1825.] 
It is at the king’s option to appoint 
whomsoever he will to hold this situa- 
tion. If he appoints an inefficient per- 
son, it is at his own risk: therefore care 
is always taken that the Sheriff is pos- 
sessed of sufficient property to cover 
his debts, which is consequently made 
answerable for that for which the king 
is himself held responsible : a solitary 
instance of a government, where one 
subject can in such case, be held bound 
for the debt of another; an instance, 
where the innocent party is made an- 
swerable, for what yet he has not the 
means to control. The Sheriff is the 
real debtor, after the prisoner has been 
once committed to his charge; and the 
Sheriff’s private solvency qualifies him 
for becoming a public debtor ! 
It may be argued, that he is only put 
upon the footing of a surety; but no such 
comparison will hold,—a surety being 
only bound for a certain sum, and that 
is generally considered to be at his own 
option; but, in what the Sheriff is 
bound for, there is neither certainty nor 
choice. 
Suppose it, again, to be a sort of 
fine upon the Sheriff, in case of neglect, 
and a provision against such; then we 
shall find the comparison wider of the 
mark than in the instance above-men- 
tioned. The fine is not imposed judi- 
cialy, but the amount is forcibly 
taken from a party wholly uncon- 
cerned—when the very circumstance 
of the debtor, having been given into 
the Sheriff’s custody, was of itself a 
sufficient acknowledgment of the inva- 
lidity of the debt. It is, therefore, 
neither a security nora fine; but one 
man is made Jiable, involuntarily and 
indefinitely, for the debt of another. 
There are many cases where this 
might be productive of the greatest 
evils ; where, by an ingeniously-con- 
trived collusion between parties, an 
insolvent debtor’s escape might be 
effected, for the purpose of getting the 
amount of a bad debt paid out of the 
purse of the High-Sheriff—supposing 
the Under-Sheriff or gaoler (always 
bound with the Sheriff) to be neither 
of them men of property. And how 
often does it happen, that both of them 
together are not worth a tenth part of 
the sums for which debtors under their 
charge are confined; and, as mankind 
are sometimes open to bribery, to whom 
could the Sheriff look for the safe cus- 
tody of those who are only nominally 
under his charge? 
(To be continued.) 
Office of Sheriff—Danish Traditions and Superstitions. 
411 
Danisu Trapirionsand SuPERSTITIONS. 
(Continued from No. 409, p+ 808.) 
The Changeling. 
HERE lived at Christiansoe a man 
and his wife, who, not having caused 
their child to be baptized, at the proper 
time, an elfin woman, who lived in a 
bank close by, took it away, and left 
her own in its place,*—which was so 
sickly and puny, that it would neither 
take meat nor drink, and would cer- 
tainly have died, had not its mother 
come by night and suckled it. As the 
man and his wife had much plague and 
trouble with this changeling, the wife, 
at last, thought of a way to get rid of it. 
Whereupon she called her servant-girl, 
and having told her what to do, she 
heated the oven as hot as she could. 
Then the servant cried aloud, in order 
that the elf-woman might hear her, 
“Why do you heat the oven, mistress?” 
To which the mistress replied: “ Be- 
cause intend to burn this plaguy child.” 
And when the girl had asked her the 
same question three times, and she had 
thrice given the same answer, she took 
the. changeling, and placed it on the 
bread-shoot, just as if she were going to 
shove it into the oven. Then came, in 
haste, the elfin woman, snatched her 
child from the bread-shoot, and return- 
ing the child she had formerly taken 
away, to its mother, she said, “ There 
is your child again: I have treated it 
much better than you have mine.” 
And, to say the truth, it looked plump, 
sleek and thriving. 
The Water-horse. 
One afternoon, several peasant chil- 
dren were playing by the Lake of Ager ; 
when, suddenly, a tall white horse arose 
from the water, and tumbled. about 
upon the meadows. The boys ran to 
look at it, and one of them at last 
mounted its back; but perceiving that 
the horse was then going to plunge with 
him into the lake, the boy, full of terror, 
exclaimed,— 
‘© Q, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, 
Deliver me straight from this fiendish horse.”’ 
And instantly it vanished from beneath 
him. 
( To be continued. } 
* The practice of changing their own 
imps for the unbaptized children of Chris- 
tian parents, is very common with the 
elves, not only of Denmark, but of the 
Scottish Highlands, where a thousand 
stories, very similar to the above, are 
related. 
3G 2 
THE 
