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as having been annexed to the freehold, or to the administrator of the deceased tenant, or to a creditor of his, who held a bill of sale of all his goods, chattels, and effects or to the vendee of the sheriff who had seized it under a fi fa!-Whether little sweeps were distrainable for the rent due from the master chimney-sweeper;* and if so, who was to feed them while they were in custodia legis ;† and whether it was a conversion of them, for the distrainer to set any of them about sweeping a chimney of his own; or whether, in such a case, their master, the tenant, being entitled to their earnings, ought to sue for them, in case, or assumpsit; or, if the little sweeps should be sold towards satisfaction of the rent, and if one of them should not go away with the vendee, whether the latter could justify an assault in compelling him ; who was entitled to the clothes of one of the little sweeps, if he should die while under distress-and who would be bound to bury him!- Who was entitled to a small slip of land which it was impossible that any one could use,

scamp to have been able to keep up such a plausible consistency-such a vraisemblante air-throughout. Some letter was handed up to the Judge in favour of the character of the first wife, whom it represented to be a sober and industrious woman. It was also admitted that the prisoner had fairly told the woman whom he had last married all that he had represented himself as having told her. The Judge, having made some just remarks upon the deplorable ignorance on the subject of marriage and divorce which seemed to be evinced by the prisoner, and which he sincerely hoped were not prevalent notions in those parts, instructed the jury that their verdict must of course be guilty, as the prisoner had confessed all that he stood charged with. He was immediately, therefore, found guilty. The Judge pointed out to him fully and distinctly the heinous nature of the offence of bigamy, and the utter absurdity of his notions respecting the relation of marriage, and the mode of dissolving it. He might be transported for what he had done; but as he seemed to have acted ignorantly, and had, especially, frankly told the woman whom he called his second wife of the fact that his first wife was living, and as he had already suffered several months' imprisonment since his committal to gaol, his Lordship thought the ends of justice would be answered by the inliction of a lénient sentence that of six weeks' further imprisonment. He was then removed from the dock.

Nothing further, of interest, I understood, would transpire in the court that day; so I went into the civil court, where Mr Justice Coleridge presided. Here you might listen to very different matters-a painfully interesting dispute, for instance, between a landlord and his tenant as to which of them was entitled to an old rusty padlock; or whether a brass farthing, which had been discovered between the boards of the floor, belonged to the heir of the reversioner,

and other the like grave and important matters. But as I heard enough of them in town, I did not see any particular reason for waiting to see them dealt with on that particular occasion, especially as I happened to have no retainers in any of the above interesting causes.

So, about three o'clock, I went to see the Docks, and also to bathe in the Baths, erected by the late corporation, on the quay. The former were a wonderful object! Dock after dock, of very large size, of most complete construction, was crammed with ships of all sorts, sizes, and countries, so closely packed, that the only wonder was

"how the d-1 they got there!" -or were to get out again. It was certainly a proud and splendid spectacle for the eye of an Englishman. What an idea it gave one of our commercial greatness! What order and system were evident every where !— An hour had passed away before we

See all the authorities, as to the power to distrain cats, parrots, monkeys, rabbits, and canaries, collected in Woodfall's Landlord and Tenant, p. 316 (2d ed.)

See now stat. 5 and 6 Will. IV. c. 59, § 4, requiring parties impounding cattle to provide sufficient food for them.

A man shall not abuse a distress.-Com. Dig. Distress (D. 6.) So a man cannot work cattle distrained, 1 Leon. 220; and see the late case of Scott v. Newington, 1 Mor. and Robinson, 252.

