Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/215

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The Green Bag.

action. This was a suit of Wolfe v. Jones. Wolfe was a widow, and Jones a butcher. The plaintiff sued the defendant for killing a cockatoo parrot belonging to her. Jones said he had taken the bird for an owl. (What a goose he must have been!) To show his blindness the mate of the deceased was brought into court, whereupon it coolly told one speaker to " shut up," recommended the contestants " to shake hands," and then, apparently considering it had earned a fee, asked for "sugar." One of the most solemn and impressive forms of an oath in China is the cutting off

the head of a cock in court, with the prayer that so the witness may perish if he swerves from the truth. A tail-piece. At the Regina trials after the Riel rebellion in the Canadian North west, 1885, it was hard to make some of the Indians understand the legal terms in which their offences were set forth. For instance, no term could be found to convey to the untutored mind the idea of the Queen's crown, against which he was charged with conspiring. This was ex plained to One Arrow as being " the great Mother's big war-bonnet with feathers in it."

WILLIAM ATWOOD, CHIEF-JUSTICE OF THE COLONY OF NEW YORK, 1701-1703. By Charles P. Daly, LL.D., Ex-Chief-Justice of the New York Court of Common Pleas. II. EMOT followed up the argument of formidable objection, for it was clear that Nicoll by the further point that by Bayard's case was not within any one of the statute of 25 Edward III, prosecutions those enumerated in that Statute and that for treason were limited to the six cases he could not be convicted under it. But specified in the Statute, and that nothing Atwood was fertile in expedients and de contained in the petitions, or the getting up, vised a way of his own of getting over this obstacle. The statute of Edward III, after or the signing of them, could by any possi bility be brought within any one of these specifying the six cases to which prosecu cases. He referred to the historical fact tions for treason were thereafter to be lim that this act of Edward III had been passed ited, contained a further provision that if to prevent judges taking upon themselves any case of supposed treason, not specified to declare anything to be treason they in the act, should thereafter occur, that the thought proper, and called attention also to judges "should tarry without any going to the subsequent act in the reign of Henry II, judgment, until it was declared before the which, after reciting that so many penalties King and his Parliament that it ought to be judged treason," under which it was held had been imposed by Statutes, in the pre ceding reign of Richard II, that " no man that the concurrence of one of the houses of knew how to behave himself, or what to do, Parliament was not sufficient, but that the speak or say," and it therefore enacted that King and both houses must concur, which "for no time to come should any treason was equivalent to an act of Parliament creat be judged otherwise than was ordained by ing a new case of treason. Atwood told the the Statute of Edward III." This was a jury that this provision showed that the act