A IVager About Napoleon. the House of Representatives. Mr. Randall cited two English cases, both decided before the -Revolution, and consequently binding precedents in Pennsylvania, and relied on them to govern the action of the court. In one of them, that of Andrews v. Herne, de cided in 1662, upon a wager of twenty pounds to twenty shillings, made six months before the Restoration, that Charles Stuart, who was then in exile, would be king of England within twelve months, the court held such a wager recoverable at law, and gave judgment for the plaintiff. The con duct of these parties involved high treason to the defacto government, and consequences far more grave to all interested than any that could arise to the United States by rea son of the wager concerning Bonaparte. The other case, which was intended to meet the objection arising from Bonaparte's death prior to placing the bet, was that of the Earl of March against Pigott, decided by Lord Mansfield in 1771. There plaintiff and de fendant agreed at New Market, after dinner, to run the life of Sir William Codrington against Mr. Pigott's father (as the phrase went), wagering sixteen hundred guineas to five hundred that Codrington Sr. would out live Pigott Sr. The latter had died at two o'clock in the morning of the very day on which the bet was made, but this fact was not known to the parties. The Court decid ed that Lord March should win the bet and have the five hundred guineas. P. A. Browne, Esq., who appeared for Ives and who was a distinguished lawyer, the author of Browne's Reports, opened ar gument against the wager with these two canonical cases commanding his forensic
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battery. He sought to outflank them by dwelling on the immorality and demoraliz ing tendency of wagers, and claimed that this particular one was void because it inter fered with the feelings and interest of a third person. In the course of his remarks he averred that the agreement between the par ties to the suit before the court had an in ternational phase in its possible results, and was an encouragement to one of the parties to do an act that might lead to war between the United States and the powers of Europe. He declared that many schemes, some of them deeply laid and well arranged, had been formed to carry off Napoleon from St. Helena, which were not put into effect mere ly because they had not received his sanc tion. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in a weak opinion by Judge Huston, in which he was joined by two others of its five judges, and which was dissented from by Chief-Jus tice Gibson and Justice Smith, declared that the court below, in not permitting Phillips to reap the fruits of his prudent wager, was right, and laid down the principle that no wager concerning a human being could be recovered in any court of justice. This case is also of present interest from its having been in part the foundation of the law that designates the purchase of stock on margin as a gambling transaction, and one that brokers cannot enforce against their customers by process of law, it having been relied upon by the Supreme Court of Penn sylvania in Brua's Appeal, decided in 1867, when they laid down the above principle much complained of to-day by the Stock Exchange. Owen B. Jenk1ns.
