storm from riding over to where the surviving child was at nurse, and killing that also—suffered himself to be pressed to death in order to preserve his estate for that infant.”
“Yes, and old Blueskin was pressed to death,” said Jack. “But I suppose you girls have not read Jack Sheppard,” he added, in a deprecatory tone.
“Stating the charge against a prisoner,” continued Charlie, “and taking his plea, is called ‘arraigning him.’ Should Jack be arraigned by a stickler for old forms, he will say to him, on his taking place at the bar, ‘You, John Wardleur, hold up your right hand.’ In obeying you will do three things, Jack. You will acknowledge your name to be John Wardleur; you will show whether or not you have been burnt on the hand for a former felony, and have therefore forfeited your ‘benefit of clergy.’ ‘A little learning’ was anything but ‘a dangerous thing’ in the ‘good old times,’ when criminals were branded; for if an unconvicted ruffian could write his name, he claimed his ‘clergy,’ and was handed over to the spiritual power, which would not have anything to say to him, and therefore he got off altogether. You must be much older than you pretend to be, Jack, if you have suffered the punishment of branding, seeing it was abolished before your dear mother was born. By holding up your hand, you show also that you are free in the dock; for the law of England will not allow the worst criminal to be fettered during his trial.
“The clerk of assize then continues, ‘You stand indicted by the name of John Wardleur, for that you,’ &c. &c., giving an abstract of the indictment. ‘How say you, John Wardleur, do you plead “Guilty,” or “Not Guilty?”’—not, ‘Are you guilty or not guilty?’ as some officials persist in demanding, for that is a question for the jury to decide. But whether he pleads ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty,’ is a question for the prisoner himself; and in pleading ‘not guilty’ to an offence that he has committed, he does not, as some very worthy gaol chaplains affirm, tell an untruth. He merely says in effect, ‘Try me.’
“This ruffian, Jack, having pleaded ‘Not guilty’ with an impudent swagger, he is marched back into the prison, where he will wait till it comes to his turn to be tried. Had he lived in those ‘good old times’ before alluded to, one more question would have been demanded of him, viz., ‘Culprit, how will you be tried?’ We call a man who has been convicted of a crime a culprit; the old lawyers so styled one whom they intended to prove guilty; the word being a compound of cul (the first syllable in culpabilis, the Latin for guilty) and the old French word, prit (prêt), ready. The Jacks of those antique days might have had their choice of trial by battle or by ordeal,—the ordeal of fire if they were of high birth, the water ordeal if they were common people. If the former could handle hot iron without being burnt, or the latter could manage to float in deep water with their hands and feet pinioned, why then it was all right—they were ‘Not guilty.’ If battle were demanded, and, being a knight, the accused could unhorse the prosecutor, or make him cry ‘Craven’ in the lists; or, being a ‘vilain,’ and fighting with cudgels, he could so belabour him that he cried for mercy; or even could hold his own until the stars came out; his innocence was established.
“But suppose the accused was beaten?”
“Then his guilt would be manifest; at least, so thought our ancestors. But all this talking has made me so hoarse,” said Charlie, “that suppose I stop now, and we will try this miscreant, Jack, after tea.”
(“After tea,” dear Reader, means in our next or an early number.)
THE WEATHER AND THE PRICE OF FOOD.
Our knowledge of the causes of Weather is so superficial and so narrow, that we are exposed to embarrassments and dangers from our ignorance in that department, as the ancients were in that and many others. We say sometimes how strange it must be to have lived in the early times, when men understood next to nothing of the heaven above or the earth beneath, or of the workings of nature all around them! How like guess-work their ways of living and seeking a living must have been! and how their daily life must have been made up of accidents!
It is a wholesome check to our vanity of knowledge, that we are almost as helpless as the most ancient people in everything that depends on meteorology. We are trying to learn, by means of observations made all over the world. We can explain something of the order of nature about hot and cold weather, about calm and windy weather, and about rainy and dry weather; but we are nearly as much at the mercy of accidents in regard to the production of our food as our forefathers of the remotest generation.
The practical good that we have gained by study and improvement in the application of science to the arts of life is considerable; but it does not affect our actual slavery to the mysteries of the weather. We have learned that we may save the lives of many hundreds of fishermen every year by putting up barometers for public use in our fishing-stations all round the coast. The fishermen, at first scoffing or timid about such venturesome ways of fore-reading the will of Providence, are becoming very glad to be warned of approaching storms. We have just bethought ourselves that we may as well use our electric telegraphs in giving notice all over the country of any considerable storm in any one direction; because, as we are beginning to understand the laws of storms, and can tell what course any hurricane is sure to take, we are able to give warning of the danger to threatened places. All this is a great gain; and so is all agricultural art which renders us less dependent on weather. A hay-making machine which finishes off in eight hours the crop which must otherwise take the risks of the weather for three or four days, and perhaps lie spoiling for a month, is a great advantage: and so is the reaping-machine, for the same reason: and so are all methods of draining, irrigating, and preparing and using the ground which render rain, and frost, and drought less injurious