146 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



discoveries, it cannot be claimed for medicine, that it is alto 

 gether above the charge of empiricism, or that it has yet accom 

 plished all that is to be desired in lessening the number or 

 alleviating the virulence of diseases, or in restoring human life, 

 with any confidence, to even a tithe of that longevity, which is 

 claimed for it in those patriarchal ages when apothecaries shops, 

 and medical schools, and degrees, do not appear to have been 

 established. It is scarcely better with the law. One of the most 

 distinguished legal gentlemen in England has lately stated, in his 

 place in Parliament, that such is the condition of the criminal law. 

 that even the most learned in the profession cannot, in many cases, 

 determine whether he is, by particular actions, committing an 

 offence or not. The records of the courts daily show that the 

 most momentous decisions often turn upon points the most 

 abstruse, and as yet absolutely unsettled ; that even the most 

 learned judges on the bench disagree in matters both of law and 

 equity, involving property and life ; and it seems but too often 

 the test of legal eminence and skill to ascertain, not whether it 

 be practicable to get &quot; a camel,&quot; but whether the lawyer can get 

 himself or his client, &quot; through the eye of a needle,&quot; as being the 

 most brilliant triumph of his art.* In theology, it cannot be said 



* In a recent trial, a brute in human shape, or rather a demoniac, for brutes 

 are not capable of actions so malicious, was indicted for wounding, maiming, 

 and injuring, a horse. He, it seems, in the fury of his passion, had drawn out the 

 tongue of the horse, and, by rubbing it against one of his teeth, had cut off four 01 

 five inches of it, which he threw at the horse s head. His counsel opposed the 

 indictment, on the ground that there could, as defined by law, be no wounding 

 but where some instrument was used ; but the tooth was not an instrument ; there 

 could be no maiming but where some limb was injured ; but the tongue was not a 

 limb ; and that there was no injury, because, though the horse found some diffi 

 culty in eating his oats, he was otherwise as useful for labor as before his tongue 

 was cut off. On these grounds the prosecution failed, and the savage escaped. 

 Under such an administration of justice, it would scarcely have been surprising, if 

 the horse, had he not lost his tongue, had himself spoken out ; and it would have 

 been only fair if he had been allowed to bite off the ears of the lawyer, and of a 

 magistrate who sanctioned such law. 



At a court of assizes which I attended, and where the criminal calendar was 

 heavy, a young married woman, of decent and respectable appearance, having a 

 husband and children, and against whose character, in other respects, nothing was 

 alleged, was sentenced to ten days solitary imprisonment, for having taken for her 

 fire, on the estate of a countess, near which her cottage stood, a stick of wood, 

 valued at threepence, from a tree that had been felled and partly cut up. If 

 the tree had not been cut down, and she had taken a piece as large, the act 



