No authority is cited in the opinion, but it might have been found in a case, reported in "Reminiscences of the Rhode Island Bar," by Abraham Payne, in which the attorney for the defendant in a suit for the value of butcher's meat sold and delivered sought out the justice of the peace before whom the case was pending, to file a plea in abatement. "He asked me," says the reporter, "what was the matter with the writ? I told him that it contained no bill of particulars. He said, very pleasantly, 'I shall not allow any plea in abatement. I know the man very well; he has had the meat, and he must pay for it. I shall enter up judgment for the plaintiff.'"
A novel decision was rendered by Justice Miller in the suit before him at Youngstown, between John P. Kirby and John Scott, each claiming the ownership of a certain carrier pigeon, which was brought into court in charge of an officer. Justice Miller, in order to settle the ownership beyond question, ordered the pigeon placed in the hands of two disinterested persons, who took it four miles south of the city and released it. After it started two chasers were sent up by Kirby, and Scott followed suit by releasing another pigeon. The pigeon in controversy flew straight to the residence of Scott, and, according to the decision of Justice Miller, is now Scott's property.—Cleveland Leader.
Some cases of comparatively recent occurrence will serve to illustrate the defects of the coroner system. The following is reported: "Inquisition held on the body of Holmes, deseasts December 8, 1853. We of the said jury, by being summoned and qualified, and hearing the evidences, and making true and diligous resentments over the said body of said deseasts, twelve men met, and, being duly sworn into the case, believes that he come to his death by some fit or other apoplexy. Doctor being duly sworn by myself, coroner, states that the lobis membrane of the spinal disease was affected to considerable extent."—Forum.
When drunkards appear on the street of the village of Mons, Belgium, the garde champetre takes them politely home. The next morning he goes to the houses of all those whom he had found drunk the night before, and presents to each a broom for sweeping the street. The drunkard is allowed to choose between working for the commune for one day and being prosecuted for drunkenness. He invariably elects to sweep the streets. The village streets are in consequence marvellously clean; and the sweepers, after swallowing more than their natural share of dust, pass mental resolutions of sobriety, and keep them.
The practical mind of Dr. Frank L. James would utilize the bodies of condemned murderers, ante mortem, for experimental pathology. This is a good suggestion, and in lieu of the judicial condemnation formulary: "Hanged by the neck until you are dead—dead—dead, and may God have mercy on your soul," we hope to see the time come when, in pronouncing sentence for capital crime, the judge will solemnly say, "And now you are sentenced, under the laws you have violated, to pay the righteous penalty of your crime. You will, therefore, this day choose the method by which you prefer to die for the benefit of science and that society you have wronged, that dying you may serve man kind better than when you lived, and, in part at least, make propitiation to the world and to God for your great crime, and may God have mercy on your soul." Let the condemned then choose whether by poison, by inoculation of disease, or electricity.
Give the condemned murderer a chance to make some atonement for his crime before he goes hence.—Alienist and Neurologist.
The following plea of molliter dentes imposuit was put in, in a dog-biting case, by Irving Browne,Esq., the genial editor of the "Albany Law Journal":—
"And the defendant further says that at the time mentioned in the complaint, the plaintiff, with sundry other unruly and boisterous youths, was throwing snowballs in the immediate vicinity of the defendant's house, and thereby endangering its safety and that of its inmates; and thereupon the defendant expostulated with said plaintiff, and requested him in a mild and gentlemanly manner to desist; but the plaintiff, refusing to observe the defendant's request, and moved and instigated by the Devil, there-
