52
under the operations of these statutes, the " material men" and contractors had grown into the most tricky and unscrupulous set of business men in the community. This your Disgusted Layman states as a fact within his own knowledge, that no other class of business men are as unworthy of belief, so destitute of high commercial honor, as the average "material man," the man who sells lumber, etc., etc., and being in a business which can profit by the mechanic's lien law, he thinks he knows something about it. Many and many a thing that the layman rages at in decisions of our Supreme Courts can be forgiven and forgotten for its resolute stand in favor of simple right and justice, imperilled by legislative asininity and base truckling to demagogueism. Let not the writer be mistaken. No mechanic's lien was ever filed against him. Your "Disgusted Layman."
LEGAL ANTIQUITIES. By an act passed in 22 Henry VIII., beggars found wandering about seeking their subsistence from the alms of the benevolent were to be "carried to some market-town or other place, and there tied to the end of a cart naked, and beaten with whips throughout such market-town or other place till the body should be bloody by reason of such whipping." In the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth, however, this act was slightly mitigated, and vagrants were only to be " stripped naked from the middle upwards, and whipped till the body should be bloody." Entries in some of the old English church registers remain as witnesses of the operation of this law.
FACETIÆ. Many good stories are told of Judge Under wood of Georgia; among the best are the follow ing : — When the famous Tweed ring had been broken up for stealing millions in New York, and the daily papers were full of the developments, Rev. Mr. Axson, a man of pure heart and trust ing disposition, said, " Judge Underwood, it surely is not possible that these charges against Tweed & Company are true. Are they not all Demo crats? " —" Mr. Axson," said the judge, " I fear
you are too good a man to live in this world. I once was young, but now I am old. 1 once was a Whig, but now I am a Democrat, and I grieve to say that, from long observation, I have become convinced that it is within the range of possi bility for a Democrat to steal." Judge Wright once reminded him in a cour teous way that justice was represented as being blind and holding the scales of justice evenly balanced in her hand. "Yes," said Underwood, " and I have long thought that the representation was a mistake in the designer, for how is it possible for her to tell whether the scales are evenly balanced without she raises the bandage a little? And there is another mistake that the lawyers make. You misconstrue the old maxim that a man shall be tried by his peers, and so whenever you have a guilty scoundrel to defend, you try to get one or more guilty scoundrels on the jury. That is not what the magna charta mea:1t by peers." Bob McCamy said that when the judge was presiding and the criminal docket was before him, he seemed to forget that justice was blind, and in spite of himself would raise the bandage a little. After he had charged the jury it was exceedingly dangerous for the defendant's coun sel to ask for an additional charge. Bill Glenn had been defending a big, strapping town boy who was charged with an assault and battery upon a smaller boy. The big boy had been imposing upon the little fellows, and one of them hit him with a switch and ran. The big boy pursued him and threw a rock at him and cut a bad gash in his head and laid him up for a week or two. The grand jury found a true bill, and after the closing speech by the solicitor the judge charged the law very fairly and then asked if there was any other charge that counsel desired. Glenn rose forward and with some tone of apprehension said, " I believe your honor omit ted to charge that self-defense may justify an assault." "Yes," said the judge, as he straightened up and fired up. " Yes, gentlemen, there is such a law, and if you believe from the evidence that this great big, double jointed, big fisted young gentleman was actuated by fear and self-defense
