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LEGAL ANTIQUITIES.
As a proof of the strict severity with which any malpractices on the part of the members of the Court of Parliament in France were punished, we read that in 1348 one of the judges, named Alain de Ourdery, Chevalier Consciller du Roy, was hanged by order of the Parliament, for having falsified some depositions in a case which came before him. And another signal instance of the same impartial justice occurred in 1496, when Claude de Chamoreux, a clerk and councillor, was convicted of having made a false report re garding some matters which had been referred to him. An attempt was made by the Church to save her son, and the Bishop of Paris claimed cognizance of the case. But the parliament stood firm, and refused to allow the guilty judge to escape. He was deprived of his office, and openly stripped of his scarlet gown and furred cap; and then, with naked feet and bare head, and holding in his hand a lighted torch, he fell upon his knees on the floor, and begged aloud for mercy from God, and the King, and justice, and the parties whom he had injured. The report which he had falsified was then torn to pieces by an officer of the court, and the culprit was conducted to the quadrangle of the Palais de Justice, and, being consigned over to the public executioner, was forced to mount upon a cart, and conducted to the pillory, where he stood for three hours. He was afterward branded on the forehead by a hot iron with a fleur-de-lis, and banished forever from the realm.
that you have no visible means of support, and that you have been seen under the influence of liquor." "What of it?" cried the prisoner. " Though I am as poor as Richard Savage when he made his bed in the ashes of a glass-factory, as drunken as Dick Steele, as ragged as Goldsmith when he was on his fiddling-tour, as dirty as Sam Johnson, as —" "There, there!" cried the magistrate, impa tiently, " I have no doubt that your associates are a disreputable lot, and I shall deal with you in such a manner as to cause them to give this town a wide berth. Seven days with hard labor. Mr. Clerk, furnish the constable with the names of the vagabonds mentioned by the prisoner."
During a trial, many interruptions having taken place, the judge at last, using his authority, said he would commit anybody who was guilty of such a want of respect to the court. This threat was followed by a dead silence for a time, which was finally interrupted by two men conversing in a loud tone. The judge, observing it, said, — "I see that you two men are still determined to set my authority at naught, and I shall commit you." "Your honor," replied one of the two. il this man, against my will, keeps on talking to me." "What was he talking about or saying to you?" asked the judge. "Why, he said your honor was a d d fool!" Instantly the other got up and exclaimed. "Your honor, I said it in perfect confidence."
In the thirty-eight years during which Henry VIII. was upon the throne of England, no less than seventy-two thousand criminals were executed. NOTE S.
FACETIAE. A literary man stood up in the police-court to answer to the charge of vagrancy. "I object, your honor," he said with dignity, "to this prosecution of gentlemen who follow the profession of letters, and —" "I understand. interrupted the magistrate, "that you were found sleeping on a doorstep,
The following is one of the head-notes to the case of Abbe v Rood, 6 McLean, 107 : "A wit ness who swears that a certain thing was said or done is entitled to greater weight than a witness who said that he did not hear the remark or wit ness the act." At Enfield Petty Sessions, a little time ago, Mr. Bassett, of Fore Street, Upper Edmonton, was fined for having his wife and child with him in
