Notes for the Month. 279 



parties. They are not empanncled to decide merely what compensation 

 a plaintiff shall receive for the injury that he has sustained ; they are also 

 to say what fine a defendant shall pay for the wrong that he has com- 

 mitted. It is laid down by judges every day as law, that " a defendant 

 who cannot pay in his purse, must pay in his person ;" i. e. that the expense 

 and charge to which a verdict puts him, is a punishment for the act 

 which he has done, quite as much as a remuneration to the party who 

 complains against him. And is it not perfectly monstrous to provide, that 

 where a jury declares the very lowest coin "of the realm the wilfully 

 and prepensely meanest and basest to be all that the plaintiff (as com- 

 plainant) deserves for a frivolous and vexatious action, that he should be 

 allowed (as attorney) to exact a penalty from the defendant to the enor- 

 mous amount of three hundred pounds! 



The fact is, that some part of this scheme must be altered, or juries will 

 very soon refuse to execute it, and so alter it themselves. For the practice 

 which is held somewhat to correct the evil as it stands that of allowing 

 the judges to deprive the plaintiff of his costs, by " certifying" that the 

 action is frivolous and vexatious it is a remedy, in our opinion, highly 

 dangerous and inconvenient. In cases of libel, it is all that was wanted to 

 complete the nonentity of the jury, and to make the court sole arbitrator of 

 the whole question law and fact together. It is the judge who, by 

 his power of direction as to the law, settles, first, whether what the 

 defendant has written is a " libel ;" and the power of certifying, in the 

 practice, enables him to settle afterwards what penalty he shall pay for it. 



Letters from Lisbon and Madrid, in the absence of political information, 

 contain long accounts of the Bull fighting exhibitions of these capitals ; and, 

 in some instances, with strictures upon the character of the sport, more, 

 calculated to gratify the amour-propre of English readers, than founded 

 exactly in reasonableness or justice. 



All combats in which brute animals are compelled to take a part, have 

 that about them, no doubt, which should be offensive to a humane and 

 cultivated taste ; but such combats, nevertheless, have been popular with 

 the most highly civilized and cultivated nations ; and, of such combats, 

 the bull fights may certainly claim, we think, to be the best. 



If the ladies of Spain and Portugal attend the bull fights, it should be 

 recollected that the ladies of England, in the times of Elizabeth and 

 James the First, attended the bear-baits ; and these were bear -baits, not 

 of our modern and merciful character, but of a far more ferocious and san~ 

 guinary description. The following advertisement, for example, of Bar- 

 bage, who was " master of the bears" in the time of James the First, may- 

 serve to shew the nature of the delights which, not two centuries ago, 

 our own delicate dames were entertained with : 



" To-morrow, being Thursday, will be shewn, at the Bear-Gardens on the 

 Bankside, a great match, played by the gamesters of Essex, who have challenged 

 all comers whatever to play five dogs at a single bear for 51. Also; to worry a bull 

 dead at the stake. And, for their further content, visitors shall have pleasant sport 

 with the horse and ape, and the whipping the blinded bear." 



This " horse and ape" business consisted in strapping a large baboon 

 upon horseback, tying squibs to the horse's tail ; and turning a number of 

 mastiffs loose, both upon horse and ape, in an open ring. And it com- 

 monly concluded in the tearing to pieces of both the unhappy animals pur- 

 sued the dogs being as fiercely excited by the alarm of the horse, and hi* 



