One of the labourers while at work, struck his pick on to an earthen jar, which broke, and out of which rolled several pieces of gold. The other workmen hearing the sound, rushed round the spot, probably to obtain a share of the treasure, when the latter cried out “Stop! Form a ring around me, and then let no one move.” The others obeyed. He then quietly picked up the pieces of gold, which he placed in his hat, and, taking up the broken jar which contained the remainder, he stood in the midst of the circle, and said, “Now call a sergent-de-ville to accompany me to the nearest police-office, where I will deposit the money.” This was done, and the prize was found to consist of 978 gold louis-d’or of twenty-four livres each, bearing the effigies of Louis XV. and XVI., the whole amounting to more than 23,000f. The whole was forwarded to the Prefecture of Police, where it was to remain during the inquiry to discover the legitimate owners of the property. It is only after that has been done that the share, attributed by law to the finder of a treasure, will be paid to the lucky workman.
There is a well-known case involving this point, in which the late Lord Abinger differed from the rest of the Court of Exchequer: a plaintiff had employed an agent to let a house for him, and the defendant asked the agent “if there was any objection to the house;” to which the agent in perfect good faith answered, there was not. It turned out, however, that the adjoining premises were of a disreputable character, of which the plaintiff was aware, although his agent was not. The defendant, on the discovery of the objection, refused to fulfil his written contract to take the house; and the question was, whether he was liable for a breach of the agreement. Lord Abinger thought he was not, but the rest of the Court thought he was, and so judgment was given for the plaintiff. Upon merely technical grounds, perhaps, the majority of the learned Barons were right; but no one can read the masterly opinion of Lord Abinger without feeling that the law ought to be as he laid it down, and on the broad and simple ground that in such a case the knowledge of the principal should be held to be the knowledge of the agent.
Although no book ever was or ever can be written to enable a man to dispense with the assistance of a lawyer in cases where a knowledge of the law is practically required, attention to certain hints may save him from many a scrape. Of this kind are the following from Lord St. Leonards’s Handy-Book: You should be cautious whom you employ as an auctioneer, for any loss by his insolvency would fall upon you; he is your agent. We may add, however, that he is the agent of both parties, buyer and seller; and for that reason his signature satisfies the Statute of Frauds, and binds both. Again, you may employ one person to bid for you at an auction when you sell property, to prevent its going beneath its value; but you must not employ more than one, for that would be considered unfair puffing. Never bid for a leasehold estate clogged with the condition that the production of a receipt for the last half-year’s rent shall be accepted as proof that all the lessee’s covenants were performed up to that period; for there may have been a prior breach of covenant, and the landlord may not have waived his right of entry for the forfeiture. Do not take possession of an estate until objections to the title are removed, for such a step would in some cases be held to be an acceptance of the title. Before you enter an auction-room make up your mind as to price, and do not be led away by the persuasions of the auctioneer, who is the agent of the seller, or the biddings of others. Do not sign a contract tendered to you by the auctioneer, unless a reciprocal contract is signed and delivered to you at the same time by him. In writing about the sale or purchase of an estate, you should always cautiously declare your offer not to be final, lest the other party should, by accepting the terms you mention in your letter, not intending them to be final, entrap you into a binding contract. Mind your fire insurances. Very few policies against fire, says Lord St. Leonards, are so framed as to render the company legally liable. If you have added an Arnot’s stove, or made any other important change in your mode of heating your house since your policy, you should call upon the Company to admit the validity of your policy by an endorsement on it.
It is rather startling to hear an ex-Lord Chancellor saying, “Thus I have told you what truths you must disclose. I shall now tell you what falsehoods you may utter in regard to your estate.” Of course it is not meant that morally any falsehood may be told, but only that there are some which do not, at Law or in Equity, vitiate the contract of sale. And it is curious to see the distinctions taken in these falsehoods. They remind us of the difference in Roman Catholic theology between venial and mortal sins. Thus, you may falsely praise, that is, puff, your property. You may describe it as uncommonly rich water-meadow, although it is imperfectly watered. In selling an advowson you may falsely state that an avoidance of the living is likely to occur soon. You may say, as a mere puff, that your house is fit for a respectable family; but you may not say, in answer to inquiries, contrary to the fact, that the house is not damp. And you must disclose a right of sporting or of common over your estate, or a right to dig mines under it. The reason of such distinctions as given by the law—valeat quantum—is, that some statements are cautions to purchasers to make inquiries for themselves, and that concealments, to be material, must be of something that the party concealing is bound to state. Although Lord St. Leonards (in his Handy-Book of Property Law) does not allude to the point, we might, had we space, while upon this subject, enlighten our readers by a set of cases in which the law relating to bugs is elaborately laid down, and explain to them in what instances the presence of these domestic nuisances in inconvenient numbers does or does not affect a contract for taking a house. But we must be content to refer them to the leading authorities in the pleasant volumes of Meeson and Welsby, where they will find the law fully expounded.—Saturday Review.
Some persons, when leaving a place, finding they could not remove the trees and shrubs, have them cut down; but they were actionable, for the law prohibits waste with malevolent intentions. The decision given in the case of Buckland v. Butterfield establishes this point; for “a tenant is liable to pay for the waste, if he cuts down or destroys,” &c. And it has also been decided by Lord Denman, Mr. Justice Littledale, and Mr. Justice Parke, that a tenant could not remove a border of box, planted in the garden by himself; but that it belonged to the landlord, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary. In the course of the argument the counsel for the tenant asked, “Could not the tenant remove flowers which he had planted in the ground?” Mr. Justice Littledale instantly said, “No.”
The giving a Character to a Servant is one of the most ordinary communications which a member of society is called on to make; and, as the learned Mr. Starkie observes, is a duty of great importance to the interests of the public; and in respect of that duty a person offends grievously against the interests of the community in giving a good character where it is not deserved, or against justice and humanity in either injuriously refusing to give a character, or in designedly misrepresenting “one to the detriment of the individual.”
