408 Letter on Affairs in general. 



town consumer, I tliink it is almost certain setting aside the additional 

 economy, induced by his having safety on his side through all the dealing 

 that the proprietor of game, shooting it by himself, and by his servants, 

 on his own manor, would be able to undersell the poacher who robbed him 

 of it, in open market. 



CONNUBIAL TREACHERY! A criminal trial, of a very singular descrip- 

 tion, came on last week, in the High Couit of Justiciary of Edinburgh. An 

 old woman, named Marian Brown, was indicted for compassing and con- 

 triving thr death of her husband, Thomas Graham, by hanging him up 

 by the neck with intent to kill, &c. white he was asleep. It appeared 

 that the man, being half intoxicated, and the woman herself, probably, 

 either intoxicated or mad, she had actually twisted a rope round his neck, 

 as he sat asleep in a chair; tied him to a beam ; drawn the chair from 

 under him ; and gone away, leaving him suspended. The jury found the 



Soor wretch guilty; but recommended her to mercy probably from a 

 oubt as to her sanity : she was seventy -two years of age. There had 

 been no recent quarrel ; but the husband would undoubtedly have died, 

 but for the accidental coming in of a neighbour, who cut him down. On 

 being brought to himself, and questioned, he complained " that his neck 

 was sore ;'" but had no knowledge whatever of the accident that had hap- 

 pened to him. 



BON-MOT OF THE LATE DB. KITCQINER. As the German Count 

 C* * * * *, was walking down St. JamesVstreet the other day, in a pair of 

 remarkably large trowsers, he ran against the Doctor, who was just going 

 into Brookes's. " Who is that ?'' said Dr. K. to a friend whom he met on 

 the steps. " I forgot his name ; but he's a foreign officer one of the 

 marshals," said the other. " Marshal Sacks (Saxe), \ should think, 

 then," was the Doctor's reply. 



I was speaking a little way back, upon the value of " character. 1 ' No 

 doubt it is a precious jewel ; but I think our nicety (as legislators) about 

 protecting it is sometimes carried rather too far. As, for instance, in a late 

 action for Libel, tried in the Court of Common Pleas, where a Jew bailiff 

 prosecuted some poor rogue whom he had arrested, or endeavoured to 

 arrest ; and who took revenge for the act, or attempt for I forget which 

 it was by writing a copy of verses upon him. In this case, the Lord 

 Chief Justice is reported to have told the jury, that " they ought to find 

 a verdict for the plaintiff," (by the way, they found for the defendant) 

 '* because the lampoon was calculated to injure* and to bring him into 

 ridicule." Now, really, I think to decide that every act shall be a 

 crime, which tends to bring a person, who is at once both a Jew and a 

 bailiff, into ridicule, is a little severe. The same failing, or weakness, may 

 be fairly imputed to one man, which could not be charged without malice 

 of another. As, for example, if I should say of a scavenger " that he 

 savoured not of amber;" of a stock-jobber that " east of St. Paul's 

 church-yard, I never believed a word of foreign news that he spoke;" 

 or, of an attorney, that I never believed, in any place at all, a word of 

 any thing that he spoke ; none of these declarations (as it seems to me) 

 could fairly be construed by the parties concerned into an affront. The 

 fault or the misfortune lies, not in the man, but in his calling. I recol- 

 lect a case of an indictment in the King's Bench, brought to abate a 

 nuisance. The complaint was, of a horrible smell that the defendant pro- 

 duced over all the neighbourhood, by making gas. A number of persons 