seemed to have seen above a fourth of the shipping; so I hurried back to the quay, to bathe in the cold salt-water bath before going to dinner. There were five or six steam-boats hissing and sputtering alongside in the Mer sey, as if furious at the violent wind, which curiously intermingled the smoke and steam; there was also a most horrid squeaking of pigs, great and small, in the act,-gentle sufferers!-of being landed, on their arrival from Ireland. There was also a bronzed Italian woman, accompanying herself on the guitar, on board of one of the steamers preparing to cross the water; and it was droll to see the indignant air with which she occasionally turned towards the quarter whence proceeded the concord of sweet sounds that drowned her own, and rendered her singing a matter of mere dumb show. On enquiring at the baths, I was vexed to find the large swimming bath under repair. The only one at my service was one little more than six feet square, and which it required some courage and caution to plunge into, for fear of breaking my head against any of the sides. Nevertheless, I bathed in it almost every day that I was in the town. On return. ing to my lodgings, I saw a little erowd collected round a low doorway in the church-wall, near the river, which I found, on enquiry, to be a deadhouse, where were placed the bodies of those who had been found drowned, or had otherwise met an unex. plained death. There had been just placed in it the body of a man who had been, only a quarter of an hour before, taken out of the water. Whether his death had been wilful, or accidental, was unknown; but there, poor soul! he lay, in a large common black shell, his silk handkerchief spread over his face, and his hat, apparently a new one, with his gloves in it, placed upon his breast. He was dressed very respectably-in a blue body-coat, light waistcoat, black trowsers, and Wellington boots; and, as far as we could conjecture, he seemed of middle age. What a miserable object he looked! thus, in the garb of the living, enclosed in the narrow dwelling of the dead! Who was. he? What friends and relatives were suddenly bereaved -what wife and children were at that moment unconscious widow and orphans? expecting him home, per

haps, as usual-wondering, it might be, that he kept the family meal so long waiting—or perhaps the dismal, dismaying tidings were being at that moment communicated- I hurried away!

The whole of the Bar dined together that evening at the Adelphi—and a grand muster we made; it would have rejoiced the cockles of your old heart to see us. But do you think, my dear sir, that, with all my communicativeness, I am going to describe that dinner? What! divulge the sacred mysteries of the GRAND COURT? The secrecy of a freemason must be a joke to that which is implicitly imposed upon me and every member of the Northern Circuit with reference to that same Grand Court; and if the unhallowed curiosity and cupidity of her Majesty's present misleaders [I like to call people and things by their true names] should really, as is rumoured, be prompting them to send a commission of enquiry into the mysteries, customs, and revenues of the Northern Circuit, and its Grand Court -let those who may be selected for such an office-poor devils!-look to it; they will never be commissioners again—at least on this side the grave!

A glorious body of Tories, by the way, is the Northern Circuit! On making minute enquiries, there are certainly to be discovered a few who fancy themselves of opposite opinions

it may be that they do it to prevent the wearisomeness of a circuit unanimous in politics; or they may have really persuaded themselves that Whig and Radical opinions are the best to live by; if so, they are nevertheless very quiet and inoffensive people, and we do not interfere with them!!

Can an observer of human nature have a richer field laid before him than a Court of Criminal Justice? Amongst mankind there is nothing so solemn and affecting as-startling adumbration of hereafter!-man sitting in judgment upon his fellow man, searching, as far as his means will allow him, into the hidden springs of action, protecting innocence from the imputation and consequences of guilt, detecting and inflicting proportionate punishment upon guilt, even to the taking away of life itself! There, at the bar-all eyes anxiously settled upon

him-stands, in terrified or sullen silence, an individual whose conduct in a particular transaction is the subject of enquiry; who knows, and probably alone, among men, KNOws that he is guilty of the crime with which he stands charged; one word from whose damp and rigid lips would instantly clear up the whole mystery, supply the essential link of evidence, throw light on the darkest train of circumstances, and reconcile the most discrepant and inconsistent facts. He stands cold and benumbed within the panoply of legal protection against self-crimination-knowing that not a sign or a syllable can be extorted from him. His heart, nevertheless, suddenly shrinks-the blood deserts, for a moment, his flushed cheek-as his guilty soul feels that his pursuers are pressing, though in the dark, closer and closer upon the truth of the transaction! He is, perhaps, inwardly cursing himself for his folly in having said or done, or omitted to do, something while about the perpetration of his crime, which his accusers have got hold of, and are pressing home upon him, and upon his jury, with dreadful strength of inference and conclusion. And there is his judge, well versed in such enquiries-the occasional glance of whose practised eye, which he feels upon him, shoots a thrill of terror into his soul, for he knows that he has found him out, and that a few words of his will presently clear away the previous doubt and uncertainty that may be felt by the jury, who, charged with the issues of life and death, will soon utter the fearful word

"That summons him to heaven or to hell!"

