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When a proverbial showman produces a small skull of the poet Burns, "when he was a boy," the shock falls upon us like a cold shower bath. Anacharsis says that laws are like spider's webs, which will catch flies, but not wasps and hornets. Some one has said that law is like a country dance, people are led up and down in it until they are tired; like physic they who take the least of it are best off. In Stevens' lecture on the "Head," he says: "Law always expresses itself with true grammatical precision, never confounding moods, tenses, cases or genders, except, indeed, when a woman happens incidentally to be slain, then the verdict brought in, is manslaughter." Southy, in his Common Place Book, asks: What's the first excellence in a lawyer? Tautology. What's the second? Tautology. What's the third? Tautology." An old orator said the same thing as to "action."

Law is said to be like an eel-trap, very easy to get into, but difficult to get out of; or like a razor, which requires a strong back, keenness and an excellent temper. We may say with Ray, of law which can as well be said of medicine, that –

It is like longitude about,
Never completely yet found out,
Though practiced notwithstanding.

The difficulty of ascertaining the precise meaning of law, doubtless, led to the establishment of the branch of jurisprudence termed equity.

If mankind should faithfully adhere to Justinian's ideas of law, namely, that we live honestly; hurt nobody, and that we give every one his due, there would be little use for lawyers.

Sterne insinuates that attorneys are to lawyers what apothecaries are to physicians, only that they do not deal in scruples.

Many of the adjuncts and circumstances of law are made to retain, for the sake of mystery, its uncouth form and size of documents and its antiquated words. Physicians' prescriptions may have better effect for being expressed mysteriously, but legal matters ought to be expressed in the clearest terms. However men may deprecate and inveigh against law, they claim allegiance to its high authority. As to its administration, let an old epigram speak:

When we've nothing to dread from the law's sternest frowns,

which, like a wounded snake, have dragged their slow length along.

Several years ago, "The New Monthly Magazine," once edited by Bulwer, contained this sentence: "Men set up sometimes with the best success as charlatans, with a full knowledge of their incapacity, and relying on the strength of public gullibility; ** * the charlatan, for the most part, has a liberal conceit of his own superiority, and fancies himself more cunning (i. e., in his apprehension, wiser) than the rest of the world.

*

The astuteness and cunning sometimes exhibited by advocates and special pleaders, particularly in criminal cases, are humorous if not mysterious. In a certain criminal case a few years ago in which the culprit was arraigned upon a charge of manslaughter, which seemed to bear very much against him, the counsel held up his little child, who was crying aloud, as an eloquent appeal to the jury in his behalf. This might have answered very well, had not one of the opposing counsel put the pertinent question to the youngster — “What are you crying for?" when the artless reply was: pinched me, sir."

"He

There is a good story told of an advocate that, on an occasion when he had drank rather freely, was called on unexpectedly to plead a cause in which he had been retained. The advocate mistook the party for whom he was engaged and, to the amazement and consternation of the agent who had feed him and of the poor client, he delivered a fervent speech directly opposite to the interests he had been called upon to defend. Such was his zeal that no whispered remonstrances, no jostling of the elbow could stop him, until just as he was about to set down the trembling client, in a brief note, informed him that he had been pleading for the wrong party. This intimation, which would have disconcerted most men, had a different effect on the advocate, who, with an air of infinite composure, resumed his speech. "Such, your honor, is the statement which you will probably hear from my learned brother on the opposite side of this case. I shall now, therefore, beg leave, in a few words, to show your honor how utterly untenable are the principles, and how distorted are the facts, upon which this very specious statement has proceeded.” He did not take his seat, until he had completely and energetically refuted the whole of his former

We all laugh at the barrister's wigs, bags and argument. While a briefless attorney ought not to

gowns;

But as soon as we want them to save or defend, Then their laughter begins, and our mirth's at an end.

The phrase, "the law's delay," is trite and is certainly well founded, if we may judge by many cases

be blamed, as it is decidedly wrong to abuse a man without a cause, the attorney above mentioned is to be commended for having advocated a cause with good effect.

