to himself and other officers; proposed to liberate the ship, on condition that Captain Glover would certify that he was not plundered or treated improperly, which was at first refused, but afterwards, for obvious reasons, complied with and, for the same reasons, a Mr. Hardens, a passenger on board, being compelled, added his certificate of the truth of the fact. After this his papers were returned to Captain Glover. He was permitted to proceed to Baltimore having been detained 28 hours and the ship carried from Sharp's Island to Point Lookout. So daring a transaction as the pirated seizure of the Othello almost within the port of Baltimore, excited considerable alarm among the merchants, who had property afloat and expected to arrive or which they were about despatching to sea, and high indignation among the citizens here in general. Thus excited, it was resolved to arrest the further depredations of the pirate, two or three vessels were accordingly provided for the purpose, manned by our volunteer companies and proceeded down the bay in succession. The vessel which succeeded in capturing the piratical schooner was called the Volunteer, having on board a detachment of two companies of the Independent and Baltimore. United Volunteers, the companies commanded by the brothers Samuel and Joseph Sterrett, but the schooner Volunteer under the direction of Captain Porter of the navy. On approaching near to the pirate, a boat was seen to leave her with four men, and make for the shore; the boat was fired on but affected a landing. At this time, the piratical vessel hoisted French colors, which she soon lowered and when taken possession of had but three men on board, the others who escaped in the boat were afterwards found on board the French ship Patriot and politely delivered up, five others were afterwards arrested near Annapolis and the whole, in number 12, were imprisoned in this city. The the Ist of September, the pirates were brought before Judge Houston, district judge of the United States, who took the deposition of Mr. Harden, a passenger on board the Othello, and decided the crime for which the prisoners were in custody was committed within the jurisdiction of the State and, consequently, the courts of the United States had no cognizance of it, grounding his decision, it is presumed, on the 8th section of "An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States" in the wording, viz.: "If any person or persons shall commit, upon high seas or in any river, haven, bay, or basin, out of the jurisdiction of any particular State, murder, or robbery, or any other of fence, which, if committed within the body of a country, would by the laws of the United States be punished with death," etc. The prisoners were turned over to the custody of the sheriff of Baltimore County by a City Magistrate and Calvert County being nearest to the place where the crime was committed, it was expected the court of that county could alone try the prisoners. The attorney general of the State is said to have since reported that the judges of the court of Calvert, hearing the case of the prisoners, gave a decided opinion, that the crime being committed on the Chesapeake Bay, the court of Calvert county could not take cognizance of it and the Criminal court of this city, who could not-touch the offence, proceeded on this report, to liberate the prisoners. "There would seem to have existed considerable difficulty in this case. Samuel Chase, the associate justice of the Supreme Court, U. S., is understood to have coincided in opinion with Justice Houston. J. T. Chase is the Chief of Calvert County, respectable as a man and eminent as a lawyer. The counties of this State are all bounded by and do not run into the bay. What must have been the case if our late general courts, one for either shore, still existed, I cannot venture to say; but, lately, the general courts were put down and all original common law and criminal jurisdiction vested in county courts, and, if the counties themselves do not run into the bay, how can the courts of any county hold pleas of a crime committed thereon? An old counsellor at law has mentioned to me that a case occurred of a robbery and murder committed by persons named Robins and Davenport on a John DeCoursi, in the year 1788 in the bay of Chesapeake, that the perpetrators being apprehended in Queen Anne's, they were there held to answer to two distinct indictments; one for murder, which, on account of doubts then existing as to jurisdiction, was never tried; the other for robbery, on this last, with no little hesitation, they were tried, convicted, hung. The trial in this case for the robbery may have preceded and been maintained on the ground of the stolen property being found on the prisoners, which in cases of larceny, the asportation of property, is held to be a continuance and repetition of the offence. The last is supposition only, and perhaps it was not a correct principle in the particular case. My informant added that the case mentioned gave rise to a law of Md. of Nov. session 1789, chapter 22 providing for cases of murder when the stroke was given on the bay and the death happened on the shore and the reverse. This last is said to have been considered in the reasoning of the judges on the case in question to apply on the principle of expressio unius exclusio alterius, but I don't know this and cannot discover where the report mentioned of our attorney general can be had." M. A PAIR OF EARS. From the French of Philibert Audebrand by MARY J. SAFFOrd. ALFRED NAQUET might have added this document to his file of papers advocating divorce. The incident occurred in the clerk's office of the Palais de Justice, where all sorts of things are deposited, stolen articles, corpus delicti, and objects tending to prove criminality. Last April, a young lawyer, with lorgnon raised to his eyes, was amusing himself by examining this judicial bric-a-brac. He went from brass watches to revolvers, silver snuff-boxes to burglars' tools, plunging like the youth in the old tale, into a gulf of philosophical reflections. Suddenly he noticed in a sort of velvet case, two singular objects, round, flat, very peculiar in form, and brown in color. They looked like India-rubber or parchment. "What are those?" he asked, turning to a young clerk who was acting as guide. "Why! Don't you see that they are ears?" "Ears of what?" "Ears of a man." "Certainly, cut off." "With what? A sabre? A knife? A razor?" "A Catalonian poniard." Then, drawing a steel blade from a leather sheath, he added: "Here is the instrument by which the aforesaid ears were amputated." The words evidently referred to some drama. Curious, like all men of his age, the young lawyer stopped and questioned his guide: "A tragical adventure! Oh, my dear sir, pray tell me about it!" "Very well! It isn't a long story." "So much the worse!" "Don't interrupt me. About three months ago, just at the close of winter, a