adultery, and so you thought you were relieved from treating her with any further consideration; but you were mistaken. The law, in its wisdom, points out a means by which you might rid yourself from further association with a woman who had dishonoured you; but you did not think proper to adopt it. You ought first to have brought an action against your wife's seducer, if you could discover him. That might have cost you money and you say you are a poor working man, but that is not the fault of the law. You would then be obliged to prove by evidence your wife's criminality in a court of justice, and thus obtain a verdict with damages against the defendant, who was not unlikely to turn out to be a pauper. But so jealous is the law (which you ought to be aware is the perfection of reason) of the sanctity of the marriage tie, that in accomplishing this you would only have fulfilled the lighter portion of your duty. You must then have gone, with your verdict in your hand, and petitioned the House of Lords for a divorce. It would cost you, perhaps, five or six hundred pounds, and you do not seem to be worth as many pence. But it is the boast of the law that it is impartial, and it makes no difference between the rich and the poor. The wealthiest man in the kingdom would have to pay no less than that sum for the same luxury, so that you could have no reason to complain. You would of course have to prove your case over again, and at the end of a year or possibly two, you might obtain a divorce which would enable you legally to do what you have thought proper to do without it. You have thus wilfully rejected the boon which the legislature offered you and it is my duty to pass such a sentence as I think your offence deserves, and that sentence is, that you be imprisoned for one day; and inasmuch as the present assize is three days old, the result is that you will be immediately discharged."

It was long before the days of the National Bank Act and people had not become accustomed to Bank Officials going to jail as they have been doing very frequently during the last decade when Nathaniel Childs (p. 205), respected citizen and Sunday-school teacher, was charged by his superior officers with having stolen over $100,000 of the bank's money. No wonder the community refused to believe such a thing possible and that the jury declared him innocent. But he was probably guilty, as subsequent circumstances showed. What Board of Directors of a bank or trust company would to-day carry on their business in the easy way that these gentlemen did? There was considerable gold lying around loose and accessible to any

one who could get into the vault. "There was no peculiar apartment in the vault in which coins for daily use and other coins were kept," said one witness on the trial, and anyone with a little trouble could obtain the key to the cellar in which the gold was kept. But there were no steel vaults and time locks in those days; people did not even lock the doors of their houses at night and the Directors acted in business as they did at home. They were almost the pioneers and founders of St. Louis, these gentlemen; most of them had come from the older states with little or no money, but industry and ability to grasp the opportunities which the new territory presented had made them the capitalists and leaders of the town. What one of them, who ten years later was to become Attorney General in the Cabinet of President Lincoln, said in his speech to the jury concerning two of his colleagues and himself would equally apply to all of them. He had seen the "goodly City" when it was a small hamlet with but four brick houses and 2,500 inhabitants; he had seen it grow rapidly in wealth and numbers and many of its settlers grow up with it. And he asked the jury:

SO

"Is it any impeachment of Mr. Barnes, one of our great merchants, now so enterprising and prosperous, and apparently wealthy, and still so rising, to say of him, that but a few years ago he was a very intelligent and faithful clerk, living on his salary, in a respectable mercantile house in this city? Is it any impeachment of Col. Brant, now one of our few millionaires, the owner of a princely fortune of his own making, to say of him that, twenty years ago, he was only a Deputy Quartermaster, with the rank, pay and emoluments of a Captain of Infantry? If these be reproaches, then all our leading men of wealth and influence, our great landholders, our eminent merchants, our far-seeing and nice-calculating brokers and financiers, instead of glorying in the achievements of their talents and industry, have cause to blush over the mushroom growth of their bloated fortunes.