There have been in ages past and are now, a large and bright galaxy of lawyers and doctors in England and in this country, who have reflected a

radiant lustre upon their profession. While here and there may be found blots on the escutcheon, in the main, the great body of practitioners are honest, conscientious and faithful to their trust. If, according to Hooker, law has her seat "in the bosom of God," it ought to be faithfully administered. The generality of men have a natural sense of justice and a high respect for law. Blackstone somewhere says that, the laws of eternal justice are so interwoven in the web of individual happiness that the latter cannot be obtained without observing the former; and if the former be faithfully obeyed it cannot but induce the latter.

Thomas Randolph, a dramatic writer of England,

says:

Justice, like lightning, ever should appear To few men's ruin, but to all men's fear. Coleridge is supposed to have been suffering from an under-dose of opium, when he wrote "The Devil's Thoughts," in which he says:

He saw a lawyer killing a viper

On a dung-hill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel.

Some writers have attributed the foregoing verse to Southey, as he was fond of writing about the "Devil," and of connecting him with lawyers; for instance in "The Alderman's Funeral."

This brief outline may illustrate that there is much wit and humor and a good deal of seriousness in law.

Most of the evils we poor mortals know, From doctors and imagination flow.

And Dryden, in verses on the poet-doctor, Garth, observes:

The apothecary train is wholly blind;
From files a random recipe they take,

And many deaths from one prescription make. Garth, generous as his muse, prescribe and gives, The shopman sells, and by destruction lives. Again, Byron, ever censorious, in a stanza, declares:

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This is the way physicians mend - or end us, Secundum artem - but although we sneer,

In health we call them to attend us,

Without the least propensity to jeer.

As to the respective merits of allopathy and homeopathy, we cannot pretend to draw the line. Both systems number among their advocates many intellectual and philosophical minds; both, doubtless, possess merit. The infinitesimal reduction of doses to the millionth and billionth part of a grain in the one system, would seem to stagger the belief of its opponents. It will, doubtless, be admitted by the medical profession generally that, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the tendency of diseases is toward recovery. Or, as a French writer puts it: "Nature is fighting with disease; a blind man armed with a club, that is, the physician, comes to settle the difference. He first tries to make peace; when he cannot accomplish this, he lifts his club and strikes at random. If he strikes the disease, he kills the disease; if he strikes nature, he kills

Let us now turn to medicine, and see if it, too, is the patient." In the nature of things, in many not open to about the same general criticism.

But for the inherent tendency of mankind to blind credulity and superstition, says a writer in "Salad for the Solitary," it may be doubted whether the profession of medicine would ever have been made the vehicle of such gross absurdities and cunning impostures as its past, and especially its earlier history reveals. The medical practice has been defined to be, for the most part, guessing at nature's intentions and wishes, and then endeavoring to substitute man's. Byron somewhere says: When in health, we throw physic to the dogs, and laugh at the doctor; but when we are prostrated by disease, when sickness sits caverned in the hollow eye, we are glad enough to seek his aid.

It is not our intention to cast any imputation upon therapeutics or the science or practice of medicine generally, but rather to glance at some of the monstrous follies which have long .disputed its claims to the suffrages of society. Since the age of Pericles, doctors have been a fruitful theme of the satirist. Churchill says:

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cases it is a question of guessing. In fact, D'Alembert tells of a physician, after conducting a practice for three decades, confessed, as his reason for retiring from it, that he was "weary of guessing." Nor is it surprising, when, as some nosologist has estimated, there are about twenty-four hundred disorders incident to the human frame, that the doctor should be constantly obliged to put on his guessing cap. Probably the bard of Avon never conjectured to what numerical extent the ills "flesh is heir to," or he would hardly have suggested throwing "physic to the dogs;" yet it may be, because there is, according to Parusch, "an evident affinity between physic and dogs; for it is clear that every specific medicine, like every dog, has its day; pills have had their popularity, and elixirs have had their day."

