Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/574

 546

The Green Bag

proved at the London Maritime Con ference held last year, furnishing new

deﬁnitions of contraband of War. Sim ply to mention this is to indicate a ﬁeld for the most fruitful effort of future Hague conferences.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW

permit of his being imprisoned at all. So the sinner was recalled and his sentence commuted by a lenient bench to a mere ﬁne. “I do not know," said Robinson, _]’.P., to himself, "which I ﬁnd more tiresome, the interference of magistrates’ clerks or the incompetence of the law. Next time I will have my go." The next item was a “drunk and disorderly," and the bench prepared itself to deal with this in its most judicial manner. This time,

S an illustration of some of the absurdities of conﬁding the ad

however, the Clerk was consulted ﬁrst as to the maximum sentence; which done, the

ministration of police courts to persons

utmost silence was commanded throughout the court and sentence thus delivered:—— "Prisoner at the bar, you have committed one of the most serious and most dastardly oﬁenses a man may commit. You have been guilty of one of the worst crimes possible against your country, your borough, your family and yourself. Justice must exert, unremitting, its every eﬁort to suppress you and your abandoned kind, that so the state may be rid of its most dangerous enemy. I sentence you to twenty-one days‘ im prisonment with hard labor; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul l"

ignorant of the law, the following may be nothing more than a burlesque on conditions in England. Such a Justice

of the Peace as Robinson, we fancy, would be more typical of the conditions of a couple of generations ago than of today. Yet, doubtless, some of the class survive. We copy from Punch: When Arthur John Robinson, Esquire, was made a borough ].P., and appointed to sit and dispense judgment in a court of sum mary jurisdiction, he determined to do the thing properly. So, before his ﬁrst appearance on the bench, he attended all the accessible assize courts and studied with great attention the methods of the Judges of the High Court. Particularly was he impressed with their manner of sentencing convicted murderers, but not so impressed as to doubt that he could do it as well himself, when occasion

arose. The ﬁrst matter with which he was called upon to deal was a charge of theft, a ﬁrst offense and not a very ambitious one at that. Bearing himself with great dignity and de corum, he discussed the sentence with the Magistrates‘ Clerk, and suggested a longish term of penal servitude. But the Clerk, who knew not only his business but also his limitations, tactfully pointed out that the most that could be done for the prisoner by that court was three months’ hard. The next case was a summons against a father for not sending his child to school, for which offense Robinson, ].P., without con sulting anybody, ordered him to be imprisoned in the second division for six months. But the Clerk arose again, and declared in a useful whisper that, though the father deserved every day of his sentence, the law did not

MORE EVIDENCE REQUIRED. OLICITOR-General Wooten of the Al bany (6a.) Circuit was vigorously prosecut ing a liquor case. 'lvo quarts of good rye whiskey were in troduced in evidence and as such were sent to the jury room for their consideration. After they had retired and remained in their room some time the attention of the court was directed that way by merry laughter and loud guffaws. Some two hours had elapsed and no verdict. The judge in structed the sheriff to see if they could agree. Their answer was that "The Solicitor General would have to produce a little more of the same kind of evidence."

SAFELY ANCHORED FARMER in Disbrow, Me., recently discovered that a notorious character had hanged himself to a tree by the roadside and hurried to town to inform the authorities. “Were you not afraid when you saw him hanging there?" asked the sheriff. “Oh, no," said the old farmer, “I saw that he was safely hitched."