strange affair occurred in an elegant villa near Sceaux, occupied by Comte de S. with his young wife, an extremely pretty woman, with whom he was desperately in love. You have divined that he was an Othello under the mask of a man of fashion?" "No, I knew nothing about him." "A Bengal tiger could be no worse. One evening, late in January, he returned front Paris by the railway, his feet half benumbed by the cold, and his eyes smarting from the glare of the snow, and dashed into the villa without ringing or knocking, like a hurricane, going straight to his wife's room. Do you know what he saw there?" "Aha! Here's the key of the drama. What did he see?" "A very good looking young man who seemed to be pressing the countess's hand." "The deuce!" "Not doubting that it was some admirer, he rushed to the weapons decorating the wall, snatched this dagger and, in less time than it requires to tell it, cut off the stranger's ears." "Ye gods of heaven and earth! Both of them!" "Those are the articles you see so carefully preserved in that case. Justice keeps them as evidence of criminality." "But the young wife?" "Wait! The fair countess exclaimed, 'My dear, you are mistaken! My dear, monsieur is a stranger! My dear, you have cut off one ear; spare the other, I beseech you!' But you know tigers are always still more infuriated by the sight of blood. Besides, the more his young wife tried to soothe him, the more he imagined that she was in league with the visitor. He did not stop till both ears were hacked off." "Well, what was the fellow doing there?" "I'll tell you. Did you ever read a story by Balzac, called Message? A young man. is accused by a friend of carrying a letter to a young married woman. Except for the existence of a secret love, the situation was identical. The stranger who called at the villa near Sceaux, was bringing a message, a letter from a boarding-school friend, which by chance he handed to her just at the moment Othello appeared on the scene. You know the rest." "A mistake!" "Yes, but the young man, as you may suppose, will not let matters rest there. As Comte de S. cannot give back his ears, he intends to make him pay damages. Complaint has been brought, with a demand for valuation to serve as a basis for estimating the damages, which will not be less than two hundred thousand francs." "What are you saying? A hundred thousand francs apiece. Come, that's pretty dear!" "Would you give yours for that sum?" "No, of course not; but that isn't the question. We are wandering from the drama. Permit me to return to it. What was the message sent by one boarding-school friend to the other? It must be known. The examination would not fail to reveal it." "The examination did reveal it, since the message was opened and read. The young beauty in Paris wrote to her schoolmate in Sceaux: I have just consulted Dr. Z. whom all the young women in Paris are questioning about their complexions. I generously send you his prescription: If you want to have a fresh complexion throughout the year, bathe your face daily, during the month of May, every morning, with dandelion juice. Alice Z.'" "What! Has dandelion juice been the cause of a jealous husband's cutting off an innocent man's ears and making the Palais de Justice echo with the absurd lawsuit?" "As you see, monsieur." The young lawyer, smiling, left the room repeating the two philosophical lines by Voltaire: Oh, Jupiter, it was a bitter jest W THE JUDICIAL HISTORY OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY. III. BY VAN VECHTEN VEEDER, Of the New York Bar. E now come to the greatest stain upon the judicial annals of England-the trials connected with the Popish Plot of 1678 and its counterblast, the Rye House Plot, five years later. It can hardly be said that no plot existed in 1678. The Jesuits were undoubtedly striving to restore Catholicism, and were probably not particular as to the means by which that result should be accomplished. But it is now certain that no such plot as Titus Oakes proclaimed ever existed. Of Oates, the chief promoter of the prosecutions which ensued, Scroggs for once told no more than the base truth when he called him "the blackest and most perjured villain that ever appeared on the face of the earth." But Lord Shaftesbury and the Whigs must bear a large measure of blame for their political activity in magnifying the plot. The plot would probably have died a natural death but for the discovery of Coleman's letters and the murder of the magistrate Godfrey, which gave some color to Oates' story. As it was, Oates, Bedloe and 'their villainous associates, with the aid of an equally infamous bench, sacrificed the lives of fourteen Catholics, beginning with Coleman and ending with Lord Stafford. Their trials are reported in the sixth and seventh volumes of the State Trials. Space will not permit of more than a hasty examination. Only Wakeman and Stafford defended themselves with any degree of force; Langhorn, the barrister, lost his head completely. Coleman's conviction was a foregone conclusion; Scroggs directed the jury that the prisoner's letters were sufficient evidence of treason. Ireland, Pickering and Grove were convicted upon the testimony of Oates and Bedloe. Even Scroggs was forced to admit that the evidence against Whitebread was insufficient, and the acquittal of Wakeman, Gascoigne and Castlemaine demolished the plot. Lord Stafford was the last victim. Lord Nottingham presided at his impeachment. Maynard, Winnington and Treby appeared. for the prosecution. Wallop and Saunders acted as counsel for the prisoner on ques. tions of law, but their craven conduct led Nottingham to command them to speak up. "You have the protection of the court," he told them, "for the counsel you give in matter of law, and whatever advice you give you should maintain by the law." Objection was made to having the prisoner's counsel stand even within prompting distance of him, and Stafford defended himself as best he could. "My lords," was his pathetic plea, "these things being such great afflictions to me, and some other accidents which I shall not trouble your lordships with teiling you of, have so much disordered my sense and reason (which before was little) that I scarce know how to clear myself to your lordships as I ought to do, or which way to go about the doing of it; therefore, I do with all humility beg your lordships' pardon if I say anything that may give an offense, or urge that which may not be to the purpose. All which I desire that you would be pleased to attribute to the true cause, my want of understanding, not of innocency or a desire to make it appear." The three chief witnesses against Stafford were Oates, Dugdale and Turberville. The first swore that Stafford had brought him a commission, signed by the pope, as paymaster of the army to be raised against the king; the second, that Stafford had offered him £500 to kill the king; the third, that Stafford had promised to reward |