untwined the web of sophistries with which a very clever counsel had bewildered the jury. 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 most ingeniously 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, everyone thought them to be so, and no stress was laid upon the circumstance. However, they were handed to the Chief Justice. I saw his keen eye glance very inquiringly over them while the evidence was going on. However, he said nothing, and quietly put them aside. When the trial was over, and 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 in 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 and flowers, in dotted lines all over, there was a small flower in the right-hand corner of each. The number of dots in this flower was the same in all the kings, and so on. A knave would be perhaps marked thus . .

,

an ace

thus. and so on, the difference being so slight and the flowers on the back so many, that even if you had been told the general principle it would have taken a considerable time to find out which was the particular flower which differed. He told me afterwards that he recollected a similar expedient in Lord De Ros' case, and therefore set to work to discover the trick. But he did it while the evidence was going on, which he himself had to take down in writing. Another thing he did very well. A man was robbed. Among the coins he had was a sou, a Portsea token, and another-the name of which I forget a sort of halfpenny. A man was taken up on suspicion, and in his pocket with some other money were three such coins. The prosecutor could only swear that he had three such. He could not identify, nor could he swear to any of the other pieces. The counsel for the defence proved in evidence that all these coins are extremely common in Brighton where the robbery took place, and the case seemed to have broken down by the countenances of the jury. Gentlemen,' said the Chief Justice, 'the question has to be tried by the doctrine of chances. The sou is common, the token is

common, and the third coin too. The chances are that perhaps a thousand sous are in the pockets of different people in Brighton; that five hundred tokens are so too, and perhaps fifteen hundred of the other; but the chances are very great against two men in Brighton having each a sou and a token, and almost infinite against two men having each in his pocket at the same time a sou, a token, and the third a coin. You must, therefore, add this to the rest of the evidence, not as a weak link, but as a very strong one.'

In criminal cases like these he especially excelled, owing to his almost intuitive insight into character and his quickness. This very quickness of perception, however, which was so marked a characteristic of the Chief Justice, had its disadvantages. It made him-no uncommon judicial infirmity-impatient of argument, and sometimes-partly owing to his health-irritable. But his impatience was not at the expense of justice. decisions were always in accordance with law and reason.

ness.

His

In private life he married early a Miss Catherine Mundell, and had five children—he was an agreeable, lively, and convivial companion, full of good-humoured satire and repartee, a generous and constant friend. Ballantyne records an instance of his kindIn a prosecution for fraud on Prince Louis Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III.), Ballantyne's leader was arguing while he was actually dying of cancer, and suffering intensely. His only desire was to live to see (which he did not) his daughter married the next day. He told the Chief Justice (Jervis) that he had no hope, and that he was sorry for his clerk. "Do not trouble yourself," said Jervis, "I will provide for him." And he did, by giving him an office in the Common Pleas.

On November 2nd, 1856, there is the following entry in Lord Campbell's diary: "While writing this, I was interrupted by the news of the sudden death of Chief Justice Jervis. From his years, he ought long to have survived me-and before long I must follow him. While living, when dying, and at the day of judgment, Lord have mercy upon me!" A few years afterwards Campbell himself was found dead one morning, in his armchair, stricken as suddenly.

Bird's case (2 Den. C. C. 94), in which the Chief Justice took a leading part, is an instructive one in the history of our criminal law. The prisoners had emulated the performances of Mrs. Brownrigg, and whipped a female apprentice to death. The

indictment charged a series of very brutal beatings, culminating in death; but, at the trial, medical evidence was sprung on the Crown, which proved that death was caused by a blow given a short time previously, and there was nothing to show that the prisoners had struck it. So they were acquitted. Could they afterwards be indicted for the assaults? Eight judges of the Court for Crown Cases Reserved said "Yes"-for on the indictment for murder they could not be convicted of the assaults; six, and Chief Justice Jervis among them, said "No"-autrefois acquit; but the principle which Chief Justice Jervis lays down is the principle which has been embodied in 14 & 15 Vict. c. 100: "A prisoner," he says, may be acquitted of the felony and be convicted of assault upon an indictment for felony wherever the crime charged legally includes an assault and the evidence properly admissible and produced to prove the crime charged warrants the finding of assault."