It is recorded that Napoleon once said to his physician, Dr. Antommachi: "Leave off all these remedies; life is a fortress that neither you nor I know anything about. Why throw obstacles in the way of its defence. Its own means are superior to all the apparatus of your laboratories." The cele

The homeophic system, sir, just suits me to a tittle

little;

brated Zimmerman attended Frederick the Great in his last illness. "You have, I presume," said the king to him one day, "helped many a man into It clearly proves of physic you cannot take too another world." This remark being taken by him as over-censorious, he retorted: "Well, not so It it be good in all complaints to take a dose so many as your majesty, nor with so much honor to myself."

small,

It surely must be better still- to take no dose at all.

According to the Dublin Medical Journal, Prof. Gregory was wont to declare in his class-room,

are so many medical lies; and that medical doctrines were, for the most part, little better than stark, staring nonsense. * * * the art that we call science is no science at all, but a jumble of inconsistent opinions."

Some writer has said that 'the world is peopled by two classes of beings who seem to be as cognate and necessary to each other as male and female, charlatans and dupes; they exist by mutual depend-"that ninety-nine out of one hundred medical facts ence what one invents, the other believes. Dr. Parr defind the term quack as being applicable to all who, by pompous pretenses, mean insinuations and indirect promises, endeavor to obtain that confidence to which neither education, merit nor experience entitles them. So long as this innate love of the mysterious obtains among mankind, charlatanism will exist; and, anomalous as it would seem, often the most cultivated and enthusiastic minds are the readiest victims of the cheat. As a great New York daily paper recently remarked: "We see that Boston, the home of learning and the nurse of new religions, is the centre of the 'lucky box' and lucky pebble' industries." And satirically observes: "An astrologist, a palmist, and old Indian yarb' doctor from the Bowery, a new-fangled healer, does well to settle in Boston; " and it ascribes the cause of the Bostonians' interest in charlatans to "intellectual curiosity or open-mindedness." Empirics and charlatans have flourished in all ages. Many of the ancient modes of healing by the operation of witchcraft, charms, amulets, astrology, necromancy, alchemy, and magic, are unknown to us; these had their day and have been more or less supplanted by science and common

sense.

It seems to be the fact that, in general, in medicine as in law, those who are most confident as to the remedy or procedure, are the most superficial. One of the difficulties in medicines is in tracing effects to their true cause, and vice versa. The uncertainty of medicine - a theme both for the philosopher and the humorist - is, doubtless, deeply felt by the practical physician. "The uncertainty of medicine," says Dr. Abercrombie, "resolves itself chiefly into an apparent want of that uniformity of phenomena which is so remarkable in other branches of physical science." Dr. James Johnson, of London, made this extraordinary admission: "I declare, as my conscientious opinion, founded on long experience and reflection, that, if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, chemist, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail." He evidently would believe in the logic of the following lines:

Some twenty years ago, through the efforts of Braid, Charcot and Bernheim, hypnotism received an impetus, and since their time many wonderful cures have been wrought by hypnosis. Not many months ago, in Paterson, New Jersey, a young woman was treated hypnotically for insanity which was occasioned by a severe shock to the affections. She was cured in less than a week by the doctor's hypnotics upon her; she did not even know the person when she saw him, nor did the sight of the presents she had received awaken in her any recollection of them. The hypnotist had brought about a retraction in that portion of the brain where the disordered notions had found lodgement; the scientific explanation of hypnosis being that the brain is composed of a multitude of small cells or bodies - these cell-bodies being unconnected except by contiguity, and that retraction, by means of its consequent separation, takes that particular cellbody or set of cell-bodies out of the connection with its neighbors, and thus for the time being cuts off that particular line of sensation from the general consciousness."

In Brooklyn, three years ago, there appeared a tall and very thin man, with a long, lean face, terminating in a beard that was likened to a stalactite. He claimed that his healing powers came direct from God. He would attempt to heal no one who did not believe in the divinity of Christ. His custom was to place his hands on the head of the sufferer and make an extempore prayer, and ask their feelings. Ordinarily, after a few passes of his hands over the patient's head, the patient would arise and declare that he felt relieved of pain. Thus, by animal magnetism, hypnotism, mesmerism, or whatever other ism it may be characterized, hundreds of people are being examined year after year by men of this ilk, who travel around the country claiming to possess the healing-art-power vicariously bestowed. Strange infatuation! But enough. In our cursory ramblings in the field of the mys

terious and humorous in medicine and law, we fear that we have ridden or driven our pen beyond the point of interest, and so, in the lines of Cooper,

may say:

"Stop, stop, John Gilpin! Here's the house!

