Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/511

NOTES. 495 where, in any but a Pickwickian sense, they had continually been ; secondly, because to allow such miscreants to escape just punishment for their misdeeds would be " a singular state of things," and would have surprised the judge who first laid down the doctrine as to ioais of a crime of this sort. That judge was really in error ; and his error the court should now " correct, not perpetuate," by surrendering these fugitives for trial in Tennessee. These two arguments are examples of rather common misconceptions. The first would lead logically to this result, if applied to the sinking of a Chinese war-ship by a Japanese. Either the Japanese were on board the Chinese vessel when they fired the guns which sank the latter, or the damage was done on board the Japanese vessel ; a sufficiently absurd dilemma. It is in fact quite possible for a man, even without the help of a human agent, to do something in a place where he is not present. The argument ab inconvenienti indicates a praiseworthy but misplaced jeal that a wrongdoer should receive his just deserts. It is not the duty of a judge to deal out retribution for sin ; perhaps that function cannot profitably be separated from omniscience, but at any rate it has never been committed to a court of common law. In punishing crime the court is dealing with an injury to the Staj^e whose law it administers. Killing a man in Tennessee is not an injury to North Carolina, and that a man should go unpunished for an offence against Tennessee should not offi- cially concern a North Carolina judge, whether the man is on the east or the west side of the boundary Hne. In ordering the surrender of a fugitive the North Carolina court is still dealing with North Carolina law (or with an Act of Congress), and the effect of that law on the adminis- tration of justice in Tennessee cannot be considered. The legislature,' not the court, considers Tennessee in the matter. These two judges could hardly with consistency object if a Tennessee officer should kidnap the defendants and carry them into Tennessee. Libel by Effigy. — The London newspapers last month contained accounts of the case of Monson v. Madame Tussaud &* Sons {Limited), a suit for libel which forms the last act in a cause celebre. Mr. John Alfred Monson, as everybody knows, is the gentleman who figured as defendant in the sensational murder trial in Scotland a year ago, the charge being that he killed his pupil, Cecil Hambrough, while the two were on a hunting trip together. It appears that after his escape from that ordeal, with the ungracious verdict of "Not Proven," and after the failure of his suit to recover the insurance on the life of the very man he was charged with having murdered, the defendants, who are the proprietors of Tussaud "s well known wax-works show, thought him a suitable subject for a wax figure in their establishment. Monson's own hunting suit and gun were procured to dress up the figure, and the whole was set off by a back- ground representing the Scottish moor where the shooting occurred. Ac- cording to the defendant's story, Monson sold them the clothes and gun for this very purpose ; but however that may be, no sooner was the show well started than Monson brought his action for libel, the innuendo being that the defendants, by the exhibition of the effigy, meant that the plaintiff was a " notorious person connected with a tragedy that remained a mystery in a way that was discreditable." It is not clear why an innuendo that the defendants meant that Monson was a murderer would not have been