Reg. v. Powell (2 Den. C. C. 403) illustrates another anomaly of our common law. The prisoner there was charged with burglariously entering a dwelling-house with intent to steal certain "goods and chattels." What the prisoner really went after was a mortgage deed, and Chief Justice Jervis held-quite rightly, no doubt the indictment bad, the mortgage deed as a security being a chose in action. Observe, had it been paid off, the parchment and wax would then have been a mere chattel. This nice distinction recalls Hale's ruling as to homicide in the commission of a felony-which Lord Bramwell not long ago held to be still law-that if a man feloniously shoots at a tame duck, misses it and kills a man, this is murder, but it is not murder if the duck is a wild one.

The days of duelling are over for us, but we have only to go back half a century to find the law of honour and the law of the land diametrically opposed to one another. The law of honour required you to call out a man and shoot him. The law of the land hanged you if you did. But observe the effect on the law of libel. You may call a duellist who has killed his man a murderer, but you must not say he practised all the night before with a pistol, or impute any other circumstance of aggravation or unfairness: (Helsham v. Blackwood, 11 C. B. 111). For even a murderer may have his honour, otherwise he would be outside the

pale of the law.

The Roman law allowed creditors to carve up their debtor.

Our law never went quite so far, but it fully recognised a man's person as part of his assets, and not the least valuable either. In Arden v. Goodacre (11 C. B. 883), the court had to determine the measure of damages against a sheriff for letting the debtor escape, and it held that they were the value of the custody of the debtor at the moment of escape, without any deduction for what the creditor might have obtained by diligence after the escape. The liability of a sheriff for the acts of his officers is well explained in Greg v. Cotterell (5 E. & B. 585). "He is supposed," says Chief Justice Jervis, "to be executing his duty in person, as he is bound in the first instance to do. The impossibility of so doing authorises him to delegate that authority to another, and he puts that party in his place, and for whatever that party does, not only when done virtute mandati, but colore mandati, the sheriff is responsible; if, for instance, under a fi. fa., the officer arrests the body of the debtor. But so, too, is the officer. He is only protected while acting strictly in accordance with his warrant (Munsday v. Stubbs, 10 C. B. 432), and a bona fide mistake makes no difference." Among the Chief Justice's other decisions may be noted: That an alien resident abroad has no copyright in England (Jeffreys v. Boosey, 4 H. L. C. 815); that a secretary of legation, acting as chargé d'affaires, is entitled to all the prvileges of an ambassador (Taylor v. Best, 14 C. B. 487); that a man tucking up his sleeves and announcing his intention of breaking your neck unless you leave the premises is an assault in law (Read v. Coker, 13 C. B. 850); that the measure of damages on breach of a contract to deliver goods at a specified time is the difference between the contract and the market price at the date of the breach, and does not include loss of anticipated profit on a re-sale (Peters v. Ayre, 13 C. B. 353); that a buyer with a warranty cannot return the goods, if the property has passed, though not equal to sample, but must sue on the warranty, unless the contract is conditional (Dawson v. Collis, 11 C. B. 452); that a man is not entitled to a lien unless he receives the property or does the act in the particular character to which the lien attaches (Dixon v. Hairsfield, 10 C. B. 398); that to entitle anyone but the author of a literary work to register it at Stationers' Hall there must be an absolute assignment (Ex parte Bastow, 14 C. B. 631). Shelton v. Springett (11 C. B. 452) is what newspaper advertisements would call Important to Parents. It lays down that the mere moral obligation of a parent to maintain his child affords

no legal inference of a promise to pay a debt contracted by him even for necessaries. If, for instance, a father sends a son to London with £5 in his pocket to look for employment, he cannot be made to pay a bill which the son has run up at an hotel. People are apt to imagine," as Mr. Justice Maule remarked in this case, "that a son stands in this respect on the same footing as a wife. But he does not." When, therefore, the prodigal finds himself cut adrift, what will he do? Chief Justice Jervis explains: He will go on the parish, and the parish will sue his parent for his maintenance. For a parent by the law of England, if of ability, remains liable to maintain his offspring, whatever their age may be. This may be recommended for reflection to persons about to marry.