refused to let the hounds go out, a learned serjeant asked the chief justice whether there would be any harm if they were allowed to do so with a piece of crape round their necks. 'I can hardly think,' said Sir Nicholas, 'that even the crape is necessary; it ought surely to have been sufficient that they were in full cry."

In days of yore dissipation was carried on to an alarming extent among the upper classes, and many of the highest luminaries at the bar and on the bench were votaries to the prevailing vice. The last four of the chief justices of the king's bench in the reign of Charles II, Scroggs, Pemberton, Francis and Jeffreys may be cited as remarkable proofs of the general profligacy of the period. The bishop of Salisbury, author of the "History of the Reformation," seeing his son, afterward a justice of the common pleas, who was then leading a dissolute life, uncommonly grave, asked him the subject of his thoughts. "A greater work," replied he, "than your lordship's ' History of the Reformation.'" "What is that, Tom?" "My own reformation, my lord." The bishop expressed his pleasure, but at the same time his despair of it.

Lord Henley, afterward Lord Chancellor, was another jovial and hilarious young man when at the bar. It is said of him that, having to apologize to a Quaker at Bristol for some indecent liberties taken in cross-examination of him at a trial, when he became chancellor, he engaged him to pay the freight of some wine consigned to him, and afterward invited him to dine at his table, where he good-humoredly related to the company the particulars of their early fracas.

Among the anecdotes that have reference to the early follies of Chief Justice Mott is the following, which shows that he did not hesitate to acknowledge

them when the confession would serve the ends of justice:

"In a trial of an old woman for witchcraft, the witness against her declared that she used a 'spell.' 'Let me see it,' said the judge. A scrap of parchment being handed up to him, he asked the old woman how she came by it, and on her answering, 'A young gentleman, my lord, gave it to me to cure my daughter's ague,' inquired whether it cured her. 'Oh! yes, my lord, and many others,' replied the old woman. He then turned to the jury and said: 'Gentlemen, when I was young and thoughtless, and out of money, I and some companions as unthinking as myself, went to this woman's house, then a public one, and, having no money to pay our reckoning, I hit upon a stratagem to get off scot-free. Seeing her daughter ill of an ague I pretended I had a spell to cure her. I wrote the classic lines you see, and gave it to her, so that if any is punishable it is I, and not the poor woman.' She was of course acquitted, and did not fail to receive from the judge a compensation for the trouble he had caused her. In none of the trials before him for this supposed crime was a conviction obtained, and prosecutions for it from this time fell into discredit, which was increased by his putting into the pillory one Hathaway, convicted of pretending to be bewitched by a poor woman whom he had indicted for the crime. Of the idle companions of his youthful frolics there is a melancholy tradition that it was his fate to have one of them tried before him and convicted of felony. The prisoner was afterward visited by him in jail, and to his inquiry after their college intimates, answered, 'Ah! my lord, they are all hanged but myself and your lordship.'”

A circumstance, not unlike the foregoing, occurred not many years ago at a trial before Chief Justice Jervis, whose social character and judicial powers were of the highest order, and who possessed a surprising memory in summing up the details of evidence.

"A young man of large property had been fleeced by a gang of blacklegs on the turf and at cards . . . . A private note-book with initials for names, and complicated gambling accounts, was found on one of the prisoners. No one seemed to be able to make head or tail of it. The chief justice looked it over and explained it all to the jury. Then there was a pack of cards which had been pronounced by the London detectives to be a perfectly fair pack. They were examined in court, every one thought them to be so. They were handed to the judge. When the charge began he went over all the circumstances till he got to the objects found upon the prisoners. Gentlemen,' said he, 'I will engage to tell you, without looking at the faces, the name of every card upon this pack.' A strong exclamation of surprise went through the court. The prisoners looked aghast. He then pointed out that on the backs, which were figured with wreaths of flowers in dotted

of Sir Edward Coke, a production which, as no one would dare to enter the legal arena without fully digesting, has been illustrated successively by the eminent names of Hale, Nottingham, Hargrave and Butler."

