Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/348

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Published Monthly, at $3.00 per annum.

BagSingle numbers, 35 cents.

Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, 15^ Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetia, anecdotes, etc.

upon a variance between the affidavit and the indictment, because in the latter the word " un derstood " was written " undertood," omitting the letter " s." In view of such cases it becomes difficult to convince one of the truth of the maxim, De minimis non curat lex.

THE GREEN BAG. IN " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," by John Ashton, the author quotes from "A Comical View of London and Westminster," as follows : " Young Barristers troop down to Westminster at nine, — peep in at the Common Pleas, talk over the news, and so, with their Green Bags, that have as little in them as their noddles, go home again." Mr. Ashton then continues : "We not only note in this quotation that the law yers carried green bags, but we find in contem porary literature frequent allusions to their bags, which certainly had been of the same color ever since Charles II.'s time, and so continued until the reign of George III." The book referred to was published in London in 1883; and its learned author is, perhaps, as good an authority in the matter as the " London Law Journal," which still persists that green bags were not carried by lawyers.

Apropos of the item in our April number concerning technical objections taken to vari ance between indictments and proofs, a New York correspondent calls our attention to the following cases : In The King v. Hart, Leach Cas. vol. i. p. 159, exception was taken upon the ground that there was a fatal variance, in an indictment charging the defendant with forgery, because the forged instrument, a draft, read "value recieved, and placed the same to account of," etc., while in the indictment it was written "value received," etc. In The King v. Beach, Leach Cas. vol. i. p. 159, the defendant having been convicted of perjury in swearing, in an affidavit, that "he understood and believed," a motion for an arrest of judgment was founded

A Pennsylvania subscriber favors us with the following: —Editor of the " Green Bag" : Sir, — Your disgusted layman seems to have got the " valedictory " of Lord Eldon wrongly stated, or has confused a remark of some other judge with one that Eldon really made. Lord Eldon did say, in sentencing a man to death for uttering counterfeit money, something like " It is to be hoped that in your future abode you will pay more respect to your obligations than you have to the integrity of the currency of this land," abstaining from definitely locating the '-future abode." It was apropos of this remark of Eldon's that his famous brother, Lord Stowell, made one of the few very witty remarks ascribed to him, which has unfortunately slipped my memory. Cannot some of your readers recall it? The conjunction of two such famous men as the brothers John and William Scott, rising from very humble positions to those of such commanding height, is one of the most remarkable in the histories of public men, and all the more striking in the total dissimilarity of the men, — Eldon slow, cautious, and conversative; Stowell quick, unhesitating, and pro gressive; Eldon contributing nothing to the law it self, merely defining and elucidating; Stowell the creator of the whole of the present system of Ad miralty law. Of the two, Stowell has always struck me as much the greater man, yet of lesser fame. M. M. M. Another correspondent calls attention to a much-needed reform. Editor of the " Green Bag" : I have read with much interest the timely criticism of Judge Thompson on the defects in the head-notes affixed to the opinions of the courts by the official reporters, and I most earnestly hope that this criti cism may have the good effect of inaugurating a