Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

had been for a considerable time previous; and he ate an enormously large dinner, with which he drank a considerable quantity of spirit. In the night following, he was taken suddenly very ill. The physician of the family in which he boarded, was sent for, but he was not at home, and a pupil attended.

From the testimony of this pupil, in the examination, it appeared that Brown was expiring when he arrived, and died before any thing could be administered. The body was examined the next day by a respectable physician, in company with another pupil, and himself. There was no external mark upon the body which indicated violence.

The abdomen was first opened; the small intestines appeared to be in a sound state, but they were not opened. The stomach exhibited a high state of inflammation, which was universal over the whole surface, and still retained the food which had been taken the day before. The liver was much diseased. There were several abscesses in different parts of it. The state of the gall-bladder was also quite unnatural. This diseased state of the liver, in the opinion of this witness, would account for the detention of the food undigested in the stomach. The kidneys were slightly enlarged, and the ureters very much so. The spleen and pancreas were sound. On examining the throat, the fifth and sixth ribs were found to have been fractured. The fracture was so near the sternum as to occasion a slight depression of that bone. The bones were entirely remitted, so as to give no indication of the age of the fracture. The heart was sound; as were also the lungs, except some slight adhesions on each side.

This witness, although he would not say that the fracture of the ribs certainly produced the diseased appearances in the liver, yet said these appearances were such as a fracture of the ribs would rationally produce. He acknowledged that habitual intemperance frequently produces diseased liver; but the appearances of the liver in this case were, in his view, in some respects different from those incident to persons habitually in

toxicated. And he gave it as his opinion, that the fracture of the ribs was the cause of death, by producing the disease of the liver, the influence of which was extended to the stomach. The statement of the other young man agreed substantially with this, and he coincided in the opinion that the fracture was evidently the cause of death. By an omission, which can only be accounted for by the extreme imperfection of all our proceedings in reference to medical testimony, the only physician of regular standing in the profession, who knew any thing of the case, was not called upon for his testimony; and notwithstanding it was intimated, by one of the medical witnesses, that he did agree with them in opinion. Upon this extraordinary testimony, the gentlemen were fully committed to take their trial for murder.

On the following day, the prisoners were brought, by a writ of habeas corpus, before two justices of the Supreme Court, and a re-examination had. In the mean time, the body of Brown was taken up, and submitted to the examination of the professor of Anatomy in our University, in company with the physician who was present when it was first examined. These two gentlemen gave a more full and accurate account of the marks of disease, exhibited by dissection, than had been given by the young men on the day previous. The stomach was very much distended, and contained a quart of undigested food, mixed with gin, which was exceedingly offensive. Its internal surface was very much inflamed, and the most so about the upper orifice, and the intestines also bore marks of inflammation. There was a considerable quantity of fluid in the abdomen. The pericardium also contained four or five ounces, and the throat a pint. On each side of this fluid, the liver was very much enlarged in all parts of it; and contained several tubercles. One of the tubercles had separated, but the situation of it did not correspond to that of the fractured ribs. It was perfectly clear that the state of the liver had no connexion with that fracture. The liver was so situated in the arch of the diaphragm, that it

could not have been wounded by the fractured ribs without penetrating the diaphragm and the lower portion of the lungs, and these parts must necessarily have retained much of the injury. But they were as sound opposite the fracture as in any other part. Besides this, it was evident from the appearance of the ribs, that the fracture was an old one; much older than the time of the meeting on board the ship.

The head was opened. The membranes of the brain had lost their transparency; and there was considerable water between them. The ventricles were also filled with water. The coats of the large blood vessels also exhibited strong marks of disease, occasioned by long continued habits of intemperate drinking. The whole body was also dropsical from the same

cause.

These gentlemen both agreed that the state of the body was not the immediate cause of death; that it was itself, as well as the other diseased appearances, caused by the habits of excessive drinking ardent spirits; and that the immediate cause of death was the overloaded state of the stomach, the system being in such a state of universal disease. The prisoners were thereupon discharged.

