have it definitely stated in this work that "there is far greater security for life and property in the majority of Chinese towns and villages than in our metropolis." Thus we can afford to respect and even learn from Chinese law. An "evolved pro
duction of 4,000 years," it has developed slowly and steadily to suit the growing needs of the people, and it is remarkably similar to Roman law, on which our own system is based.
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION. THE GREAT SMYTH CASE. COMPILED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES BY LAWRENCE IRWELL. THE celebrated Tichborne case is prob ably familiar to most readers of The Green Bag; but the Stapleton Estates case, which resembled it in three important par ticulars, is by no means so well known. Both undertakings had the same object in view; both had an untimely end, and the chief actor in each met with a well-merited punishment. The great Smyth case occupied the atten tion of Mr. Justice Coleridge (the Lord Cole ridge recently deceased) and a special jury at the Gloucester (England) assizes from the 8th to the i ith of August, in the year 1853, and from the strange evidence tendered, and the extraordinary termination of the proceed ings, the trial will always be regarded as one of the most remarkable in English legal his tory. The action was to recover possession of the Stapleton estates, worth more than .£20,000 a year, and was brought by a man styling himself " Sir Richard Hugh Smyth, Baronet," against the person in possession of the property, whose name I do not know. (Let me here state that the following account of this extraordinary trial has been derived from so many different sources, that I am only able to vouch for the accuracy of the important facts, and not for the details, al though I believe that even the minor points are correctly stated.) In order that my readers may grasp the gist of the case, I commence by giving a
brief outline of the Smyth family, showing the grounds upon which the plaintiff sought to establish his claim. Sir Thomas Smyth, of Stapleton, Glouces tershire, died in 1800, possessed of the Sta pleton estates. He left four children, Hugh Smyth, John Smyth, and two daughters, one of whom married a Mr. Upton and the other a Colonel Way. Sir Thomas Smyth devised the property to his eldest son Hugh for life, and if he died childless, then to John, upon the same terms, and if he also died without children, then to the two daughters successively, and their children. John died without leaving a fam ily, and Hugh, although known to have been married twice, was also believed to have left no issue; the property, therefore, went to the .child of one of Mr. Thomas Smyth's daughters under the terms of the abovenamed will. Suddenly, however, and, of course, unexpectedly, the owner was suqmsed to find his title challenged, by the plaintiff, who claimed to be the son of Hugh Smyth, and who sought to establish his right on the ground that Hugh Smyth was married to his mother—a Miss Vandenburgh—in Ireland, in 1796. If this story were true, the plaintiff was undoubtedly the person to whom the estate belonged. The story related in court amounted to
