Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/484

 Rh dallions of the queen and Prince Albert, sur rounded by brilliants. This jewel was found by a porter, who received a reward of a hundred marks, but he contends that the article is worth considerably more than a thousand marks ($250), and he has brought an action against the cabinet of the empress in order to obtain a larger sum.

Liquor may be sold in the House of Commons without a license, the police magistrate having dismissed the summons against its bar-keeper. As the " Daily News " puts it : " If the House of Commons wants liquor, the House of Commons will have liquor, and all the courts in England cannot control the legislative power."

Daniel Ambrose, the colored postmaster of Pickens, Miss., was induced to make a will in which he bequeathed to a Mr. Pinkston the postoffice and " all appurtenances thereunto belong ing, to have and to hold during the lifetime of the said Pinkston."

A three-hundred-year-old lawsuit between the village of Burgsinn and the Lords of Thiingen, over the ownership of the Burgsinn common wood, has come to an untimely end by the Bam berg Supreme Court's giving final judgment for the village. A prisoner in Sydney, Australia, who was re cently sentenced to one year's imprisonment, asked the judge to make the sentence one year and one month. It seems that convicts sen tenced to a term of more than one year are en titled to a remission of two months and five clays for good conduct, while those sentenced for twelve months or under must serve their full terms. The following note of how criminals are made reaches us from a clergyman who has been con ducting a mission in one of her majesty's prisons. The prisoner's story, which is given in his own words, suggests that there is an aged as well as a juvenile offenders' problem, and it reminds us painfully of the harsh and hideous administration of justice which amateur magistrates too often indulge in : —

449

"I have been locked up three times. As long as I was in work I was never in trouble; then I got out of work, and everybody preferred putting on younger men. I was hungry — did you ever know, sir, what it was to be downright hungry? Well, I begged at a door. I knew it was wrong, but I begged, and I got locked up for it. When I came out, I said, ' I won't do that again.' So I got some leather and cut out a pair of boot laces, and tried to sell them. Then I got run in again for hawking without a license. When I came out, I said, ' I won't do that again.' And I walked and I walked, and could get no work, nor find food either. I was dead beat, and I lay down under a hedge — then I got locked up for sleeping out of doors." — London Chronicle.

CURRENT EVENTS. Ninety reporters are employed in the gallery of the House of Commons. The Liverpool docks, one of the wonders of modern commerce, extend along the Mersey a distance of six and a half miles. There are 230,000,000 copies of newspapers pub lished every month in the United States, and yet occasionally a new paper is started to supply a " longfelt want." That instrument called a " protocol," which stopped the war between the United States and Spain, derives its name from very ancient times. Like many other English words derived from other languages, " protocol " has long since lost its origi nal meaning. It is derived from the Greek " protos," meaning first, and "kollan," meaning glue; and meant originally a sheet glued in front of a manu script, bearing the writer's name and other particu lars. From this the meaning evolved into that of a rough draft of a document, and was so used by the Romans, who called it " protocolium." The defi nition of the word as used in modern diplomacy is given as a rough draft of any document or a docu ment preliminary to some transaction. It likewise is defined as "a diplomatic document or minute of pro ceeding signed by friendly powers in order to secure certain diplomatic ends by peaceful means." It is the meaning given before the last that must be applied to the instrument signed by Embassador Cambon and Secretary Day. This is a preliminary instrument created to secure peace at once, and is at the same time a rough draft of the probable future agreement.