The following Rules are suggested for the consideration of masters and mistresses not acquainted with the law in such cases:
Rule 1. No magistrate has any jurisdiction touching the character of a domestic servant; and the common threat of a master or mistress being summoned for not giving a character is absurd.
Rule 2. It has been clearly decided that a character honestly and bonâ fide given by a master or mistress to any person making the usual inquiry, is a privileged communication; and unless inconsistent with truth, or actual malice can be proved by evidence, no damages can be sustained. But it must be carefully borne in mind that, however truly or honestly the character may be given, an action at law can be brought against the master or mistress, and the ladies of the family put to the anxiety of appearing in court, as well as the lady to whom the character was given. And, although the servant may be immediately defeated, and the case stopped by the judge, you will find yourself some fifty or sixty pounds out of pocket by your victory.
Rule 3. The only safe course, when a master or mistress cannot in sincerity and truth recommend a servant, is to decline answering any questions on the subject, and the following form of written answer may prove useful: “Mrs. A. presents her compliments to Mrs. B., and in reply to her note requesting the character of Ann C——, trusts she will kindly excuse Mrs. A. declining to answer any questions on the subject.” Address and date. A copy should be kept.
In the case of Carrol v. Bird, the courts of law have decided that neither master nor mistress is bound to give a character, and that no action will lie against them for refusing. The cases also of Taylor v. Hawkins are well worthy of notice. It must, however, be repeated, that both justice and humanity claim from a master and mistress their kindest care and consideration for the character of their servants, more particularly female servants; but it is confidently believed that if the above rules were better known and more generally acted on, all good and honest servants would be gainers.—Times, April 19, 1860.
It may be useful to mention here that in the Court of Exchequer, a cook, formerly in the service of Col. Sibthorp, M.P., brought an action against him for an alleged libel in a letter to a lady who had applied to him for the character of the cook, but which was not satisfactory to the lady. It was submitted the Colonel’s letter being proved a privileged communication, the action could not be maintained without proof of express malice on the part of the defendant, of which there was not the slightest evidence; the judge concurred in this view, and the plaintiff was accordingly nonsuited.
Within memory, when an accident occurred, it was customary to inflict a kind of fine or penalty thus: supposing a boy was run over by a vehicle, the verdict was recorded “Accidental death, with a deodand of one shilling upon the cart.” In the Liber Albus (27 Henry III.), we read that a man fell from a boat into the Thames, and was drowned; no one was held in suspicion as to the same; the judgment was “Misadventure,” and the value of the boat, 4s. 7d., was exacted as a deodand, payable to the king. [See Things not generally known, First Series, p. 173.] The deodandum (Deo dandum, given to God) of our jurisprudence may be reckoned among the mysterious things of history. The deodand is philanthropic, it is religious, and it is so far clerical, that its value, when levied, was handed over to the clergy. Fleta, a commentator on English law, temp. Edward I., says that the deodand is to be sold, and the price distributed to the poor, for the soul of the king, his ancestors, and all faithful people departed this life. Yet it was not ecclesiastical: it cannot be recovered by suit in the courts of canon law, but only in the courts of the king’s coroner, either for counties, or for all England. This ancient custom was abolished by act 9th and 10th Vict., cap. 62, which enacts that subsequent to September 1st, 1846, there shall be no forfeiture of chattels in respect of homicide.
It was long erroneously believed that the body of a debtor might be taken in execution, in this country, after his or her death. Such, however, was the practice in Prussia, till its abolition by the Code Frédérique.
The above idle notion we remember to have been repeated in connexion with the pecuniary embarrassments of Sheridan, at the time of his death, in 1816. It may have been fostered through the mis-reading of an account of a sheriff’s officer arresting the dying man in his bed; “he would have carried him off in his blankets, had not Dr. Bain assured him it was too probable his prisoner would expire on the way to the lock-up house!” After Sheridan’s death, the removal of his remains from Savile-row to Mr. Peter Moore’s house, in George-street, Westminster, to be near the Abbey for interment, more probably led to the story that the body was removed to escape arrest.
When in 1859, Lord Northwick’s collection of pictures was about to be disposed of by auction, at Thirlestane-house, Cheltenham, we paid a visit to the gallery, and great was our regret at the thought of the dispersion of so extensive a collection, which had long been the pride of Cheltenham, and had been to that thriving town what the National Gallery is to the metropolis. Lord Northwick had collected these pictures during a life extending for nearly a quarter of a century beyond the average term allotted to man. Until within a year or two of Lord Northwick’s death, in 1859, he spent much of his time every day among his pictures, and took great delight in pointing out their beauties to any intelligent visitor. The collection, and another at Campden, were swept away by sale, which realized nearly 100,000l. Upon our visit to the Thirlestane Gallery, much as we were gratified with the pictures, we became impressed with the futility of devoting a long life to their collection, without providing against their dispersion; and subsequently to the sale, there appeared in the Morning Post the following remarks, which more fully bespeak our own feelings upon the subject:
We contemplate the dispersion of these pictures with two painful reflections, which, by way of caution or suggestion to other collectors, we wish to impress upon the public. The first is the comparative uselessness of collecting works of art without some provision for their preservation. The purpose of a life is dissipated, and a new illustration is given to the preacher’s moral, “Vanitas vanitatis est omnia vanitas.” Undoubtedly, he who collects treasures of art in the way Lord Northwick did, and gives the public the benefit of them during his life, does a great service in his day and generation; but it is impossible not to remember how much greater a service he renders who not only forms a collection but provides for its perpetuity. In the next place, see the duty of making a Will. These collections are dispersed because they form a portion of the personalty of the deceased, and there being no instructions as to their disposal, there is no choice but to sell them, and appropriate their proceeds among the heirs-at-law. Next to the mischief of making an unfair Will is that of making none at all. Had Lord Northwick ordered by Will the sale of his pictures, however disappointed the world might have been, it would have been felt that he had a right to do as he liked. But dying intestate, the sale follows as a matter of course, and the results of a long life and large fortune devoted to works of art are just nowhere. A gallery of pictures left to a family or to the public is an offering at the shrine of art; but, sold by auction, and dispersed among innumerable private purchasers, is sheer vanity and labour lost.