They all at once did cry; "The dinner waits and we are tired;" Said Gilpin: "So am I!"

TOM GALVIN, THE KILMAINHAM HANGMAN.

(1.)

The execution of a criminal is the most disagreeable task known to the officers of the law. In former times, in England and Ireland, a public execution was always considered a holiday by the lower classes, and they perfected their plans accordingly. The scaffold was generally erected in one of the public squares, and consequently every one had an unobstructed view of all the proceedings. Beer and sandwiches were sold in large quantities from carts and other vehicles, and the sales of intoxicants did not improve the temper or conduct of the multitude. Obscene, jokes and songs, ribald jests and drunken laughter were to be heard on every side. On such occasions the ordinary police protection was generally deemed inadequate and special police were sworn in in large numbers. These last were plentifully provided with beer and sandwiches, which has a powerful effect in drawing volunteers from the lower classes. Just as the American public enjoy an exciting base ball game, so the English public took a morbid delight in witnessing executions. Public executions in England were carried out according to law, and every detail was carefully looked after. Legal executions in America have always been held in jails and prisons. Public executions in America are lynchings, viz.: taking a prisoner's life by mob force without a trial and contrary to law. Let us examine for a moment the ancient customs of executing criminals in different countries. In America we never had a public execution; that duty was delegated to the sheriff in whose custody the prisoner was remanded. The hideous scaffold and drop have now given way to the electric chair, and the executioner has been supplanted by the mechanical electrician. Among the Jews sentences of death were executed either by the people at large-by the accusers of the condemned criminal- by the relatives of the homicide, if the condemnation were for murder or by other persons, according to the circumstances. The sovereign often ordered those about his person, particularly if they were young men, to go out and put to death some individual whom he named. We

find many instances of this in Holy Writ; and far from any infamy being attached to such executions, they were deemed honorable. Among the Greeks the office of executioner was not despised. Aristotle, in his politics, places the executioner among the magistrates. He even says that from the necessity of his duties, he ought to be ranked among the principal officers of the state. At Rome, besides the lictors, soldiers were sometimes ordered to execute criminals, not only for military, but for civil offences. Among the ancient Germans executions were performed by priests, because the people lookd upon the blood of criminals as the most agreeable offerings to their gods. In ancient times, judges often executed their own sentences, of which history, sacred and profane, furnishes us many examples. In Germany, before the office of executioner was established, the duties were performed by the youngest member of the city corporation. In Tranconias it was done by the man most recently married; at Rethingen, the imperial city of Swabia, by the counselor last appointed; and at Stedien, a little town in Thuringen, by the inhabitants who came to settle there. In Russia, there is no executioner; the duties are performed each time by a different prisoner. This commission of an instant is always followed by a full pardon.

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Tom Galvin, the Calcraft of Kilmainham, was a decidedly eccentric character. The character of Harvey Duff in Dion Boucicault's Shaughran did not begin to portray the depravity of his nature. I think Dickens' Denis in Barnaby Rudge is a truer portrait of this peculiar individual. He relished his ghoulish work, and the news of a reprieve to a condemned prisoner was always melancholy news to him. "Arrah, why do they be cheating a poor soul like me out of my hard-earned fee," was his usual exclamation. He evidently referred to his labor in getting everything ready. He was a person of barbarous wit and humor, and his hideous puns were always delivered under the shadow of the gallows. His exact recompense for hurling unfortunate souls into eternity I have been unable to determine, but the inquiry is neither interesting nor profitable. His record has never been surpassed in the history of nations; at the end of the "Bloody Assize," we learn from reliable authority, he executed 184 individuals.

