36
The Green Bag.
two of them are for horse-stealing. Now, gentlemen, there are grades in crime, and common-sense would indicate that the pun ishment should be in proportion to the criminality of the offence, as exhibited by the circumstances of each case. That, I suppose, is the law; if it is not, it ought to be so. You will understand what I mean by this, when I inform you that one of these scamps stole a slab-sided Yankee mare, while the other took a Virginia blood-horse. Two others are indicted for mayhem, — one of them for biting off a negro's nose, which I think exhibits a most depraved appetite; the other for gouging out an Irishman's eye, a most ungentlemanly way of fighting.
I hope you will look well to these fellows. The last is a poor cuss who stole a jug of whiskey. The article is so plenty and cheap that it may be had by asking anywhere; and stealing it is the meanest kind of of fence, and deserves the severest punishment that the law will permit. The great men at Albany have made it our special duty to charge you in regard to private lotteries. What is the mighty crime involved in this business I cannot see, when hustling and pitching coppers is tolerated; but I suppose they know, and as the law makes it our duty, I charge you to look out for them. Sheriff, select two constables, and march these men off to Iheir duties.'"
CHAPTERS FROM THE ANCIENT JEWISH LAW. By David Werner Amram, of the Philadelphia Bar. I. THE RIGHT TO DIVORCE. IT is difficult, if not impossible, to deter she hath been defiled, for it is an abomina mine when the custom of granting a tion before the Lord; and thou shalt not bill of divorcement was first instituted bring sin upon the land which the Lord thy among the Hebrews. In the year 621 b.c. God giveth thee for an inheritance." the book of Deuteronomy was discovered This law does not expressly sanction di or written, and in the twenty-fourth chapter vorce; but it speaks of the act of sending is found the earliest record of such a cus away the wife with a letter of divorce as tom. It provides that " if a man hath of a custom well known and established. taken a wife and married her, and it comes It was the ancient common law of the land to pass that if she finds no favor in his eyes, which authorized this act; and the purpose because he luith found some shameful thing of the law in Deuteronomy was simply to qualify it, by providing that the divorced in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce ment, and gives it into her hand and sends woman could never again marry the man her away out of his house; and she departs who had divorced her, if she had been mar ried to another man. There is here a curi from his house, and goes and becomes an other man's wife; and if the latter husband ous blending of the purely legal and the ethical view of the question. The divorced hates her, and writes her a bill of divorce ment, and gives it into her hand, and sends woman was not forbidden to contract a her away out of his house, or if the latter second marriage, but having done so, was husband who has taken her as his wife forbidden from ever remarrying the first husband who had divorced her; the law should die, — then shall her former hus band, who had sent her away, not be at j favored the continuity of the marriage rela liberty to take her again to be his wife, after 1 tion, and looked on divorce with disfavor;