"Delighted so much in his profession that he always carried one of the year-books in his coach for his diversion, saying that it was as good to him as a comedy. His passion for law ruled him to such a degree that he left a will purposely worded so as to cause litigation, in order that sundry questions, which had been 'moot points' in his life-time, might be settled for the benefit of posterity. Judge Jeffreys is said to have availed himself of the serjeant's legal knowledge; but one day, when Maynard was arguing against judicial dictum, the coarse judge told him that 'he had grown so old as to forget his law.' 'Tis true, Sir George,' he retorted, 'I have forgotten more law than ever you knew.'"

Lord Thurlow used to say that Lord Mansfield was---"A surprising man; ninety-nine times out of a hundred he was right in his opinions and decisions; and when once in a hundred times he was wrong, ninety-nine men out of a hundred would not discover

it. He was a wonderful man."

The law's delays were much more general in former times than at the present day, and little effort was made to fetch up arrears. During the chancellorship . of Lord Eldon the business of the court of chancery progressed but slowly, notwithstanding that on the one hand the proverbial dilatoriness, hesitation, and dubitation, displayed by his lordship in his decisions was more than counterbalanced by the expeditiousness of his colleague, Vice-Chancellor Sir John Leach, who was notorious for the swiftness with which he disposed of the business which came before him. A line might well have been drawn between the two extremes. The rapid disposal of cases by the latter, owing to his extraordinary confidence in himself, led to much inconvenience, and unnecessary and harrassing litigation.

"He relied so little upon authorities, and listened so indifferently to any arguments that conflicted with his own opinion, sometimes not even condescending to give any reasons for his judgments, that his decisions were frequently appealed against, and not unfrequently overturned. In comparing his summary judgments with Lord Eldon's proverbial delays, the chancellor's court was designated the court of Oyer sans terminer, and Sir John's that of Terminer sans oyer."

On the other hand Lord Eldon justified himself in his delays by his over-anxiety to do strict justice to the litigants, and acted on the principle that extreme care was necessary to come to a right decision, inasmuch as it prevented not only the annoyance and

"In Equity's high court there are
Two sad extremes, 'tis clear;
Excessive slowness strikes us there,
Excessive quickness here.

Their source, 'twixt good and evil, brings
A difficulty nice;

The first from Eldon's virtue springs,
The latter from his Vice."

-

[To be Continued.]

CURRENT TOPICS.

The passage of the Supreme Court of Judicature act will effect one of the most important changes of the century in English jurisprudence. The existing courts are consolidated and reorganized into one great court — to be known as the Supreme Court of Judicature. This court is to consist of two permanent divisions the "High Court of Justice," and the "Court of Appeal.". The "High Court of Justice" will be composed of the judges of the existing courts, and will be subdivided into four parts. The Court of Appeal will be composed of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice of England, the Master of the Rolls, the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, the Lord Justices of Appeal in Chancery, the existing salaried Judges of the Privy Council, and three other judges to be appointed. The act prescribes in outline the practice and procedure to be followed in these courts and which is in all its essential features similar to that in existence in this State under the Code, including the concurrent administration of law and equity.

It is a noticeable fact that the Independent is unable to discover any sufficient reason why churches and ministers should not bear their just and equal proportion of tax burdens. We quite agree with it that "no reason can be given for it that is not either false in the fact it affirms, or false in the inference it seeks to draw." From the census the Independent finds that in this State alone there is church property to the amount of over $66,000,000, which, added to the $1,500, exemption of the ministers, makes about $75,000,000, which yields no tax to State, county, city or town. In the United States the church property alone foots up over $350,000,000, most of which is not taxed. Our contemporary says: "Here is a huge amount of privileged property that enjoys all the benefits of government without paying a solitary penny for its support. Roads are built for its convenience; courts of justice sit to assert and enforce its rights; public improvements are made to its advantage; indeed, like all other property it shares in all

the protection, immunities and remedies afforded by law; and yet contributes nothing toward the necessary expenses thereof." Were the church property of the State assessed, as in justice it should be, it would add to the revenue of the State, to say nothing of municipal and local taxes, nearly two-thirds of a million of dollars.