Lord St. Leonards, in his Handy-Book of Property Law, says: “I am somewhat unwilling to give you any instructions for making your Will, without the assistance of your professional adviser; and I would particularly warn you against the use of printed forms, which have misled many men. They are as dangerous as the country schoolmaster or the vestry-clerk. It is quite shocking to reflect upon the litigation which has been occasioned by men making their own Wills or employing incompetent persons to do so. To save a few guineas in their lifetime, men leave behind them a Will which it may cost hundreds of pounds to have expounded by the courts before the various claimants will desist from litigation. Looking at this as a simple money transaction, lawyers might well be in despair if every man’s Will were prepared by a competent person. To put off making your Will until the hand of death is upon you, evinces either cowardice or a shameful neglect of your temporal concerns. Lest, however, such a moment should arrive, I must arm you in some measure against it.
“If you wish to tie up your property in your family you really must not make your own will. It were better to die without a will, than to make one which will waste your estate in litigation to discover its meaning. The words “children,” “issue,” “heirs of the body,” or “heirs,” sometimes operate to give the parent the entire disposition of the estate, although the testator did not mean any such thing. They are seldom used by a man who makes his own will without leading to a lawsuit. And now an operation has been given to like words by the new statute, which I could not explain to you without you possessed more knowledge of law than I give you credit for. It were useless for me to show how to make a strict settlement of your property, and therefore I will not try. I could, without difficulty, run over the names of many judges and lawyers of note, whose wills made by themselves have been set aside, or construed so as to defeat every intention which they ever had. It is not even a profound knowledge of law which will capacitate a man to make his own will, unless he has been in the habit of making the wills of others. Besides, notwithstanding that fees are purely honorary, yet it is almost proverbial that a lawyer never does anything well for which he is not fee’d. Lord Mansfield told a story of himself, that feeling this influence, he once, when about to attend on some professional business of his own, took several guineas out of his purse and put them into his waistcoat pocket, as a fee for his labour.”
This name, from a well dedicated to St. Bridget, or St. Bride, between Fleet-street and the Thames, was given to a palace built there, and which, soon after, became a House of Correction, in the reign of Queen Mary. Hence, places of confinement in other parts, in which employment and penitentiary amendment were leading objects, were called Bridewells.
The greater part of the City of London Bridewell was taken down in 1863; committals are now made to the City prison at Holloway, but refractory City apprentices are still committed to Bridewell by the Chamberlain, this jurisdiction being preserved by the Court of Chancery. The number of committals rarely exceeds 25 annually, nevertheless the power of committal which the present Chamberlain has most praiseworthily asserted and successfully maintains, acts as a terror to evil-doers, and keeps in restraint 3000 of these lads of the City.
By a document lately discovered in the State-Paper Office, it appears that in the Bridewell of London were imprisoned the members of the Congregational Church first formed after the accession of Elizabeth; they were committed to the custody of the gaoler, May 20, 1567.
British cocks are mentioned by Cæsar; but the first notice of English cockfighting is by Fitzstephen, in the reign of Henry II.; and it was a fashionable sport from temp. Edward III. almost to our time. Henry VIII. added a cockpit to Whitehall Palace, where James I. went to see the sport twice a week. There were also cockpits in Drury-lane, Shoe-lane, Jewin-street, Cripplegate, and “behind Gray’s Inn;” and several lanes, courts, and alleys are named from having been the sites of cockpits. The original name of the pit in our theatres was the cock-pit, which seems to imply that cockfighting had been their original destination. One of our oldest London theatres was called the Cockpit; this was the Phœnix in Drury-lane, the site of which was Cockpit-alley, now corruptly written Pitt-place. Southwark has several cockpit sites. The cockpit in St. James’s-park, leading from Birdcage-walk into Dartmouth-street, was only taken down in 1816, but had been deserted long before. Howell, in 1657, described “cockfighting, a sport peculiar to the English, and so is bear and bull baitings, there being not such dangerous dogs and cocks anywhere.” Hogarth’s print best illustrates the brutal refinement of the cockfighting of the last century; and Cowper’s “Cockfighter’s Garland,” greatly tended to keep down this modern barbarism, which is punishable by statute. It was, not many years since, greatly indulged in through Staffordshire; and “Wednesbury (Wedgbury) cockings” and their ribald songs were a disgrace to our times.
Cockfighting was, in fact, the great national amusement, particularly in the north of England, and Berwick-upon-Tweed was among the places most celebrated for it. Some ninety years ago, in the north of England, when a cockfighting was about to take place, the parties were in want of an adept in putting on the spurs: a person present was recognised by an acquaintance, who exclaimed, “Here comes a Berwick man; he knows how to do it.” Cockfighting is now legally a misdemeanor; and on the 15th of April, 1857, at the Liverpool Police Court, James Clark, a publican, in Houghton-street, was fined 5l. and costs for permitting cockfighting in his house.
In the autumn of 1862, several persons were convicted by the magistrates at Barnsley, for cockfighting, under the Act, which inflicts a fine on any one assisting at a cockfight, in a place used for the purpose. This is an absurd condition, and is a blunder of the Act-framer. Now, the place used for the purpose of this fight was an old quarry; but the magistrates held that any place where a cockfight took place was a place used for the purpose, the fact of the fight being the evidence of the use. The case came by appeal before the Court of Queen’s Bench, when the Judges decided, in accordance with a ruled case, there must be some evidence of general use, if on a piece of waste ground, and that one act would only prove the use when it was a place over which a man had some control. The judgment was therefore reversed. At Bradford, within a few days of this decision, William Speight and J. Holroyd were fined 3l. each for cruelty in having set gamecocks to fight; twelve other persons, resident in various parts of the Riding, were fined 10s. each.
On June 24th, 1863, before a bench of magistrates at Loughborough, the Marquis of Hastings, and three of his gamekeepers, were charged, on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with causing a cock to be cruelly tortured. It was proved in evidence that three weeks before, the Marquis of Hastings had “some good cockfighting” at Donington Hall, on a Sunday! They fought six pairs of cocks, six cocks were killed, all had steel spurs on, and the Marquis was one of the persons who put the cocks together to fight; the other persons accused being spectators. Lord Hastings admitted that the fight had taken place, but denied that there had been any cruelty used in the sense of the words of the information. His Lordship was, however, convicted in the penalty of 5l., and his three keepers in 2l. each.
