Lawsuits Against Animals. confined to putting his clients' accusations into proper form; but the poor fellow is nat urally tempted to give a little "extraneous" advice now and then, such as : " You should contrive to provoke your opponent to assault you " — even though there is a risk of the stamps being " forfeited." The Adviser gains his income from fees charged for draw
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ing up the documents and affixing the stamp. Every chief mandarin at a yamun has his "followers " whose specialty is negotiating bribes, — for instance, from gambling houses. These vermin retainers receive no regular salary. As for the Chai-yu— policemen, bailiffs and turnkeys — they are utterly despicable.
LAWSUITS AGAINST ANIMALS. IN the midst of the enlightenment which we are inclined to associate with the latter half of the nineteenth century, it is almost difficult to imagine that there can have been anytime when lawsuits were formally carried on against dumb animals with all the solem nity of prosecution and defence, and all the subtleties of the strictest legal procedure. Down to a comparatively late period, how ever, the lower animals, not only in Europe, but in portions of both North and South America, were considered as being in all re spects amenable to the laws. Domestic animals were tried in the common criminal courts, and their punishment on conviction was death; whilst over wild animals the ecclesiastical courts exercised jurisdiction, and inflicted upon them sentences of banish ment and death by exorcism and excommuni cation. According to one French authority, the difference in the mode of procedure ap plied to those animals which could be taken possession of and brought bodily into court, on the one hand, and to those which were unseizable, on the other. For each course cer tain casuistical reasons were found. The prerogative of trying domestic animals was supposed to be founded on the ancient Mosaic law, and it is to be remarked, both in this class of cases and in those tried by the
canon law, advocates were assigned to defend the animals, and trial, sentence, and execution were alike conducted with the utmost formali ties known to the law. The proceedings against wild animals and insects in the ecclesiastical courts were ex ceedingly complicated, and their legality was always disputed by a certain section of can onists. It was held, on the one hand, that the church had an inherent authority to ex ercise, anathematise, and excommunicate all animate and inanimate beings, even whilst the lower animals, having been created before man, and being thus first heirs of the earth, and having also been provided for in the ark, were entitled to be treated with the greatest clemency consistent with justice. On the other hand, it was contended that, as the lower animals were devoid of intelligence, no such social pact as would confer authority to punish could ever have been made with them; that no penalty attached to injuries committed unintentionally and in ignorance; and that, as the church did not undertake to baptise animals, she could have no authority to anathematise them. Such arguments as these, doubtless, have the appearance of being most suitable for the pages of Rabelais or Swift, but it is beyond question that they were carried on in sober
