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returned, the foreman solemnly declaring that they found the prisoner guilty. "I thought I told you," said the recorder, "that you were not to try the case." The foreman, -"We thought it a particular case and we have gone minutely into the whole evidence, and we find the prisoner guilty on both charges." The recorder, after some observations to the grand jury on their wasting everybody's time, proceeded to try the case, when the petty jury acquitted the man on one count, and the prosecution offered no evidence on the other. The grand jury, who had waited to learn the result, were heard, as they retired, to give vent to their indignation and mortification in somewhat strong language.

A SCENE AT THE CHESTER ASSIZES. An occurrence perhaps without a parallel was witnessed at the close of the assizes at Chester, of which the Manchester Guardian gives the following account :—

Mary Lancaster, thirty-three, was indicted for the manslaughter of her husband, John Lancaster, at Birkenhead. The deceased had long led the prisoner a wretched life; and on the 13th of September he came home drunk, and kicked over the meat which she was preparing for his dinner. He then thrashed her, and in a passion the prisoner threw at him a sharpening steel, and caused his death. The prisoner was a hard-working woman, and, in spite of her husband's brutal treatment of her, had done her best to make his home comfortable. The jury found the prisoner guilty. Mr. Justice Brett, addressing the prisoner, then said: I believe that if I thought it right to act according to your own feelings, I should say nothing about this unhappy husband of yours. As far as I can see, you were a respectable, hard-working, well-behaved wife, and I feel bound to say a greater brute than your husband was I have seldom heard of. There are circumstances in the depositions even worse than those which have been brought forward. They show that, even on the very last day you were together, you were doing all you could to make his home comfortable, and to make him happy. With a brutality which made me shudder when I read it, he cast away that which you had prepared for him. He has been beating and ill-treating you for months, probably for years; and it is nothing but the tenderness and forgiveness of the woman and wife which prevented you from having him punished for crimes he committed against you time after time. It is only when he had driven you to desperation by ill-treating you the whole day, and I dare say was on the point of ill-treating you again, that you, in a moment of passion, took up a formidable weapon and threw it at him, I believe, without the intention of striking him. It did strike him, and you immediately ran for assistance, and did all you could to save him. All the real right in this case was on your side; all the real wrong on your husband's; and God forbid that I should punish you! I will be no party to it; I will not even make this judgment complete; I will not allow it to be said by anybody that you are a convicted felon [hear, hear], - for a conviction is not complete until a sentence is passed, and I mean to pass no sentence at all. [Loud cheering, which for some time the officials of the court vainly endeavored to suppress.] I shall merely ask you to enter into your own recognizance to come up for judgment if called upon, and nobody in the world will ever call upon you, - God forbid they ever should! [Renewed cheering, during which the prisoner left the dock.]

USAGE.

The case of Achard v. Ring, tried recently by the Lord Chief Justice, presented a novelty, inasmuch as it was decided that a custom upon which former decisions had been based was a fiction, and had never existed.

The plaintiff, as charterer, sued the ship-owners for a general average loss to cargo, caused by scuttling the ship to extinguish a fire which had broken out in the cargo. The text-books, and the presumed practice of adjusters, were in accord in establishing that "where the degree of danger is so great that it amounts to a moral certainty of total loss," no general average arises. It had been previously admitted in a special case submitted to the Court of Queen's Bench (Stewart v. Pacific and West Indian Marine Insurance Company, 30 L. T. Rep. N. s. 742; L. Rep. 8 Q. B. 362), that a valid custom prevailed at Lloyd's, excluding from general average damage to cargo by pouring water down the hatches to extinguish a fire. Upon that custom alone, having regard to the terms of the bill of lading the Exchequer Chamber affirmed the decision of the Court of Queen's Bench in favor of the defendant It is hardly possible to suppose that any difference can have been made by adjusters between scuttling and pouring water down the hatches; and consequently it must be now taken that Stewart's case was decided upon a custom which had no existence. But on this trial of Achard v. Ring, the jury found that there was no custom excluding from general average damage by scuttling to put out a fire; and, in fact, the evidence only proved that instances of such losses were extremely

rare.