"Gentlemen, few of us are natives of this country: we are all adventurers, coming from a distance, to seek a fortune or make a name: we had very little to bring with us: if we had been rich and prosperous at home, we would have shown our wisdom by letting

well enough alone, and staying there. But with most of us, migration was a necessary of life. I remember as if it were yesterday, the first time I ever crossed the Mississippi, the twenty-ninth of April, 1814, and I can give you, with entire precision, the inventory of my worldly wealth at that interesting epoch. Imprimis, a horse, saddle and bridle the horse a first rate gelding, of the best Hunter blood on the shores of the Chesapeake; item, a pair of saddlebags, well packed with pretty good apparel; and lastly, in actual cash in my pocket, three dollars and a half! I came without fear or doubt of the future; buoyed up by the confident hopes, puffed up, it may be, by the silly vanity of youth, I never allowed myself to doubt of a reasonable measure of success. I knew then, as I know now, that, in the good providence of God, integrity, industry and perseverance never go wholly unrewarded; that in all civilized society, they entitle their possessor to personal independence and to the decent respect of the world." (Edward Bates.)

The case of John Johnson (p. 512) is an extraordinary one, for he was a respectable man of family earning a decent livelihood. But the sight of the bag of money in the trunk of his young lodger was too much for him and drove him to a brutal and senseless murder, for which he paid the extreme penalty of the law. Our ancestors had a way of increasing the punishment of criminals in strange ways and the sermon of the Ordinary at Newgate was still copied in all its absurdity and hideousness in New York City at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.

How business customs have changed since Mrs. Spence went shopping in New York City a century ago (Spence v. Duffey, p. 541)! Then the retail shopkeeper did not invite people to come into his store merely to look around and see what he had to sell; if they did not intend to buy, what were they there for! The women of the present day will hardly agree with old Lawyer Sampson, that a woman's proper place was at home mending stockings and making puddings for the family.

The whole story of the murder of young Austin by Selfridge (p. 544) is told in the Narrative. The case

is a leading one and the argument of the lawyers and the charge of Mr. Justice Parker were destined to be the text in every subsequent trial for murder for a half a century in every State of the Union where the plea of self-defense was set up.

The irate parent in the Morris case (p. 703) was very properly punished. The ancient respect for the office of teacher so well described by the counsel for the People hardly obtains in this day and generation. Our modern system of education may excel in some ways that of our grandfathers, but in the matter of respect for the law and authority everyone must admit that it has grievously failed.

The case of Dr. Hughes (p. 714) resembles that of Clough (Vol. I., p. 723), another story of disappointed love and insane revenge. The murderer's wish to return to the scene of the tragedy has never been realized and the old Cleveland lawyer still awaits the promised call from one of his earliest clients.

The trial of Pell (p. 787) gives a comfortable picture of the great Metropolis of America when it was more like a rural town than the commercial capital of the Continent. Gone are the quiet public gardens in which the quick tempered defendant and his wife had the dispute with the waiter and in their place are the great hotels and restaurants of to-day with their decorated walls and marble pillars and the thunder of the traffic of the streets outside!!

A sermon might be preached with the case of Mayberry (p. 790) for its text. Of what little use is the law unless it is backed by a great public sentiment! An active minority succeeds in abolishing the death penalty. A brutal murder takes place in a quiet and law-abiding community. The neighbors of the victim

attend the trial, and as they listen to the story of the crime they are stirred to vengeance against the murderer. When the verdict is rendered and the prisoner is sentenced to imprisonment for life, and they comprehend what that really means, detention in a state prison for a few years and then a pardon by some sentimental Governor, they feel that the punishment does not fit the crime. So they step in and flouting the very law they have made themselves, proceed to carry out the ancient command: Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.

3

The trial of Diana Sellick (p. 837), besides the fact of the incompetence of the black as a witness in New York, again referred to (see also Southard's Case, post), presents the common law procedure in the selection of a jury, which once prevailed in this country, but has long since disappeared from our practice. Certainly the question as to whether one called as a juror is biased or not, is a question of fact, and logically should be decided as questions of fact are by laymen, and not as questions of law are by judges. This is now and has always been the English method. A challenge propter affectum, i. e., that the juror is not indifferent but is biased, must be proved by evidence aliunde; it is not allowable to ask a juryman whether he has an opinion or has expressed one. The counsel must challenge the juror he objects to, must state the ground of bias and must then produce his witnesses support of his charge. If it is the juror first called that is challenged, the Court appoints two triers from the panel summoned or from the specta

in

The records show that in a majority of the American States a sentence of life imprisonment means on an average confinement for less

than ten years.