Sir John Bowring states that he remembers a murder occurring in Ceylon, and on the murderer being brought to trial, it was found utterly impossible to make him comprehend that he had committed any sin whatever in revenging himself upon one by whom he thought he had been injured. The consequence was that the Judge came to the conclusion that the murderer could not be held responsible for his crime. So ignorant was this man that he could not count up to the number of five, losing himself always at three.
Archbishop Whately, who always handles a practical subject in a masculine way, annihilates the English Ticket-of-leave system with a single sentence:—“What should we think of a right, encouraged by a Secretary of State, to go every day to a menagerie and let out by mere rotation one animal from a cage without inquiring whether he released a monkey or a tiger?” The Archbishop proposes that all sentences beyond fifteen years should be irreversible, except by an Act of Parliament, specifying the names, offences, and previous committals of the prisoners pardoned.
It is an odd circumstance that Lord Campbell, to whom both as judge and legislator the law of England owes so much, was born at a place which gives its name, “Cupar justice,” to the peculiar system of law which hangs a man first and tries him afterwards; and that he had his country residence (Hartrigge-house, Roxburghshire) in the neighbourhood of another town which gave the name of “Jedburgh justice” to an equally summary code, the great principle of which is, “Hang all or save all.”
Transportation having had a fair and patient trial, and having altogether failed as a punishment, and having no colony fitted and willing to receive the sweepings of our gaols, the alternative to which we are compelled is to keep our convicts at home, and to make the best of them, by making them self-supporting. Or, in the forcible words of the late Mr. Charles Pearson, City Solicitor:
If the honest millions, as they pass through life, can, and do, during what is recognised as the producing age, not only provide for their own wants, but create a large surplus, by which the non-producing classes are supported and the institutions of society are maintained, it surely ought not to be endured that any portion of the same race and of the producing age ... should be permitted to renounce their allegiance to the fundamental law of their existence, and declare in practice, that by the sweat of the face of other men, they will eat of earth’s choicest fruits.
The only rational, merciful, and effectual corrective of such offenders against all laws, human and divine, is to classify and place them in secure prisons, surrounded by lofty and substantial walls; to subject them, week by week, to seventy, or at least sixty, hours of useful and profitable work; to allow them sixty, or at most seventy, hours for food, rest, cleanliness, and their other bodily requirements; to give them twenty-eight hours with means and opportunities for mental and spiritual instruction, and for the public and private worship of God.... If any Government, having thus placed at its disposal annually the hundred millions of hours of confiscated labour, which 30,000 criminals would yield, cannot make the class not only self-supporting, but productive of a surplus for the future benefit of those who produce it, such a Government would be pronounced by men of business unfit to be at the head of a great manufacturing and commercial people.
In 1834, Mr. Henry Warburton, in Parliament, denounced the Game Laws as they then existed, in this remarkable illustration:—“I have read in Mariner’s account of the Tonga islands, that there the rats were preserved as game; and, though everybody might eat rats, nobody was allowed to kill them but somebody descended from their gods or their kings. This is the only country and the only case I know of which furnishes anything like a parallel to our game laws.”
The Pillory (Fr. pilori, probably from Lat. pila, a pillar) was a mode of punishment by a public exposure of the offender long used in most countries of Europe. No punishment has been inflicted in so many different ways as that of the pillory. Sometimes the machine was constructed so that several criminals might be pilloried at the same time; but it was commonly capable of holding but one at once. Francis Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. i., p. 146, gives six representations of distinct varieties of this instrument. These varieties are all reducible, however, to the simplest form of the pillory. It consisted of a wooden frame or screen raised on a pillar or post several feet from the ground, and behind which the culprit stood supported on a platform, his head and hands being thrust through holes in the screen, so as to be exposed in front. This screen, in the more complicated forms of the instrument, consisted of a perforated iron circle or carcan (hence the name given to the pillory in French), which secured the hands and heads of several persons at the same time.
The Pillory seems to have existed in England before the Conquest, in the shape of the stretchneck, in which the head only of the criminal was confined; but it was usually constructed for the head and hands. It was used for punishing all sorts of cheats; as, bakers for making bread of light weight; fraudulent com, coal, and cattle dealers; cutters of purses; sellers of sham gold rings; forgers of letters, bonds, and deeds; users of unstamped measures, &c. It was also a Star Chamber punishment; and from the time of Titus Oates to its abolition, the pillory was a common punishment for perjury. The usual places where the pillory was pitched were the Royal Exchange, the Old Bailey, Temple Bar, Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, Charing Cross, New Palace Yard, and Tyburn. About the year 1812, the writer remembers to have seen four men in the pillory, at the north end of Fleet-market (Holborn-bridge). The last person who stood in the pillory in London, was Peter James Bossy, for perjury, in the Old Bailey, June 23, 1830. A pillory is still standing at Coleshill, in Warwickshire; and in an unused chancel of Rye church, Sussex, is a pillory, last used in 1813. The pillory was abolished in Great Britain in 1837, by stat. 1 Vict., c. 23; and in France in 1832.
Although we occasionally read in the public journals of the issue of the usual Death-warrant for the execution of a criminal, there is (except in the case of a peer of the realm) no such thing as a death-warrant ever signed by the Crown or by any one or more of the officers of the Crown; the only authority for the execution of a criminal convicted of a capital crime being the verbal sentence pronounced upon him in open court, which sentence the Sheriff is bound to take cognizance of and execute without any further authority. It is true that a written calendar of the offences and punishments of the prisoners is made out and signed by the Judge, of which a copy is delivered to the Sheriff; but this is only a memorandum and not an official document, and it is optional with the Judge to sign it or not.
