A Legal Study of St. Patrick. of self-defense, extenuating circumstances, justifiable homicide, or stood mute, — the record being silent as to the defense inter posed or the evidence offered on the part of the defendant), was condemned to be hanged. This sentence was thereafter confirmed by an order of parliament and carried into effect.' On another occasion, in the province of Bur gundy, an unfortunate pig, which had hap pened to kill a child, was in like manner regularly indicted, solemnly tried in open court, and duly sentenced to be hanged, and was thereafter executed.2 This was in accordance with the old law of France, which provided that if a vicious animal killed a person, and it was proved that its owner knew of its propensity to attack people, and negligently permitted it to go at large unattended, he was to be hanged, and 1 Foumel, torn. I, p. 11 9. ! Id. p. 2S9.
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the animal also. This was making the doc trine of scienter much more formidable than has ever been known to the English law. The writer has read somewhere, but has been unable to recall where, of a trial in Eng land in an early day, in which the dog of a sheep-stealer was sentenced to be hanged with his master, doubtless due to the influ ence of the Norman notions of law and procedure brought over by the conquerors and engrafted onto the Anglo-Saxon administra tion of the criminal law. In the P^xchequer records of 24 Edward? there is an account of a writ being issued to the sheriff to take possession of an unfor tunate whale which, in a spirit of sportive venture, or in urgent pursuit of a dinner, ventured into dangerous waters, was washed ashore and stranded in the county of Essex. 3 Mem. in Scacc. H. 24 Edw. [.
A LEGAL STUDY OF ST. PATRICK. By Joseph M. Sull1van. THE Senchus Mor, a Gallic manuscript containing the largest part of the Brehon Code, was compiled in the first part of the fifth century, and was therefore in full force and effect when Saint Patrick first set foot on the shores of Erin. Sent there by the Pope in the year a.d. 432, Saint Patrick found that there existed in ancient Ireland a system of laws in which the property and personal rights of individuals were minutely regulated. He found also that the rights of women in lands of their husbands were jeal ously guarded. The wife had the right to alienate a portion of her husband's land, and to control to some extent her husband's right of alienation. Schooled as he was in Roman law, Saint Patrick discovered that
the ancient Irish law governing the distribu tion of estates of deceased persons left nothing to be desired in the matter of com pilation and amendment. He was surprised to find a complete system of legal ethics, a court, a judge, and enlightened procedure for the enforcement of its decrees. He found that the courts employed in the en forcement of their judgments, writs and proc esses resembling those of distress, and other legal forms commonly used in early English procedure. He found, also, that the rights of creditors were protected, as, for instance, sureties were made liable somewhat after the old English institution of frank-pledge. Saint Patrick soon learned that the ancient Irish needed no instruction in legal ethics,