Punishment for contempt of court seems not to be more potential in England than in this country. It was not very long ago that one Mr. Onslow, M. P., was convicted of that offense and subjected to a mild penalty; but notwithstanding this, he recently permitted his name to be affixed to a published document in favor of a claimant, attacking the court in violent terms, and then wrote a letter commending the attack to the attention of the public. Mr. Onslow, upon being called upon by the court, claimed that he had not seen the document when he wrote his introductory letter, and that he meant no offense, etc., and this excuse the court saw it to take without pursuing the matter further. Meanwhile Mr. Whalley, another friend of the Claimant, declared that he "feels it to be a paramount duty to secure for the defendant a fair trial, and as it is forbidden to appeal by writing or speech to the people of England, he means to do so to the people of America." From which we infer that according to Mr. Whalley's theory to secure a "“fair trial" in England requires money, and for that he will appeal to Americans. Mr. Whalley will probabiy find that the interest of the Americans in the -Claimant, measured by dollars, is very slight.

English propriety had something of a paroxysm over the fact that Dr. Kenealy was allowed, on account of the exceptional heat of the weather, to address the court in the Tichborne case without his wig. But the Pall Mall Gazette has found that it was not without a precedent. It says: A somewhat similar circumstance took place in 129, when Mr. Scarlett, at the summer assizes, at Lancaster, hurried into court without his wig and gown, and while apologizing to the judge, expressed a hope that the time would shortly come when these mummeries, as he profanely termed them, would be entirely discarded. In consequence of this bold expression of opinion, all of the counsel appeared the next day in court without wigs and gowns; but the change of fashion lasted but for a day, and Mr. Scarlett's wishes have never been realized. Yet it is difficult to see why wigs should thus be considered the necessary badges of wisdom, or why even judges should be compelled to wear a head dress which is positively painful in such weather as that we are now having. Police magistrates do not wear wigs, yet the awe with which they are regarded in their courts is more than sufficient for any practical purpose; indeed, it would be well for them and for the public, if, by wearing wigs, or by any other devic.. they could be regarded within their own small circles, more like

ordinary mortals and less like divinities. In the mean time, to judge by the complaints of the heat and atmosphere of the court in which the Tichborne trial is taking place, ice bags, rather than wigs, would be appropriate coverings for the heads of those engaged in the case.

NOTES OF CASES.

In Luske v. Hotchkiss, 37 Conn. 219, the statute provided that "eight hours' work done in any one day shall be deemed a lawful day's work, unless otherwise agreed by the parties." The plaintiff, under a contract for a fixed price per week, worked sixteen hours per day, and then sought to recover double the agreed price. Held, that he could not recover. This decision is in accordance with the doctrine laid down in Brooks v. Cotton, 2 Am. Rep. 172; 48 N. H. 50, although that case was not cited.

In Jewett v. City of New Haven, 38 Conn. 368, a city was held not to be liable for injuries occasioned by the negligence of one of the members of its fire department, while engaged in extinguishing a fire within the city limits, although such fireman was employed and paid by the city. Then the fireman, while going with a horse and hose-cart belonging to the city to the engine house, to procure additional hose to assist in extinguishing a fire, negligently drove against plaintiff's carriage; whereby he was injured. In Forbush v. City of Morwich, 38 Conn. 225, a city was held not to be liable for the trespasses of members of a voluntary association. These two cases are supported by Fisher v. City of Boston, 6 Am. Rep. 196; 104 Mass. 87, wherein it was held that a municipal corporation was not liable for personal injuries occasioned by reason of the negligence of the fire department in using or keeping in repair fire engines; and, also, by Wheeler v. City of Cincinnati, 2 Am. Rep. 368; 19 Ohio, 19, where a city authorized by statute to establish a fire department and procure necessary engines, etc., was not liable to an individual, whose house had been burned, for any | defect in the execution of such power, nor for a neglect on the part of the fire companies, or their officers.

It is proposed to place the new building for the library of congress on the north-east of the east capital park, while on the south-east corner a building for the supreme court and court of claims will ultimately be erected.

James S. Franklin, clerk of the court of appeals of Maryland, whose present term of office will shortly expire, was re-nominated for that position by the Democratic convention which met in Baltimore last week.

The examination into the conduct of justices of the peace and constables of the district of Columbia, just concluded, shows that these officials received nearly $100,000 annually in fees, in excess of the law.