From the Pittsburg Legal Journal.]

Court of Queen's Bench in Banco.

CRESSWELL vs. CROWDY.

annuity on account The declaration set

This was a very curious case. It was an action by a nephew against his aunt, on an agreement to pay him an of his promising not to marry a certain lady. forth that in 1868, the aunt, from her care and affection for her nephew, who was 23 years of age, conditionally on his not marrying a certain young lady, a widow with three children, whom he had lately met on board ship on a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope, agreed if he should continue unmarried to the young lady, to allow him £300 a year during his life. For some reason or other, however, the defendant had intermitted her payments, and in 1871 this action was brought to recover some arrears. The aunt demurred on the ground that the contract was not legally valid.

Mr. Manisty, Q. C., and Mr. Wood Hill, were for the plaintiff, the nephew; Mr. Brown, Q. C., and Mr. F. M. White, were for the defendant, the aunt.

Mr. Brown urged that there was no legal consideration.

The Lord Chief Justice.-Oh, yes, there was; the nephew agreed to forego his natural freedom of marriage, and to give up the young lady he was attached to.

Mr. Brown.-Perhaps she would not have had him.

Mr. Justice Blackburn.-Never mind, he agreed not to ask her. (Laughter.)

Mr. Brown.-Perhaps he had asked her, and she had refused him already.

Mr. Justice Blackburn.-In most cases I have heard of, the lady refused in the first instance. (Much laughter.)

The Lord Chief Justice.-The aunt appears to have had such a persuasion that the lady would have him, that she thought it necessary to bind him not to propose to her.

Mr. Brown.-Ought such a contract to be enforced?

The Lord Chief Justice.-Why not? Aunts should not enter into such agreements if they don't intend to keep them. (Laughter.) Mr. Brown.—It is contrary to public policy, as it is in restraint of marriage.

Mr. Justice Blackburn.-Marriage with a particular lady, that is all; not restraint of marriage generally. There are scores of cases in which obligations not to marry particular persons are valid. Nay, there is a very bad case in which the stipulation was not to marry any Scotchman, (much laughter,) yet it was held valid, though it was strongly urged that it was likely to raise ill blood between the two countries. (Great laughter.) It is not a restraint of marriage generally.

Mr. Brown.-Yes, my lord; but if the aunt won't let him marry the only lady he loves, the probability is that he will not marry at all. (Much laughter.)

Mr. Justice Blackburn:-Oh, that is too romantic, Mr. Brown. (Laughter.)

Mr. Brown. My lord, this lady is a widow.

The Lord Chief Justice.-What of that? He may be very fond of her. (Laughter.)

Mr. Brown. She has three children. (Laughter.)

The Lord Chief Justice.-What then? He may be so fond of her that he may not care about that. (Laughter.)

Mr. Justice Quain.-Or he may be so fond of children that he may really prefer it. (Laughter.)

Mr. Brown went into the cases to show that contracts against marriage were invalid; but

Mr. Justice Blackburn challenged him to cite one in which it was held that a contract not to marry a particular person was invalid; and no such case was cited, the learned judge asserting that there were many cases to the contrary.

Mr. Brown, however, still argued that the natural effect of preventing a young man from marrying the only woman he cared about, was to deter him from marrying at all, and this the law deemed mischievous.

Mr. Justice Blackburn again asked for an authority in point, and it was admitted there was none.

Mr. Justice Lush.-It is a common thing to leave a provision in a will for a widow, on condition of her not re-marrying.

The Court, without calling upon the counsel for the plaintiff, pro

nounced judgment in his favor. There was nothing, they said, in the agreement in restraint of marriage generally, and, therefore, there was nothing in it which made it illegal or invalid. No doubt a general contract not to marry at all would be invalid, but this was quite different. Judgment for the plaintiff.