FOREIGN MARRIAGE.

BEFORE VICE-CHANCELLOR SIR R. MALINS. In re Alison's Trusts. This case possessed some unusual features, and involved the question of the legality of a marriage in Persia. The petitioner, Vardine Rafael, had been the mistress of Mr. Charles Alison, the late British minister at Teheran, in Persia. At his death he left her enceinte, and bequeathed to her, as recompense, about £7000. Very soon after this a marriage was arranged between her and a Mr. Ongly, a relative of Mr. Alison, and British Vice-Consul at Teheran. She had been baptized in the Armenian Church, her mother being Armenian, and her father Italian. No Armenian priest would celebrate the marriage, it being contrary to the law of that church to perform the ceremony with the woman in that condition. Accordingly they were married by a Roman Catholic priest, she having confessed and received absolution. The young woman came to England to claim her legacy, which had been paid into court, and she petitioned for it as a feme sole, on the ground that the marriage was invalid. The chief clerk found in favor of the marriage, but the Vice-Chancellor now reversed the decision. He said that the evidence showed that the petitioner was not a Roman Catholic, and that the marriage was invalid by the Armenian law. To render it valid as a Roman Catholic marriage, both parties must be Roman Catholics, which clearly was not the case here. It was at one time believed that the marriage of a British subject, which was valid in any country, was also valid in England; but since Brook v. Brook (9 H. L. C. 193), it seemed that this was not a correct view. He therefore decided that there was incapacity on the part of the woman to contract marriage in Persia, and as Ongly had not taken measures to marry according to English law, the marriage was invalid. He added that the transaction was discreditable to all the parties concerned.

IN the Shoreditch County Court the case of Lidstone v. Churchill was tried, resulting in a verdict for the defendant.

This was a suit for £18 15s., the price of three hundred copies of a work called "The 20th Londoniad, giving a full Description of the Principal Establishments in the Capital of England, &c., also containing Pieces on Celebrated Personages, &c., forming altogether Episodes in a Grand National Poem on the Arts."

The plaintiff stated that he was an author, and that he published in the Londoniad advertisements in rhyme of the goods supplied by various wholesale houses, taking payment in subscriptions for the work. Some months since he solicited and obtained from the defendant, an order for a page of advertisement in rhyme in the forthcoming edition of the book; and the defendant was to subscribe for three hundred copies of it, which (the plaintiff admitted) he expected the defendant would distribute among his trade connection. The advertisement in rhyme was duly inserted; and, when the book was printed, three hundred copies were delivered at the defendant's warehouse. On being asked for payment some time afterwards, the defendant refused, and said the plaintiff might have all the books back again.

The case for the defendant was that his business was entirely that of an agent for certain manufacturers of American machinery, that he was himself an American subject, and that the plaintiff was well aware of this when he took his order; that the work contained numerous attacks on Americans and American goods, conveyed in very violent and coarse language, and for this reason the defendant was quite unable to distribute the three hundred copies delivered. He swore that the books and the advertisement were perfectly useless to him, and that he would rather have paid a large sum than have even his name appear in connection with the abuse of American traders which the book contained. The plaintiff was cross-examined on the contents of the book, which, besides the matters above mentioned, had in it a great variety of satirical" comments upon the royal family, many of the judges, the late Lord Mayor, County Court officials, &c. He admitted that he had written the whole.

WE quote from the Law Times the following account of a matter which will be of interest from the name of the author involved therein:

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THACKERAYANA. The law of copyright has had a fresh illustration upon a question of more than ordinary difficulty in the case of Smith v. Chatto, which came before Vice-Chancellor Hall, on the 18th inst., for hearing. Upon an interlocutory motion, the plaintiff applied for an injunction to restrain Messrs. Chatto and Wood from publishing, selling, or advertising for sale a work call Thackerayana. From the evidence it appears that at a sale consequent upon the death of the late Mr. Thackeray in 1865, Mr. John Camden Hotten, bought several books which had belonged to the novelist from his school days, as well as some sketches and caricatures drawn by Mr. Thackeray. In 1874, Mr. Thackeray's next of kin and legal representatives (his two daughters) sold the copyright in all their father's published and unpublished works, drawings, caricatures, and other productions, to the plaintiff and William King. The defendants succeeded to the business of Mr. Hotten a short while ago, and soon advertised the above work as "Thackerayana. Notes and Anecdotes, illustrated by nearly six hundred sketches, by William Makepeace Thackeray.”