The false notion of there being such a document as a Death-warrant for the execution of a criminal has been fostered to our own time by the frequent reference of writers of note to its existence. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall says of Dr. Dodd’s case in 1777—
“I have heard Lord Sackville recount the circumstances that took place in the council held on the occasion, at which the King assisted. To the firmness of the Lord Chief-Justice, Dodd’s execution was due: for, no sooner had he pronounced his decided opinion that no mercy ought to be extended, than the King, taking up the pen, signed the death-warrant.”
This is flatly contradicted in the Quarterly Review, No. 57, as follows:—Lord Sackville never could have told him any such thing—the King never signs any death-warrant—his pleasure on the Recorder’s report is in ordinary cases verbally, and in fatal cases silently, signified—and it is always guided by the opinion of the legal members of the Privy Council.
This popular error of the Death-warrant is fully explained, from an accredited legal source, in Things not generally known, First Series, p. 172.
It is erroneously supposed that the Sovereign can save a life that has been declared forfeit by the law; but the Sovereign’s sign-manual to a pardon is of no effect unless it be countersigned (that is, sanctioned) by a responsible minister.—J. Doran, F.S.A.; Last Journals of Horace Walpole, vol. i.
The practice of our Judges in putting on a Black Cap when they condemn a criminal to death will be found, on consideration, to have a deep and sad significance. Covering the head was in ancient days a sign of mourning. “Haman hastened to his house, mourning and having his head covered.” (Esther vi. 12). In like manner Demosthenes, when insulted by the populace, went home with his head covered. “And David ... wept as he went up, and had his head covered; ... and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.” (2 Samuel xv. 20.) Darius, too, covered his head on learning the death of his Queen. But among ourselves we find traces of a similar mode of expressing grief at funerals. The mourners had the hood “drawn forward over the head.” (Fosbroke, Encyc. of Antiq., p. 951). Indeed, the hood drawn forward thus over the head is still part of the mourning habiliment of women when they follow the corpse. And with this it should be borne in mind that, as far back as the time of Chaucer, the most usual colour of mourning was black. Atropos also, who held the fatal scissors which cut short the life of man, was clothed in black. When, therefore, the Judge puts on the black cap, it is a very significant as well as solemn procedure. He puts on mourning, for he is about to pronounce the forfeit of a life. And, accordingly, the act itself, the putting on of the black cap, is generally understood to be significant. It intimates that the Judge is about to pronounce no merely registered or suppositious sentence; in the very formula of condemnation he has put himself in mourning for the convicted culprit, as for a dead man. The criminal is then left for execution, and, unless mercy exerts its sovereign prerogative, suffers the sentence of the law. The mourning cap expressly indicates his doom.—Notes and Queries.
In March, 1856, the last Gibbet erected in England was demolished by the workmen employed by the contractors making docks for the North-Eastern Railway Company upon the Tyne. The person who was gibbeted at that place was a pitman, convicted at the Durham Midsummer Assizes of 1832. So great was the horror and disgust of all parties with the sight of the body of the poor wretch dangling in chains by the side of a public road, that great gratitude was expressed when the pitmen took it down one dark night. It is a gratifying fact, showing the progress of civilization among the mining population, that, though there have been several strikes among them since 1832, none of those strikes have been marked by a repetition of the fearful acts of violence of that year. At one of the great meetings of pitmen held in the spring of 1832 the Marquis of Londonderry attended on horseback to remonstrate with them. But he had a company of soldiers with him, which were hiding in the valley. This was known to the pitmen, and the pitman that held his horse’s head as he spoke had a loaded pistol up his sleeve, in case the Marquis should wave the soldiers to come up, to blow the Marquis’s brains out. Fortunately, the good feeling and kind heart of the nobleman prevailed, and that emergency did not arise.
It is the grossest and most illogical of assumptions to conclude, without a particle of attempted proof, that Public Executions produce only brutalizing effects upon the spectators. It is just as fair to assume that their results even on the spectators are edifying. But these results are only remote and indirect, and comparatively unimportant. Public executions are to be justified on other grounds than their effects on bystanders. They are designed not only to prevent possible murder but to avenge actual murder. They are great retributive acts; they represent and embody the last and most solemn and weightiest impersonation of Eternal Justice. An execution is retaliatory, and is to be defended as such. As we no longer hang men for other crimes than that of murder, life for life becomes a social necessity. Any other punishment than that of death is incommensurate with the crime; and we cannot afford to place the sanctity of human life and the safety of our spoons under the same sanctions.—Saturday Review.
On the other hand, it is maintained that executions ought never to be made a spectacle for the multitude, who, if they can bear the sight, always regard it as a pastime; nor for the curiosity of those who shudder while they gratify it.
In neither of these views is the effect of a public execution upon the criminal taken into account. This effect, as instanced at the execution of the Mannings for murder, in 1849, was thus forcibly urged by Sir Francis Head:
The merciful object of every punishment which the law inflicts, is not so much to revenge the past crime as to prevent its recurrence. Now, Mrs. Manning’s last moments clearly explain, or rather indisputably prove, the benefit which society practically derives from a public execution. She had courage enough—as she sat smiling by his side—to plan the murder of “her best friend;” to dig his grave; to prepare vitriol and lime to burn his body; to blow his brains out; to bury him in her own kitchen. She had resolution enough—almost before he was cold—to go to his lodgings to obtain his property. Her self-possession before the police authorities at Edinburgh was unexampled; her hardness of heart on her trial, as well as in prison, most extraordinary. And yet this bold, courageous woman, who after the murder, and with her hands stained with blood, had said to her husband, “I think no more of what I have done than if I had shot the cat that is on the wall!” afterwards triumphantly adding, “I have the nerve of a horse!” did not dare to face the indescribable terrors of a public execution! She did not fear death in private; on the contrary, she almost succeeded in gradually, with her own hands, strangling herself; but her obdurate heart quailed at the idea of beholding in fearful array before her, the uplifted horrid faces of the London mob; and accordingly, as her last act, “she drew from her pocket a black silk handkerchief, requested that she might be blindfolded with it; and, having a black silk veil fastened over her head, so as completely to conceal her features from public gaze, she was conducted in slow and solemn procession towards the drop;” and as for a few fleeting moments she stood with bandaged eyes beneath the gibbet, how unanswerably did the picture mutely expound the terror which the wicked very naturally have of being publicly hanged before the scum and refuse of society! “The whistlings—the imitations of Punch—the brutal jokes and indecent delight of the thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds,” so graphically described by Mr. Charles Dickens, were—by her own showing—not only the most fearful portion of her sentence, but, under Providence, these coarse ingredients may possibly have effected that momentary repentance which the mild but fervent exhortations of the chaplain had failed to produce.