IN 184-, in the county of L., there was a trial before the Circuit Court, in which there was an unusual display of forensic eloquence. It was upon an indictment against one McLaren and one Wiggs, charging an assault with intent to commit a rape. The proof showed that the two defendants went to a house of doubtful fame and knocked at the door, and on being refused admittance, pushed in; and all that followed was some verbal importunities. Of course there was no foundation for the charge. But the Attorney-General, being a man of great humor and fond of fun, permitted the trial to proceed. One of the defendants, McLaren, succeeded in employing a young Irishman, whose name was K- and who had been but a few months in the profession, and with very slender legal resources. Poor Wiggs was not able to employ any one, but chose to rely on the incidental benefits to result from the defense of his co-defendant. Judge T

a very worthy man, had no turn for humor-never told an anecdote, and seldom smiled.

Karose to make his speech, and manifested in manner and appearance, a deep sense of the importance of the case. He said: "May it please this honorable court, (and I know it is as honorable a court as ever sat on the bench, for I have often said behind your Honor's back, what I say here to your face, that if I had to be tried for me life, I would rather be tried before your Honor than any maun in Tennessee.) May it please this honorable court, I lay it down to be the la, and I defy hiven, yarth and hell to controvert it, that words can not constitute an assault. And, gintlemen of the jury, when I look around upon your faces, upon this solemn and momentous occasion, and think of the vaust responsibilities which rest upon you, I wish I could put one foot down on the yarth, and the other upon the Georgium sidus, I would bring down the forked lightnings of hiven, and throw them among ye, to illuminate yer dark understandings!

If the great men of ould, such men as Fox, and Pitt, and Curran, and Grattan, and Blackstone, could peep down o'er the battlements of hiven upon this yarth below, they would cry out with one united voice: McLaren! McLaren! McLaren is not guilty!-and--also— Wiggs!" It is needless to say that the defendants were acquitted. But the eloquence of the attorney, while it struck the crowd with amazement, excited a roar of laughter among the bar.

IN one of the Western States, a trial was had before a Justice of the Peace. The plaintiff sued the defendant on an account for $300, while the statute of the State limited the jurisdiction to $250, on that species of indebtedness. The attorney for defendant, of course, raised that point, and insisted on a dismissal of the case, for the want of jurisdiction. But the Justice replied, "I have found a remedy for that. I shall render two judgments for equal amounts, and order executions accordingly."

BOOK NOTICES.

The Law of Contracts. By FRANCIS HILLIARD. In two volumes. Published by Kay & Brother, Philadelphia.

This is the latest work published upon the subject of contracts, and on account of its importance, deserves particular notice and a more extended one than our space will admit of. The law of contracts constitutes by far the largest and most intricate division into which the civil, as contradistinguished from the criminal law, is arranged, and a work embracing the principles that have been adjudicated upon the subject, including those determined by recent decisions, would be of incalculable value to the profession at large. The reputation of Mr. Hilliard is too favorably known to be questioned, and his admirable treatises upon torts, injunctions, etc., have secured him a deserved prominence among text writers. This of itself, however, should not be the exclusive test of the accuracy and completeness of the work now before us, as it too frequently happens that authors grow careless when they reach their climacteric, and impress the marks of haste and profuseness upon the pages of their subsequent productions. On the other hand, the attempt to generalize legal principles and compress multum in parvo, has also been hurtful to the profession, as by so doing the object is to make an exact science of the law which from the very nature of the subject, it is impossible to do. The law of contracts controls the most numerous and complex transactions of every day life, and the reported cases in England and America show that most of them have been determined by its principles. It follows, therefore, that it is a subject which of all others connected with this science, deserves the most careful and elaborate exposition. In this view of the case, we feel constrained to say that Mr. Hilliard's treatise is defective.

We agree with him that it is the better plan to present in the text the decided cases constituting as they do "the warp and woof of the work," and utterly condemn the "common criticism" that such a compilation should be a mere digest. The plan adopted by him in this respect, we hold to be the proper one; for it enables the reader himself to judge from the facts in each case presented as to the cor