and Mr.

sits in? What of Mr. who exerted their eloquence against justice and the poor? On our side, too, was no less a man than Mr. Sergeant Binks, who, ashamed I am for the honor of the British bar to say it, seemed to have been bribed too; for he actually threw up his case! Had he behaved like Mr. Mulligan, his junior, my thanks, - all might have been well. I never knew such an effect produced, as when Mr. Mulligan, appearing for the first time in that court, said, 'Standing here, upon the pidestal of secred Thamis; seeing around me the arnymints of a profission I rispict; having before me a vinerable joodge and an enlightened jury, — the counthry's glory, the nation's cheap definder, the poor man's priceless palladium,- how must I thrimble, my lard, how must the blush bejew my cheek (Some

and to whom, in this humble way, I offer

body cried out, 'O cheeks!' In the court there was a dreadful roar of laughing; and when order was established, Mr. Mulligan continued): 'My lard, I heed them not: I come from a counthry accustomed to opprission;. and as that counthry- yes, my lard, that Ireland - (do not laugh I am proud of it)—is ever, in spite of her tyrants, green and lovely and beautiful, my client's cause, likewise, will rise superior to the malignant imbecilityI repeat, the MALIGNANT IMBECILITY — of those who would thrample it down; and in whose teeth, in my client's name, in my counthry's, — aye, and my own, — I, with folded arrums, hurl a scarnful and eternal defiance !' "For Heaven's sake, Mr. Milligan'· ('MULLIGAN, me lard,' cried my defender.) 'Well, Mulligan, then, be calm, and keep to your brief.'

"Mr. Mulligan did: and for three hours and a quarter,

in a speech crammed with Latin quotations, and unsurpassed for eloquence, he explained the situation of me and my family; the romantic manner in which Tuggeridge, the elder, gained his fortune, and by which it afterward came to my wife; the state of Ireland; the original and virtuous poverty of the Coxes - from which he glanced passionately for a few minutes (until the judge. stopped him) to the poverty of his own country; my excellence as a husband, father, landlord; my wife's, as a wife, mother, landlady.

"All was in vain: the trial went against us."

WARREN.

Probably the first law-book that the student gets hold of is "Ten Thousand a Year," in which Mr. Samuel Warren, an amiable and funny but rather mean-spirited barrister, mixes up some bad law with a good deal of toadyism and servility to "the upper classes." His firm of rascally attorneys, Quirk, Gammon, & Snap, are familiar and celebrated. In spite of the author, Oily Gammon is a much more interesting character I had almost said a more respectable character-than his too saintly hero. Unintentionally the author excites our sympathy for him, just as Milton does for Satan. We need now only point out the bad law; leaving the book to be read, as it certainly deserves to be, for its combination of cleverness and cringing. There is a great ejectment suit, in which the hero's title depends on an ancient deed, in which there was an apparent erasure, written over by the same hand, but unnoted. The presiding judge refused to admit the instrument in evidence. Now, this has not been law in three hundred years, if it ever was. The

instrument is always admitted; and, if the erasure is material, the jury are to pronounce whether it was made before or after delivery. Some courts say, there is a presumption that an erasure was made before delivery, because the presumption is always against fraud; others that there is no presumption either way; but all agree that the paper must be received for what it may be worth. Those who are curious on this point may find it well discussed in the recent case of Neil v. Case, 25 Kans. 510; S.C. 37 Am. Rep. 259; to which the editor of the latter series has appended an exhaustive note.

COOPER.

This novelist has a good deal to say of the subject in hand. He himself was in law pretty much all his life. What with prosecuting editors, who criticised his later and poorer novels; and a standing fight with his neighbors at Cooperstown, whom he accused of trespassing on his manorial rights, we may readily suppose he was in a most unenviable state of mind. He was a man of haughty manners, of unyielding temper, and of aristocratic ideas. After all he wrote in praise of the Indian character, one might expect him to side with the AntiRent movement; but I am informed that he published several novels against it. I believe he was generally successful in his libel suits, for in his day the people of this country were much more proud of a second-rate author than of a first-rate editor: but he must at some time have met with a rebuff; for, in "The Ways of the Hour," we find a systematic and elaborate attack on the trial by jury. The key-note is sounded in the preface. He here announces the object of the book to be "to draw the

attention of the reader to some of the social evils that beset us, more particularly in connection with the administration of criminal justice." As to jury trial he says, “In our view, the institution itself, so admirable in a monarchy, is totally unsuited to a democracy." He refers to the prejudices of juries against railroad companies, and against the claims of non-resident creditors, and to the influence of politics in the composition and verdicts of juries. And he makes the startling announcement, “It is certain that the juries are falling into disrepute throughout the length and breadth of the land."

In this book, written in 1850, we find plenty of sneers at the newly adopted Code of Procedure, and at the system of choosing judges by popular election; although the author discloses that he is as grossly ignorant of the design and scope of the one as he must necessarily have been of the practical results of the other. The plot is as absurd as could be conceived. A young lady is indicted for the murder of an aged married couple, in whose family she, with another woman, a German, had been an inmate. The house burns down: two human skeletons are found in the ruins, bearing marks of violence on the head. A piece of money is found in the possession of the accused corresponding to a peculiar piece known to have been kept by the old people among their hoard in a stocking. The old man and the German woman were both missing, but the medical testimony leaned to the theory that the skeletons were both female. The accused is first put on trial for the murder of the old man. With no more proof than the foregoing of the corpus delicti, and no evidence on the part of the defence to speak of, and in spite of a charge very favora

ble to the accused, the jury find the prisoner guilty. She is sentenced to die, but just then the old man walks into court! Some discussion ensues as to what to do in this juncture. One of the lawyers suggests an examination of the code! But, leaving matters just as they are, the prisoner, sentenced to die for the murder of an individual alive and well in court, is put on trial for the murder of the old woman! Out of this embarrassing predicament the fair accused is delivered by her own acuteness. She herself conducts the cross-examination of the people's chief witness, a woman who identifies the piece of money, and worrying her as only one woman can worry another, makes the witness confess that she stole the stocking-hoard, and put the peculiar piece of money in the prisoner's purse, and that the wounds on the skulls of the deceased were caused by a ploughshare which fell on them. Of course the young lady was acquitted; and it was not deemed worth while after this to put her on trial for the arson, of which she also stood indicted. Mr. Cooper however does not explain to us what was done with the sentence of death, nor whether the code furnished any road out of the difficulty.

One might be surprised that an author of Cooper's calibre should seriously anticipate that such trivialities as these could shake the system of trial by jury: but I must do him the justice to say that he did not anticipate any thing of the sort; for he tells us in his preface, that he "has not the vanity to suppose that any thing contained in this book will produce a very serious impression on the popularity of the jury:" but when in connection with this subject, he informs us that he designs the book