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LEGAL ANTIQUITIES.
FACETIÆ.
In the middle of the seventeenth century the common-law judges adhered to their coifs, or black cloth caps, which they still put on when they pass sentence of death; but the Lord Chan cellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons wore round-crowned beaver hats. The full-bottom wig and the three-cornered hat were introduced from France after the Restoration. Barrister's wigs came in at the same time; but very gradu ally, for the judges at first thought them so cox combical that they would not suffer young aspirants to plead before them so attired. Who would have supposed that this grotesque ornament, fit only for an African chief, would be considered indispensa bly necessary for the administration of justice in the middle of the nineteenth century? — Lives of the Chief-Justices.
It was a Harvard law-student who, having found a flea in his bed, described the insect as a chose in action.
A peculiar penal statute is the 52 Geo. III. c. 146, entitled an Act for the better regulating and preserving Parish and other Registers of Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths in England, which provides (Sect. 18) that one half of the amount of all fines and penalties to be levied in pursuance of this Act shall go to the person who shall inform or sue for the same. As the only clause in the Act mentioning any specific penalty is Section 14, which declares certain offences against it to be punishable with fourteen years' transportation, it is probable that there have been few informers. Different variations of this statutory blunder are to be found in many books of legal anecdote; but readers have generally thought them all apocryphal, for want of any specific reference.
By an ancient act of the Scottish Parliament, passed about the year 1228, it was " ordaint that during ye reign of her maist blessit maiestie, Mar garet, ilke maiden, ladee of baith high and lowe estait, shall hae libertie to speak ye man she likes. Gif he refuses to tak her to bee his wyf, he shale be mulct in the sum of ane hundredity pundis, or less, as his estait may bee, except and alwais, gif he can make it appeare that he is betrothit to another woman, then he shall bee free."
The lecturer on Criminal Law at the Boston University Law School remarked that earthly tri bunals inferred the intent from the act, while the heavenly courts did not. A student whose love of brevity was extreme, noted the latter statement concisely, with "contra supra." Baron Alderson had a very profound dislike to scientific witnesses, especially those of the medical profession, called upon to give an opin ion upon the evidence they had heard in court, and he rarely failed in proposing some question to them which eventually proved a floorer. At the end of a very long examination of a celebrated medical man, who had been called upon to establish the incompetency of a deceased testator to make a will, the witness unfortunately said that he believed " all persons were subject to temporary fits of insanity." "And when they are in them," asked the judge, "are they aware of their state?" "Certainly not, my lord," was the reply; " they believe all they do and say, even if nonsensical, to be perfectly right and proper." "Good Lord! " exclaimed Alderson, " then here have I taken no less than thirteen pages of notes of your evidence, and, after all, you may be in a fit of temporary insanity, talking nonsense, and believing it to be true!"
A very neat mot is credited to Judge Grover in a tilt at the bar with Judge Peck. The latter had delivered a particularly rasping speech, to which the former felt compelled to reply in kind. "Your Honor," he said, " it rained last night, and this morning when I took my course across the fields, at almost every step I came upon some slimy venomous creature that had issued from its hiding-place. Snails, toads, frogs, lizards, worms, snakes, vipers, adders, — every description of loathsome reptile was to be seen crawling, filled with venom; and yet, your Honor, though there seemed so many of them, all of them put together would not have made up a Peck! "