Such is an imperfect expression of the thoughts which were passing through my mind when, one morning, a little after nine o'clock, I entered the Crown Court, which was crowded to suffocation; but the only sound that met my ear was the voice of counsel stating to the jury the facts of a frightful case of murder, while he pointed, as he went on, in illustration of his statement, to an elaborate model of the premises where the alleged crime had been perpetrated. At the bar stood he whose life depended on the issue of that day's enquiry. He was a young man of apparently four-and-twenty years of age, of average height and

build, with light hair, rather protuberant cheek-bones and upper lip. His countenance wore an air of mingled sullenness and anxiety, but its general expression and character would not have led me to imagine him capable of committing such crimes as he was charged with. I knew a member of Parliament whose countenance is the exact counterpart of the culprit's. He was dressed respectably, in a blue bodycoat, with brass buttons, a black stock, Valentia waistcoat, which was very open, displaying a full plaited shirtfront. He stood at about a foot's distance from the front of the dock, holding a coloured silk pocket-handkerchief between his closed hands, from which he sometimes slowly wiped the perspiration--a posture which he never varied during the whole time of his trial. He seemed a young man of slow and dull feelings, which consequently he had little difficulty in controlling. He never raised his eyes towards the jury, judge, or witnesses, and only once or twice evinced any emotion; drawing a long heavy breath, and his cheek flushing, as one or two of the most striking points of the evidence made their appearanceto him probably unexpectedly. name was Hill; and he stood charged with having committed the threefold crime of murder, rape, and robbery, upon the person of an elderly female, one Betty Minshull, at Warrington, under circumstances, many of them unfit for detail-all of them of horrid atrocity. One's flesh crept as one looked at the man standing so near us, and supposed him capable of committing some of the acts with which he was charged. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial. One of the witnesses proved an admission to him, by the prisoner, of his having committed two of the three offences of which he was accused; and it was when this was being deposed to that his cheeks suddenly flushed all over. He had, probably, till that moment, forgotten having made such a damning acknowledgment.

His

Betty Minshull was, if I recollect rightly, the landlady of a small public house, in one of the outhouses of which her body had been found early one morning-death having been effected by strangulation. It was proved that, late on the preceding night, the prisoner had been at the public

house; that he was the last of the few visiters who had then been there; and that she had, good-naturedly, given him a glass of ale which stood on the table just as he was going. Shortly afterwards a woman living in one of the adjoining houses heard violent screams issuing from that quarter of the premises in question where the body had been discovered. They were at first loud and violent, but became gradually fainter till they ceased. Though these sounds had surprised the witness, they had not sufficiently alarmed her to induce her to suspect any thing so serious as turned out to have taken place; so she did not rise from bed to enquire about them. On the morning of that day the prisoner had met a man whom he knew, and whom, with a strange and fatal communicativeness, he told a part of what he had been doing; that he "had been having a lark with Betty Minshull". and had left her asleep, having first taken out of her pocket some money, a knife, and a snuff-box; that he had thrown the last article into a millpond in the neighbourhood of the spot where they were then standing. It was subsequently searched, on suspicion being excited against Hill and discovered lying at the bottom. The knife he had given away. Both of them were produced in Court, and clearly identified by one or two of the relatives of the unfortunate deceased as having been her property. The prisoner evinced no emotion when they were handed about, with serious scrutiny, between the Judge, the jury, the witnesses, and the Bar. His demeanour throughout appeared to me that of a man consciously guilty, and deserted by hope. One of the witnesses was the head-constable, or keeper of the house of correction-I forget which—at Warrington; and he spoke to a most important examination by himself of the prisoner, when first brought into his custody. The prisoner's counsel having elicited the fact that the witness a huge, brawny, overbearinglooking fellow-had conceived himself entitled to examine the prisoner, with a show of authority for doing so, and closely and sternly and now came to state the results, most important and even decisive, of the answers so wrung from the prisoner,—

"Do you mean to say, sir," sternly interposed Mr Justice Pattisonturning towards him, "that you presumed to examine the prisoner at the bar as soon as he came into your custody?"

"Yes, my Lord, I did," he replied, with a confident air, "and can state exactly".

"Then let me tell you, sir," interrupted Mr Justice Pattison, with an indignant air, "that you have acted with the highest impropriety, contrary to the law of the land-and have taken a shameful advantage of your situation. How dared you to do so, sir? Pray is this a practice of yours ?"

"Yes, my Lord, it is," replied the witness, doggedly, but with a sadly crest-fallen air.