Mr. Fitzpatrick gives the following account of the execution of O'Brien, the informer: "In the year 1800 O'Brien was deputed to scrutinize some persons who had assembled for the purpose of playing foot ball near Stevens' lane. In scrambling over a fence which inclosed the field, assisted by an old man named Hoey, who happened to be on the spot, the cry of O'Brien, the informer, was raised, the people fled, and O'Brien, in his chagrin, turned

round and illogically wreaked his vengeance by stabbing Hoey to death. He was tried for the crime and sentenced for execution by Judge Day, who was a just judge in bad times, and disregarded the eulogiums with which Major Sirr belauded O'Brien during the trial. The delight of the populace was unbounded. A vast ocean of people surged round the prison, and under the gallows. A delay occurred, the people became impatient, and finally uneasy, lest the government should have yielded to the memorial which was known to have been presented in his favor. A multitudinous murmur gradually gave place to a loud boom of popular indignation. The delay was caused by the cowardice of O'Brien, who shrank from his approaching doom. Prostrate on his knees he begged intervals of indulgence according as the turnkey reminded him that his hour had come. At length Tom Galvin, the hangman, a person of barbarous humor accosted him. "Ah, Mr. O'Brien, long life to yer, sir! Come out on de balcony, and don't keep de people waiting. Dey are mighty uneasy entirely under de swing swong."

The writer is the son of an Irishman and can, therefore, speak with perfect frankness on the good qualities and failings of the Irish people. Tom Galvin represented no type of Irishman. He was one of those disreputable characters common to every nation, and was, in fact, well qualified to discharge his hideous labors. There was no element of sympathy in his make-up, and good principles were unknown qualities to him.

Some kind hand dropped flowers on the tomb of Nero. Let us in the light of true Christian charity cast no stone on the grave that holds the ashes of Tom Galvin, leaving him to that Higher Wisdom which shall judge him and us.

JOSEPH M. SULLIVAN. OF THE SUFFOLK (MASS.) BAR.

MEXICAN NATIONAL LAW SCHOOL.

In order to become a lawyer in Spain it was lately necessary to acquire the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, and then pursue a course of study during seven academic years on the following subjects.

1. Outline study of law.

2. Roman law.

7. Political economy.

8. Spanish public law and administrative law. 9. Theory of procedure. 10. Forensic practice.

11. Forensic eloquence.

After four years the student received the degree of Bachelor of Laws, and at the end of seven years he obtained the title of licentiate of jurisprudence. According to royal order, this was sufficient authority for the exercise of the profession in all Spanish territory, without the necessity for previous authority from the courts of justice. The law expressly provided that the title of licentiate of jurisprudence, or attorney and counselor-at-law, obtained at the universities the last year of the course, was enough of itself, without any other requirement, to authorize the practice of law in all the monarchy. The minimum age fixed for the practice of law was seventeen years. The form of oath which the law required of attorneys before beginning the practice of the profession, though varying at different periods, usually contained the promise "not to prosecute for their clients any cases which they knew or believed to be unjust."

President Diaz, of Mexico, has recently published a decree providing a new plan of studies for the Mexican National School of Jurisprudence. He was authorized to do this by a law passed by the federal congress on October 12, 1901.

In the Mexican national law school there are

studies for two professional careers, namely, lawyer, or abogado, and business agent, or agente de negocios. The college curriculum includes:

I. Constitutional law.

2. Roman law.

3. Civil law.

4. Mercantile law and laws not codified. 5. Penal law.

6. Administrative law and fiscal legislation. 7. Public international law.

8. Private international law.

9. Civil procedure.

10. Criminal procedure.
II. Federal procedure.
12. Political economy.
13. Legal medicine.
14. Philosophy of law.

15. Forensic oratory.

To be registered as a student and have the right

3. History and elements of the civil and criminal to examination for either of the professional

law of Spain.

4. Spanish codes.

courses, lawyer or business agent, the candidate must present a general certificate, stating that he

5. History and elements of the canon law gen- has been approved in all preparatory courses, erally and particularly of Spain. according to law, whether in the National Prepara6. History and discipline of the church generally tory School or in the Official Schools of the States and particularly of Spain. which have the the

same plan of studies as

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