A Strenuous Affiant. heard one of those luminous expositions of law, says a contemporary, "must remember the effect produced in court when, often with out taking time to consider his judgment, Dr. Lushington would deliver one of those masterpieces of judicial wisdom and legal learning which rank him among the first of English jurists." With respect to maritime law in particular his name is permanently as sociated. The ancient jurisdiction of the ad miralty was largely restored by various statutes during his tenure, and it was finally made a court in 1861. Then the Crimean war, bringing in its train many ques tions of the rights of neutrals, blockade and contraband of war, enabled him to build up a high reputation as an authority on in
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ternational law. The ecclesiastical contro versies of his time, arising out of the ritual istic movement in the English Church, were also determined by him with broad minded liberality.1 1 Some of Lushington's conspicuous cases in Admi ralty are : The Milan, Lush. 388; Franciska, 2 Spink's Adm. and Ecc. i; Banda and Kinvee Booty, L. R., I A. and E. 109; Batavia, 9 Moo. P. C. 286; Europe, Br. and Lush. 89; Pacific, ib. 245; Helen, L. R., i A. and E. I. In matrimonial affairs see Dysart г'. Dysart, 3 Notes of Cases, 324; Williams v. Brown, I Curt. 53; Braithwaite v. Hook, 8 jur. (N. S.) 1186. His principal ecclesiastical cases are : Williams v. Bishop of Capetown; Westerton v. Liddell; Ditcher v. Denison; Burder v. Heath; Bishop of Salisbury v. Williams; C-orham v. Bishop of Exeter; Long v. Bishop of Capetown; and the Colenso case.
A STRENUOUS
AFFIANT.
Bv HALE K DARLING. A NAME frequently found on the Court records of Orange County, Vermont, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, is that of Scth Burbank, of Thetford. He ap pears to have been what might well be termed a "contagious critter. Not only did he frequently sue — he more frequently was sued. Outside of his profession as a litigant, he got out spars and masts and floated them down the Connecticut river,— that is, in the rare intervals when he was not in the county jail on mesne or final process. But his great specialty was the making of affidavits. He wrote a fairly good hand for the times, and had been at law so much that he had acquired a good degree of fluency with respect to legal phrases,— particularly those commonly used in affidavits; and, though he had three attorneys of record, he always made his own affidavits. During the August term, 1797, of the Supreme Court of Judicature, held at Chel sea, he boarded and lodged in the county jail. On the docket at that term he appears
as a party in five cases, and on almost every day of the session (which ran into Septem ber) he prepared and sent into Court at least one affidavit. Isaac Bayley was then clerk, and it seems that he did not take these documents very seriously. The docket contains no entry showing that they were filed, and I found them tucked into a box in such shape as to indicate that they were put there to be got out of sight. It looks as if Brother Bayley got sick of receiving and filing them, for on the back of one of more than usual bulk are endorsed, in the clerk's handwriting, the words, "The Last Groans of Burbank." From a large stock of these efforts of said Burbank, I have selected one affidavit, to serve as a sample of all. The reader will. not fail to note certain peculiarities in spelling and in the use of capital letters, by no means uniform, which may indicate either that Burbank didn't know any better or that he was a genius — take your choice. I give him the benefit of both theories.