"Then I tell you, sir, that I have a very great mind to cause you to be dismissed immediately from a situation which you don't know the duties of. You have been guilty of misconduct in your office, sir. You ought to know that the law gives you no authority whatever to ask a single question of any prisoner committed to your custody, with a view to finding out whether he is guilty of what he is charged with. God forbid, indeed, that persons of your description should ever have such a power. Your duty is to keep them safely, and not to abuse your power by worrying them into confession, and extorting from their fears matter which you may afterwards come here, as you do this day, to swear to against them. If a prisoner volunteers a confession, a statement, you may hear it, and afterwards state it here; but at your peril ever again presume to continue your present cruel and oppressive practice ! Do you hear me, sir ?" he sternly added, observing the sullen conceited air with which the fellow listened to the merited and dignified rebuke inflicted upon him.

"Oh, yes, my Lord." The tone and air in which this was said did not escape the Judge.

"I am by no means sure," added his Lordship, "that I shall not even yet feel it my duty to recommend your dismissal from your present situation."

"Then I hope, my Lord, you will not allow this examination to be given in evidence?" enquired the prisoner's counsel. The prisoner's heavy, gloomy

turn. They were absent for more than an hour; and as one of them was a Quaker, we began to suspect that the well-known repugnance of that sect to the shedding of blood afforded a chance to the prisoner of their verdiet mitigating his crime into man. slaughter. Immediately on the former one retiring, another jury was sworn, and another prisoner placed at the bar.

eye was lifted for an instant anxiously upon the Judge, on this question being asked; but his Lordship, after repeating his opinion of the improper manner in which the evidence had been obtained, observed, with a manifest reluctance to such use of evidence so unfairly obtained-" Why, yes,— they are, nevertheless, admissions of the prisoner, and I do not think myself warranted in altogether excluding them; but I shall take care to remark upon them to the jury.".

The prisoner's eye was instantly cast down, and his chest heaved with a long, deep-drawn sigh. After a strong chain of circumstantial evidence had been laid before the jury, the prisoner's counsel addressed them on his behalf. What could he say? He had no witnesses to call! The only point he attempted to make was, that though the prisoner might have been guilty of two of the three grievous crimes charged upon him, yet he had not intentionally, or even knowingly, occasioned the death of Betty Minshull; pressing upon them, with much energy, the statement of the prisoner which had been given in evidence, that "he had left the deceased asleep ;" and also urging, for the honour of our common human nature, the incredibility that the prisoner, or any one living, could have been guilty of one of the atrocious acts with which he was charged. The Judge then summed up; stating it to be "perfectly settled and unquestionable law, that all homicide is presumed to be malicious, and amounts to murder until the contrary appears in evidencewhich must be made out by the prisoner to the satisfaction of the Court and jury. It was for them to say whether they thought that the deceased had come by her death in consequence of any felonious act of the prisoner; and if so, he was clearly guilty of murder, although he might never have intended it, or thought it possible to have been the result, or have been aware of it. Of this there was not the slightest doubt." His Lordship then, with great patience and perspicuity, recapitulated and commented upon the evidence; and, though he had done so with the most rigorous fairness, it was clear to every one what the issue must be. The jury withdrew to consider their verdict, and the prisoner was removed from the dock till their re

The prolonged absence of the jury greatly strengthened our above-mentioned suspicions. What a dreadful interval must that have been to the prisoner! At length it was announced that the jury were returning into court to deliver their verdict. "Remove this prisoner, and place John Hill at the bar!" said the Judge, as I fancied, slightly changing colour. I am sure that I did, especially when I saw the prisoner led forward by two of the officers and placed in front of the dock to hear his doom. He stood exactly in his former attitude, with his handkerchief in his hands; but his face was turned, and his eye directed with dreadful anxiety to the spot where his jury were collecting; in whose downcast faces, as they one by one made their way through the breathless crowd, he too plainly read his fate. His chest heaved several times slowly, while he endured the agonizing suspense occasioned by the jury being twice called over, and answering to their names. As soon as the twelfth had responded—“ Gentlemen, are you agreed upon your verdict?" enquired the officer of the court; "do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty?"

Amidst profound silence, the forcman pronounced the fatal word— “GUILTY.” My eye was fixed at the moment on the features of the miserable wretch whom that word had doomed to a speedy and ignominious death. It blanched his countenance; his eyes drooped, and he leaned heavily against the two officers who had led him in, and then stood close behind him. Immediately on the foreman's pronouncing the verdict, the Judge placed upon his head the ominous black velvet cap, and with much solemnity, amidst the breathless silence of the Court, thus addressed the pri

soner:

"John Hill-after full and anxious consideration, the jury of your coun

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