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wards sought to assert his rights as owner and recover his "property." Montgomery secured Ralph's arrest by the sheriff of Dubuque county, and had started with him down the river in a steamboat. Mr. A. Butterworth obtained a writ of habeas corpus, upon which Ralph was brought before the District Court, whence, by consent of the parties, the case was at once taken to the Territorial Supreme Court. This case is given in full in a thin octave volume now very scarce, containing "Reports of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of Iowa from the Organization of the Territory in July, 1838, to December, 1839, inclusive, by Wm. J. A. Bradford, Reporter of the Su preme Court." It was also included in the later reports by Morris. The colored man's defence was conducted by David Rorer, who afterwards won high distinction as a lawyer and author. It was written long ago that "Slaves cannot breathe in England," and it would seem that the atmosphere of early Iowa was equally un friendly to that "peculiar institution," as it was called in those days. A few were held for a time—as the United States census of 1840 sets forth in Dubuque and Des Moines counties, but Iowa soil was never congenial to slavery and it soon disappeared. THE sale of the Indiana and Illinois to the Illinois Central .recalls an amusing story.When the Switz City division of the Illinois Central was built it was known as the In diana and Illinois Southern. It was a nar row-gauge road; the roadbed was bad; the engines and cars were built on a miniature scale, and while there had been a schedule, had a train been on time the fact would have been regarded as a miracle. The road was known as the "Try-Weekly." About twenty years ago Josiah M>cConnell desired to go to Switz City from Sullivan, but missed the train by a minute or two. The clock at the station showed that the train had left Sul livan five minutes ahead of time, and McConnell sued the railroad company for $5,000 damages. On a trial of the case, it

was proved beyond a doubt that the train McConnell missed should have gone the day before, and was really 23 hours and 55 min utes late.—Xav York Commercial. IN England, from the earliest times, the facts in civil matters, as well as in criminal charges have been without intermission de termined by juries. In Scotland also, down to the sixteenth century, the assizes dealt in a perfunctory way not only with crime, but with matters of civil right; but, upon the institution of the Court of Session in 1532, this branch of jury trial was entirely elim inated, and for nearly 300 years trial by jury was almost entirely confined to crime. In 1815 an attempt was made to reintroduce into 'Scotland jury trial in civil causes, but it has never been very successful, and the determination of the facts by evidence led before a single judge, or before a court pf judges, is still permitted and preferred, in many cases where it is necessary to place these facts before a jury.— The Lam Times. THE Balkan crisis is likely to revive that almost insoluble problem of international morality, as to whether intervention in the internal affairs of one State by other States on humanitarian grounds for the prevention of cruelty and wrong can properly be under taken. As international public law professes to deal solely with the relation of States to each other, and as such immoral acts of a particular State in its internal dealings with its own subjects as result in massacres, bru talities, and religious persecutions do not fall within the scope of such relations, many contend that the right of intervention cannot be legally invoked for their redress or re pression. . . . Interventions for the purpose of putting an end to religious persecutions within civilized States are not generally sanctioned by publicists. They seem, how ever, to be regarded as legitimate when em ployed by Europe as a means of protecting Christians within the limits of the Orient, upon the general ground that the Eastern •Question constitutes an exception—a case apart.—The Law Times.