Many men, neither sentimental nor enthusiastic, nor even philanthropists, however, conclude that though public executions under the present system are deterring, to a certain extent, yet they are exceedingly brutalizing and calculated to harden and deprave the spectators. Sir George Bowyer, M.P., has said:
The problem remains unsolved how the terror of capital punishments is to be purified from the abominable accessories and consequences which Dickens and Thackeray have so vividly and usefully described. I am not one of those who think that capital punishments are either unlawful or inexpedient. The passage in Holy Writ which says that the civil ruler bears the sword to be a terror to evil-doers, points out with infallible authority both the lawfulness and the use of the extreme penalty. But still I must admit that this dreadful prerogative of Sovereignty—the power of life and death—may be, and is in this country, exercised in such a way, that one might almost doubt whether the moral pestilence which it spreads did not counterbalance the security that it affords to society.
The Committee of the House of Lords on Capital Punishment were so convinced of the evil effects of the present mode of carrying into effect capital punishments, that they recommended that executions should in future take place within the prison, and in the presence only of official and selected witnesses. But this opinion does not solve the difficulty. Mr. George Augustus Sala truly says that private executions would not be tolerated in the present state of society. Besides, certainly the terror produced by the sight of death cannot be equalled by the sound of a bell or the hoisting of a black flag, which the Lords’ Committee propose; and these forms would soon lose any impressiveness. The sight of death is, indeed, most awful to human nature:
The knowledge that a criminal had been put to death would no doubt be less terrible to the criminal and dangerous population if they were prevented from seeing the execution. If the plan of private executions be rejected, what can be done to give a character to public executions more wholesome than that justly condemned by the committee?
The cold, business-like formality of a public execution is then referred to: beyond a glimpse of the chaplain’s surplice there is nothing to remind the spectators of the awful and sacred character with which the Christian religion invests death. The people see a man strangled, and that is all.
Archdeacon Bickersteth evidently felt this when he said before the Lords’ Committee, “I would suggest that the churches might be opened.... There might be a service at the time, and perhaps a prayer for the criminal.” This is a very pregnant hint. At the execution of three men at Dundalk a few years ago, when the criminals came on the scaffold, all the people knelt and prayed for them at the request of the priest. Those who were there describe the scene as most solemn and honourable to the Irish character. The prisoners confessed their guilt and declared their penitence. An account describing a late execution for murder at Ancona, says that the prisoner knelt on the scaffold and repeated the Litany, the crowd making the responses. A friend of mine who was at an execution for murder in Rome, told me that the thousands of spectators round the scaffold recited the Miserere and De Profundis in a loud voice. How different this is from “levity, jeering, laughing, hooting, whistling, low jesting, and indecent ribaldry” described before the Committee! This contrast surely suggests that the people in England should be better taught than they are, and that it is by religious influences that executions can be purified from their abominable and loathsome effects. The people should be made to feel that they are, so to speak, attending a death-bed scene of the most frightful and appalling kind, and not the mere slaughter of a biped without feathers.
Sir George Bowyer then relates how the problem is solved in Italy, where, in every city is a religious society of laymen, called “the Confraternity of Death,” or of Mercy, whose duty it is to attend criminals before and at their execution:
The exposition of the blessed sacrament for the forty hours’ prayer commences in the churches, and the people attend in great numbers during the whole day, and even sometimes during the night. The prisoner is taken to the place of execution (usually outside the town) in the following manner:—First the great black cross and banner of the Confraternity is seen slowly advancing, followed by the members walking two and two in their black cassocks and their hoods over their faces, with apertures for their eyes. As they proceed along the streets they recite the Penitential Psalms aloud. They are followed by the litter for the dead body, carried by four of their number; and then comes the convict, assisted by the clergy and brethren. At the scaffold the Confraternity stand round and continue their devotions until the prisoner is dead, and then they remove the body in the same funeral procession.
These facts, it must be admitted, are very suggestive; but, how far such ceremonies are adapted for a Protestant country is extremely questionable.
That experienced judge, Baron Alderson, in his answers given to a Committee of the House of Commons, looked on the deterring effect of punishment, such as it was, as more indispensable than the reforming:—
“It is desirable—I do not know whether it is the duty of the State—to make all criminals better if possible; but I think this object is to be held subservient to that of preventing crime by the example of punishment; and on no other principle that I can perceive is it possible to defend capital punishments, which can hardly be said to have any tendency to make the individual criminals better, though I think they have a strong effect in repressing crime.”
The latest evidence upon the subject is—that in September, 1863, the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, holding its second session at Ghent, discussed at great length the subject of punishment of death. The abolition was finally voted by a great majority. In the course of the debate a member read a list of 167 convicts sentenced to death, of whom 161 had been present at capital executions; and he concluded from this fact, that the witnessing capital punishment is not efficacious in the suppression of crime.
Before the introduction of railways we scarcely possessed any standard by which an idea could be formed of the distances and movements of the planets by comparison with those which exist on the terrestrial globe. Thus, the mean distance of the moon from the earth is about 237,000 miles. A steam-carriage on a railway, proceeding uninterruptedly, at the rate of 25 miles an hour, would run 237,000 miles in 1 year, 4 weeks, and 2 days. This falls within the limits of our conception. We may imagine something analogous to this, supposing a carriage, or rather a succession of carriages, to be kept constantly at work for rather more than two years, and working 12 hours per day. But our powers of imagination fail us in estimating a distance equal to that of the earth from the sun, namely, ninety-five millions of miles.[12] Our steam-carriage illustration is here no longer available, since it falls far beyond the boundaries of probability. Proceeding uninterruptedly at twenty-five miles an hour, it would require 433 years to move over a space equal to ninety-five millions of miles.—Dr. Lardner.
