216 NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



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anomalies in law which so often render the administration of justice in 

 our legal courts a very lugubrious affair, has just occurred. Mr. Gee, 

 whose extraordinary abduction and subsequent ill-treatment made 

 such an uproar in the papers lately, sought reparation against his 

 cagers by a criminal prosecution. He failed, though the guilt of the 

 defendants was as palpable as a metropolitan fog. Mr. Gee was 

 compelled to sign a paper, which (the merest casualty prevented it 

 being converted into money) went to deprive him of 800/. This the 

 judges held, and no doubt it was good law, to be no robbery, inas- 

 much as Mr. Gee had not the money in his possession, and therefore 

 could not be deprived of what he did not possess. All objections to 

 this decision on the part of Mr. Gee's counsel were overruled by the 

 Bench. The indictment then went on to state that threats were 

 used, with a view to extort legal securities from Mr. Gee, to the 

 amount upwards of a thousand pounds ; but here again the genius 

 of technicality stepped in, and set aside the matter of fact, as it 

 appeared that the plunderers actually did procure possession of the 

 securities in question. Many other circumstances, equally at variance 

 with common sense, added to the solemnity of this farce, and de- 

 monstrated, beyond all question, that law and justice are any thing 

 but synonymous. And yet there are not wanting those who say 

 that English legislation is the perfection of reason. How to account 

 for it is not our duty, but it is certainly very singular that we never 

 hear of convictions for political offences failing through informalities 

 of indictments. 



LOOK AT HOME ! An edict has lately been passed in one of the 

 minor German states, making it a capital felony to cause the de- 

 struction of a nightingale. This promulgation of the Fatherlanders 

 would make every peasant in Sussex or Devonshire grin with con- 

 tempt upon the boors that could submit to receive such a mandate 

 with equanimity. But did it never strike our self-complaisant coun- 

 trymen, who chaunt " Britons never shall be slaves," and starve at 

 the plough tail for sixpence a day, that, if there be an injustice in 

 sentencing men to death for killing a bird, the sweetness of whose 

 song beguiles the poor man's lassitude, that there is something worse 

 in the laws that consign an individual to banishment for knocking a 

 hare on the head. The English gentry and nobility incessantly 

 exalt themselves and their virtues by deploring the rudeness and un- 

 couth barbarism of the peasantry, without ever taking into consi- 

 deration how far instrumental their own acts have been in producing 

 the antithesis of civilization. " What remains," says Dr. Knox, in 

 his Moral Essays, " among us of savageness and brutality is chiefly 

 preserved by the mean and selfish greediness of those who possess a 

 thousand peculiar advantages, and who yet meanly contend for an 

 exclusive right to destroy the game, that usufructuary property of 

 which the Creator intended to be possessed by the first occupant, 

 like the air, light, arid water." But as if those iniquitous enactments 

 were insufficient to monopolize all enjoyment for the wealthy, at the 

 sacrifice of the poor in this respect, the same system is pursued in 

 every other, from the Sabbath bills of the Agnews and Poulters, and 