The book contained many extracts from Mr. Thackeray's writings, together with the above sketches. For the plaintiffs it was contended that the extracts were so long as to amount to piracy, and that the defendants had no right to publish any of the drawings. On the latter point no case was made out, and defendants' counsel accordingly confined themselves to the question of piracy, and argued that the quotations were fair, as they were introduced simply as frames to the pictures. Mr. Thackeray had in his writings sketched his own career; that career it was intended to illustrate. As to the title, they urged that no one could suppose it to refer to a work by Thackeray any more than the word "Johnsoniana" refers to a work by Johnson. In granting an interim injunction, Vice-Chancellor Hall made some important observations upon the law of piracy. The question for decision was whether "the portions of the plaintiffs' work so taken by the defendants were in themselves calculated to produce a profit to them, as distinguished from such parts of their own work as might be profitable, considering it as a whole, and original." The true test of this is not the quantity of matter taken. The learned judge quoted with approbation the decision of Lord Hatherley in Scott v. Stanford (L. Rep. 3 Eq. 722; 16 L. T. Rep. N. s. 551), where the dictum of Mr. Justice Story in Folsom v. Marsh is accepted as a statement of the law. The case of Wilkins v. Aikin (17 Ves. 422) was also quoted by his Honor as one of the earliest decisions on the subject. In that case Lord Eldon says, "There is no doubt that a man cannot, under the pretence of quotation, publish either the whole or part of another's work, though he may use, what is in all cases difficult to define, fair quotation. . . . The question upon the whole is whether this is a legitimate use of the plaintiff's publication in the fair exercise of a mental operation, deserving the character of an original work." The crucial test in the present case was the object of the defendants in inserting the extracts. Had they inserted them with the view of increasing the value of their work by rendering it more amusing to the public? The Vice-Chancellor thought they had done so, and accordingly granted an injunction. The difficulty of defining what is a fair quotation is very evident; but no one can dispute the justice of this decision. Where quotations go to the substance of a work, as logicians might say, the quotation cannot possibly be fair.

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OBLITERATIONS ON A WILL. In the Court of Probate, Dec. 2, before Sir J. Hannen, the following question was presented In re Horsford: The will propounded was contained on four pages, with a continuation on a fifth page. It was duly signed and witnessed; but over certain parts of the will strips of paper had been pasted, and on some of these the testator had written various bequests. It is clear," said the court, "that the words so written on the strips of paper must follow the fate of ordinary alterations, and that in the absence of evidence showing when they were made, it must be presumed that they were added after the execution of the will." But the novel question arose, whether these strips now to be treated as though blank were to be considered as obliterations of the passages under them, and the will was to be admitted to probate excluding the words so covered. The court held that the only method for inspecting the obliterated parts was with the aid of glasses, and that if the testator adopted an unusual mode, if it were effectual it must be respected. In an earlier case, where obliterations were made with ink, such words as could be perceived through it were allowed to stand, but no chemical means were resorted to in order to remove the obscuring ink. The 21st section of the Statute of Wills provided that no alteration should be valid,

except so far as the words of the will before such alteration should not be apparent. In this case, so long as the strips of paper were undisturbed, the words beneath were not apparent, and the obliteration, though in an unusual form, was effective. In regard to a codicil annexed in this case the matter was different. The amount of the legacy was covered over, but the name of the legatee remained. Hence he inferred that the testator meant to strike out this bequest only in case he had succeeded in substituting others; and as the court was at liberty to try to ascertain the original design of the testator, obviously the readiest way was to remove the strip of paper. This was ordered to be done, and probate was granted of the instrument otherwise unaltered.

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