are rendered so expensive that the poor are deterred from attempting to defend their rights. Whatever else our Chinese visitors
may borrow, they are pretty certain not to transplant either bar or jury. — Forum.
THE LAW AND AUTHORS IN THE OLDEN TIME. THE agitation now going on as to the suppression of certain books, by cer tain authors, recalls to mind the thought that authors and their books have in all times suffered more or less at the hands of the law. In the olden times they certainly fared much worse than at the present day; and a few instances of the manner in which the majesty of the law was vindicated in former days may prove of interest to the readers of the " Green Bag." In June, 1599, by order of Archbishop Whitegift and Bishop Bancroft, nearly all the copies of Christopher Marlowe's transla tion of Ovid's Elegies, with Sir John Davies's Epigrams (1596), were condemned to be burned at Stationers' Hall. The few existing copies of the little volume contain ing these two performances are worth from six to eight guineas each. An old writer tells us that, by command of the Pope, and with the consent of the whole clergy of Eng land, the Bishop of Rochester preached in St. Paul's Churchyard against Martin Luther and all his works, and denounced those persons as accursed who kept any of his books, of which many were burned during the sermon. In 161 7 James I. published his famous " Declaration to his Subjects concerning Lawful Sports," sanctioning the public enjoying certain recreations and pas times on the Sabbath, and positively ordering all parochial incumbents to make his per mission known in their respective churches, of pain of the king's displeasure. On March 10, 1643, twenty-six years after its publica tion, this royal book was burned by the com mon hangman, in Cheapside, in pursuance
of a resolution of both Houses of Parliament, which commanded all persons having any copies of that work in their hands to.deliver them forthwith to be burned according to the order. For writing his " Altrare Christianum" (1637) and " Sunday no Sabbath," Dr. Pocklington was deprived of all his livings, dignities, and preferments, disabled from ever holding any place or dignity in church or commonwealth, and prohibited from ever coming within the verge of the king's court, and his works were ordered to be burned by the common hangman. " I am afraid," says Southey, " that this act of abominable tyranny must mainly be attrib uted to Archbishop Williams, who revenged himself thus for the manner in which Dr. Pocklington had foiled him in a contro versy." On August 27, 1659, all Milton's books were burned by the common hang man, according to an order altogether worthy of the prince who had Cromwell's moulder ing bones taken up and exposed on a scaf fold. Dr. J. Drake's very curious "Historia Anglo-Scotica, or Impartial History of the Kings and Kingdoms of England and Scot land, from William Conqueror to the Reign of Queen Elizabeth " ( 1703), was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. The Scottish Parliament having pronounced Wil liam Attwood's work entitled " The Superi ority and Dominion of the Crown of England over the Crown of Scotland" (1704), to be scurrilous and full of falsehoods, commanded it to be burned by the hangman of Edin burgh. When Linnseus first published his works, the Pope ordered them to be burned; but some time afterward his holiness un seated a professor of botany for being igno
