438
year in the penitentiary," continued the judge. Then, looking over at the convict in a quizzical sort of way, he added : "Do you happen to have that in your jeans?"
NOTES.
A recent viceroy of India (not Lord Curzon) who went out from England full of belief in the perfectibility oi native character, was told by a high police official, an Englishman, that no native could be trusted; that every document confided to the care of a native could be purchased; and, in short, that no secret was safe in native hands. The viceroy was extremely angry, and assured his informant, in the language of Burke, that it was impossible to frame an indictment against a whole race. "Well," said the policeman, " I know these people. Your excellency does not; but as you seem so sure that they are to be trusted, I invite you to submit the matter to a test. If your excellency will name some secret document in your personal possession, and will undertake not to mention the matter to any human being, I will undertake in a fortnight to supply your excellency with a copy of that document." " Very good," said the viceroy. " Locked up in a despatch-box in my writing-room there is an autograph letter from the queen. There are only two keys to the box : one is in my possession; the other is in the hands of the private secretary, Colonel —." Before two weeks had elapsed the police official had furnished the viceroy with a copy of the queen's letter. The governor-general was convinced, but was extremely angry with the head of the police, and charged him with corrupting native servants. The story is a true one, and both par ties to it are still alive. ,
Mr. A. H. Garland's legal reminiscences ("Ex perience in the Supreme Court of the United States, with some Reflections and Suggestions as to that Tribunal") are chiefly remarkable for their modesty. Most people of his distinction would have made a couple of octavo volumes out of himself, while here we have only a hundred small pages. They are readable, and here and there the author makes a good point, as where he observes, of the late Justice Bradley, that it is
doubtful if any man ever sat on the bench of the Supreme Court who knew " more law and more sorts of law than he." A good story of Roscoe Conkling and " Matt " Carpenter is given. Conkling, with a record of a case coming on at once in court on his hands, applies to Carpenter for light on a point about which he says he is " troubled," and asks what he, Carpenter, would do about it. Carpenter's reply is, "Why, I would employ a good lawyer." Mr. Garland gives a long list of cases in which he was engaged in the Supreme Court, but the one which will perhaps cause his name to be longest remembered was Ex parte Garland, in which, as he somewhat grotesquely puts it, " the right of lawyers against legislative encroachments" was vindicated. So conspicuous at the time did this judgment make him that Ex parte became a sort of Christian name for him, as Ad interim did for another character of the Reconstruction period.
"The conservative English lawyer opposes the codification of laws as practiced on the Continent. Yet, there are some regulations, which, while theo retically in force, should be removed from the statutes as obsolete," says the Amsterdam "Nieuws van den Dag." " Thus there is a law which con demns the members of societies for the propaga tion of prohibition to seven years' hard labor. Disobedient clergymen may be imprisoned for life. Stealing from the queen to the value of more than a shilling must be punished with death or not at all."
When Queen Victoria ascended the throne there were thirteen crimes punishable with death in England. Since the statue of 1861 there remain now only four, namely : Setting fire to Her Majesty's dockyards or arsenals, piracy with violence, treason and murder.
A ten-m1nute prayer in a Pennsylvania court in a horse case created quite a sensation recently. Robert F. Thomas had brought suit to recover the part payment he had made on a horse. He bought the animal from Peter German, of Hei delberg township, for $80; paid $50 on him, and the balance, $30, was to be paid in sixty