A rare exceptional instance of this faculty being cultivated and matured for a highly-useful purpose, is presented in the case of Mr. Bidder, the eminent civil engineer, known in his childhood as “the Calculating Boy.” (See a portrait in the Boy’s Own Book.)
George Parkes Bidder, when six years old, used to amuse himself by counting up to 100, then to 1000, then to 1,000,000: by degrees, he accustomed himself to contemplate the relations of high numbers, and used to build up peas, marbles, and shot, into squares, cubes, and other regular figures. He invented processes of his own, distinct from those given in books of arithmetic, and could solve all the usual questions mentally more rapidly than other boys with the aid of pen and paper. When he became eminent as a civil engineer, he was wont to embarrass and baffle the parliamentary counsel on contested railway bills, by confuting their statements of figures almost before the words were out of their mouths. In 1856, he gave to the Institution of Civil Engineers an interesting account of this singular arithmetical faculty—so far, at least, as to show that memory has less to do with it than is generally supposed: the processes are actually worked out seriatim, but with a rapidity almost inconceivable. They are accomplished mentally by occupying the mind simultaneously with the double task of computing and registering. The first—computing—is executive, or reasoning, and is that portion of the process, which, whilst it is the most active, is not that which causes the greatest strain upon the mind. The result is recorded by the second faculty, registering, which is the real strain upon the mind, and that by which alone the power of Mental Calculation is limited.
Experience has shown that, up to a certain point, the power of registering is as rapid as thought; but the difficulty increases, in a very high ratio, in reference to the number and extent of impressions to be registered, until a point is reached, the registering of which, in the mind and by writing, are exactly balanced. Below that point, mental registration is preferable; above it, that by writing will be as quick, and more certain.
All the rules employed by Mr. Bidder were invented by him, and are only methods of so arranging calculation as to facilitate the power of registration: in fact, he thus arrives at a sort of natural algebra, using actual numbers in the place of symbols. When he first began to deal with numbers (in his 6th year), he had not learned to read, and certainly long after that time he was taught the symbolical numbers from the face of a watch.
A brief outline of Mr. Bidder’s method is given in the Year-Book of Facts, 1857, pp. 149-152. The paper, in extenso, has been edited and published by Mr. Charles Manby, F.R.S., Honorary Secretary to the Institution of Civil Engineers.
The late celebrated architect and antiquary, Luigi Canina, made a great number of inquiries as to the length of the ancient Roman foot. He measured very carefully the Antonine and Trajan columns, and found them (exclusive of their pedestals and some pieces let in to repair them) exactly alike. This height, which was known to have been 100 Roman feet, was measured with extreme care by means of rods of wood carefully dried, and found to be exactly 29·635 French mètres. Measuring chains were then constructed of this length, and the Roman miles (mille passuum) carefully measured down the Appian Way as far as the twelfth mile, and were found to correspond with the traditional sites of the milestones. The great length of these measurements being such an extensive check, their accuracy was at once accepted by the Roman archæologists as the best authority known. This would make the ancient Roman foot 11·66753 English inches; and the mile 4861·41 English feet; being about one-eleventh less than our English mile of 5280 feet. For rough reckoning the antiquary may deduct one-eleventh from Roman miles to bring them into English; or may add one-tenth to English miles to bring them into Roman; the ratio being 10:11, but inversely. There is a common error in supposing the Roman mile, or mille passuum, was 1000 paces, or single steps. This is not the case: the military passus consisted of two steps (gressus), or about 5 feet Roman.—Notes and Queries.
The well-known contrivance of the Quipus, or method of counting and even recording events by means of cords, was equally ingenious and original. The quipus of the Peruvians were of twisted wool, and consisted of a thick cord, with threads more or less fine, attached to the main part. The smaller lines were covered with knots, either single or double. The size of the quipus varies much, sometimes the main cord being five or six yards long, and at others not more than a foot; the branches rarely exceeding a yard in length, and being sometimes shorter. In the neighbourhood of Lurin, on the coast of Peru, a quipu was found which weighed twelve pounds. The different colours of the threads had different meanings: thus, the red signified a soldier, or war; the yellow gold; the white, silver, or peace, &c. In the system of arithmetic, a single knot signified 10, two single knots 20, a double knot 100, a triple knot 1000, and so on to higher numbers. But not only the colour and mode of combining the knots, but also the laying-up of the strands of the cord, and the distances of the threads apart, were of great importance in reading the quipus. It is probable that in the earliest times this ingenious contrivance was merely used for enumeration, as the shepherd notches the number of his sheep on a stick; but in the course of time the science was so much improved that the initiated were able to knot historical records, laws, and decrees, so that the great events of the empire were transmitted to posterity; and, to some extent, the quipus supplied the place of chronicles and national archives. The registry of tributes, the census of populations, the lists of arms, of soldiers, and of stores, the supplies of maize, clothes, shoes, &c., in the storehouses, were all specified with admirable exactness by the quipus; and in every town of any importance, there was an officer, called the quipu camayoc, to knot and decipher these documents.—Markham’s Visit to Peru.
Many people hear of distances in thousands of yards—a usual measure of artillery distances—and have very little power of reducing them at once to miles. Now, four miles are ten yards for each mile above 7000 yards, whence the following rule: the number of thousands multiplied by 4 and divided by 7 give miles and sevenths for quotient and remainder, with only at the rate of ten yards to a mile in excess. Thus 12,000 yards is 48 7ths of a mile, or 6 miles and 6 7ths of a mile: not 70 yards too great. Again, people measure speed by miles per hour, the mile and the hour being too long for the judgment of distance and time. Take half as much again as the number of miles per hour, and you have the number of feet per second, too great by one in 30. Thus 16 miles an hour is 16 + 8, or 24 feet per second, too much by 24-30ths of a foot.—Athenæum, No. 1854.