(To be continued.)

ART. II.-AGREEMENT OF A FEME COVERT.

Can the agreement of the wife, to join with her husband in conveying lands, be enforced against her?

THERE is a case in 2 Vernon, 61. Baker v. Child, decided in the year 1688, in which the opinion of the Court is thus laid down:

Per Cur: Where a feme covert, by agreement made with her husband, is to surrender or levy a fine; though the husband die before it be done, the court will by decree compel the woman to perform the agreement.

A case reported in 3 Peere Williams, 189. Trin. 1733, Hall v. Hardy, goes still farther. There have been an hundred precedents,' says the Master of the Rolls, 'where if the husband, for a valuable consideration, covenants that the wife shall join with him in a fine, the Court has decreed the husband to do it.'

[ocr errors]

These ancient decisions are evidently grounded on the rules and principles of the civil law, which was once the rule of the Court of Chancery in England; at civil law the wife is considered as the companion and associate of her husband, and the husband as her protector, not her tyrant; the civil law never presumes that the husband can compel her by force or threats, to do an act injurious to herself, it does not guard her against such contingencies; but, on the contrary, guards against her own presumed levity, by requiring her husband to join her as a kind of guardian in every contract that she makes. Under such a system, the above mentioned decisions are certainly correct.

Far different are the principles of the common law. It considers the wife as a servant, at best as a dependent to her husband, and the husband as a master who may be tempted to abuse his power, and against whose improper influence she ought to be protected. Therefore she is not permitted to dispose of her real property, without sufficient evidence given in a solemn form, that she is acting of her free will and accord, without any threats or compulsion from her husband.

There have been various and fluctuating decisions in the Court of Chancery of England upon this subject. In a case anterior to Hall v. Hardy; in Otread v. Round, 4 Vin. 203, pl. 4. decided in 4 Geo. I. A. D. 1718, (Hall v. Hardy was decided in 1733) Lord Chancellor Cowper is reported to have said, that the doctrine of compelling the husband by imprisonment to procure his wife to levy a fine, was a tender point, a great breach on the wisdom of the law, which secures the wife's lands from being aliened by the husband without her free and voluntary consent, and that the authority of the Court in this respect should be sparingly exercised.

The reason given in favor of this doctrine is, that it is presumed that when the husband covenants that his wife shall levy a fine, he has previously obtained her consent so to do. 3 P. W. 189. This is a natural presumption; but what if he has obtained that consent by tyrannical means, by those very means which the common law is so particularly anxious to guard against? Turn it as you will, you will find in these conflicting principles of the chancery jurists and common lawyers, nothing else than the direct opposition of the civil and the common law to each other, two systems which it is impossible by any rational means to reconcile, because the one proceeds on the principle of the tyranny, the other of the manly protection of the husband. Whichever of these principles is the best and the most rational is not my business here to inquire; but certain it is, that they militate directly against each other, and that whatever may be said in favor of the rule of the civil law in such cases, still the common law is the supreme law of the land, and should not give way to a subordinate system not recognized by the Courts of general judicature.

This is now felt and understood in the Court of Chancery of England; and in the case of Emery v. Ware, 8 Ver. 514, Lord Ellenborough is reported to have said, that if it were perfectly res integra he would hesitate very long before he would say that it is to be presumed that the husband had ob tained the wife's consent. His reasoning in this case fully shows the absurdity of this principle in a country governed by the common law. The case in 2 Vernon, 61, in which it is said that the wife, after her husband's death, can be compelled to perform her agreement made while under coverture, appears to stand single, and is not less in contradiction with the principles of the common law than of the Pennsylvania statutes, which it would virtually repeal. In this State these English Chancery doctrines are perfectly res nova, and have never been acted upon here. We are consequently at liberty to reject them, as the English Chancellors would now do

[blocks in formation]
« ZurückWeiter »