A collection of the Weights and Measures of the various countries of the world, made, under the auspices of the International Association, for obtaining a uniform Decimal System of Measures, Weights, and Coins, was among the curiosities of the International Exhibition of 1862. Few persons are perhaps aware of the extraordinary diversities in weights and measures, and in their use, which exist in our own country. The price of com, for instance, will be quoted in at least fifteen different ways in as many different localities; at so much per cwt., per barrel, per quarter, per bushel, per load, per bag, per weight, per boll, per coomb, per hobbet, per winch, per windle, per strike, per measure, per stone. The word bushel is in some places used for a measure, in others for a weight, and this weight is by no means the same in all places. In different English towns the bushel means—168 lbs., 73½ lbs., 62 lbs., 80 lbs., 75 lbs., 72 lbs., 70 lbs., 65 lbs., 64 lbs., 63 lbs., 5 quarters, 144 quarts, 488 lbs., and in Manchester, while a bushel of English wheat is 60 lbs., a bushel of American wheat is 70 lbs. The meaning of a stone is almost equally various. An acre of land expresses seven different quantities. These variations in measurement must be highly inconvenient, and prejudicial to trade; and the labours of the above-named Association are directed to bringing about a uniformity, which seems greatly called for. The metrical system employed in France is that which is advocated. This has been already established in Belgium, Holland, Sardinia, Lombardy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and many other parts of the world. Great Britain and the American States still adhere to their old systems.
Trinity High-water Mark is placed in various parts of London, as described in the Register of Tides in the River Thames, printed by order of the Honourable Court of Commissioners, of the 26th of October, 1849; and every bench-mark in London is shown in feet and decimals of feet above an oblate spheroidal datum plane, decreasing in radii towards the north pole from the centre of gravity between the parallels of latitude at London and Liverpool, about 2·02 feet, or 24¼ inches, which is evidently worthy of consideration, at a rate of 2 feet to the mile in 40 miles of sewer. The difference at Liverpool is also given in the aforesaid Report; and this may prove of public utility if reported on by the engineer employed in the levelling of the main drainage of London. The Ravensbourne drainage is a specimen of such levelling. The approximate mean water at Liverpool is 12½ feet below the level of Trinity High-Water at London, as described identical with the level of the datum plane of the Ordnance survey of London, which is also 12½ feet below the level of Trinity High-Water mark.
The want of intelligent workmen, without the concurrence of other causes, might have destroyed the old English predial polity, if that system had not failed through its own nature; having been essentially rude and awkward and uncommercial. Under the Plantagenets, service could in general be reduced to money at the discretion of the lord or the option of the tenant. The service often cost the tenant more than it was worth—he found it cheaper to pay than to work: on the other hand, money must have been at all times welcome to the lord, and he did not at all times require labour. In the course of time agricultural service went out of use altogether, and money was regularly tendered and accepted instead of it: so that the improved rent, as it has been called, now paid by a farmer, appears to be a compound—historically considered—of the ancient mail or gable, and of a great variety of petty charges, which were originally compensations for tributes of corn, malt, poultry, bacon, and eggs—or fines for the non-performance of acts of tillage, carriage, porterage, and the like. The elements of rent were recognised in Scotland longer than in England, because petty charges subsisted in Scotland for some time after they had been abandoned in England. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, David Deans—the tough true-blue Presbyterian farmer—still paid “mail duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure, lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word Rent.”—Heart of Mid-Lothian, chap. viii.; Law Magazine, N. S., No. 27.
Mr. Foss, in his Lives of the Judges, tells us that the Court of Exchequer was anciently sometimes called Curia Regis ad Scaccarium; and its name was derived from the table at which it sat, which was “a four-cornered board, about ten feet long and five feet broad, fitted in manner of a table to sit about, on every side whereof is a standing ledge or border, four fingers broad. Upon this board is laid a cloth bought in Easter Term, which is of black colour, rowed with strokes, distant about a foot or span, like a chess-board. On the spaces of this Scaccarium, or chequered cloth, counters were ranged, with denoting marks, for checking the computations.”
In the old Court of Exchequer, at Westminster, before the coronation of King George IV., might be seen the chequered cloth which covered the table of that Court. This table, at which sat the officers of the Court, and the king’s counsel, was ten or twelve feet square, and was covered with a woollen cloth, the groundwork of which was white, with a very dark blue chequered pattern over it; the dark stripes being about three inches wide, leaving between them white squares of about four inches across.
Again, the cover on the table of the Exchequer Court in Dublin is composed of a thick woollen substance made in squares of black and white, resembling a chess-board.
The origin of the word Scaccarium (whence Exchequer) is not certain. Madox, the historical authority upon the subject, considers the most likely derivation to be from Scaccus, or Scaccum, a chess-board, or the ludus Scaccarium, the game of chess. He then refers to the chequered cloth mentioned by Foss; adding, “from the Latin Scaccarium cometh the French Eschequier, or Exchequier, (Exchiquer,) and the English name from the French.”
Mr. G. A. Sala, in a communication to Notes and Queries, 3rd S. No. 81, however, traces exchequer to the Italian Zecca, treasury or mint; whence, also, he derives the word cheque; remembering that in old time our goldsmiths were Lombards and Venetians.
However this may be, the forms by which accounts were kept in the Exchequer, and receipts given for moneys paid by “the King’s debtors” in those days, when few persons knew how to write and cipher, and “double entry” was unknown, were strictly observed down to a period scarcely thirty years ago. The rude wooden “tallies” that were prepared as quittances for payment, and stowed away in the Exchequer as entries of receipt, were still maintained in their sham employment until finally abolished by an Act passed in 1834. The officials who superintended, or were supposed to superintend, the operation of cutting, delivering, and keeping the tallies were paid by fees on all receipts; and as the national revenue augmented their incomes became enormous. A “Tallier,” or, as the name became latterly, “Teller,” of the Exchequer enjoyed at last an income from his sinecure office of more than 30,000l. per annum.
The Tally was a slip of willow-wood, cut to a length proportioned to the magnitude of the pecuniary transaction it was intended to record. Its indications were rendered by notches, which signified various sums, according to their size and shape.[13]