and endeavoured to wrench the fork from him.
In the scuffle and struggles of the men, the two
wounds were inflicted, from which the homicide
ensued. The assizes having but just closed,
the survivor was unwilling to surrender
himself, and, although he felt acutely for the
suspected and innocent prisoner, he considered
that, from the difference in their position,
imprisonment would be less injurious to the
accused, to whom, with the view to make his
confinement easy, he had rendered every pecuniary
assistance, besides supporting his family. In
order to clear the prisoner of the charge, he
could not devise any other expedient than that
of causing himself to be summoned on his jury
and placed at its head. This object he had
accomplished with great labour and expense,
having all along determined in his own breast
rather to die himself than that an innocent man
should be the victim. The detail satisfied the
Chief Justice, and the juryman at parting made
this further stipulation, that in case his lordship
should happen to survive him, he should then
be at liberty to relate the story, that it might
reach posterity. The juryman lived fifteen
years after, and the Chief Justice, having
survived him, revealed the transaction.

A case presenting some features of
resemblance, although very dissimilar in the motives,
occurred in Ireland during the agrarian outrages
which disgraced that country in the early part
of the present century. A man was tried for
the murder of a farmer in the county of Limerick,
and the clearest and most convincing
evidence given of his guilt; so much so, that the
presiding judge and every person present felt
assured of a conviction without the jury
retiring to consider their verdict. One of the
jury, however, urged that as the life of the
prisoner was at stake, they ought, for the sake
of appearances at least, to deliberate, and
accordingly, to the surprise of all in court, they
went into their jury-room. When the doors
were closed they all naturally inquired of the
cautious and conscientious juror, who was a
resident gentleman of some property, well known
in the country, whether he had any doubt of
the prisoner's guilt? "Not the least," he
promptly replied; "but we are all friends here,
and I have a most serious question to put to
you." They were of course all attention. "Is
it," said he, "a reason because one ruffian
chooses to shoot another ruffian, that I should
lose three hundred a year by it? That ruffian
in the dock is the last life in my lease of the
fine farm on which I live, and if he's hanged
I'll lose my farm. Now, I appeal to you all,
would that be just or fair, and l had myself put
on the jury to prevent myself from being
robbed." This earnest expostulation was a
poser, to which the code of Irish ethics
regulating the tenure of land did not furnish a ready
answer. Solemn deliberations immediately
followed; some earnestly but vainly inquired,
could the shadow of a doubt be suggested in
order to justify a merciful consideration of the
case, while others hinted at a strong
recommendation to mercy, a proposal considered on
reflection wholly inadmissible, as, in the event
of a conviction, the fate of the murderer was
inevitable. A boot-eater was a character almost
as well known in Ireland in former days as a
fire-eater, and this clement and disinterested
juror swore that he would breakfast, dine, and
sup upon his boots unless his colleagues gave in
and concurred with him. The justice of
preserving the farm in the end preponderated; the
maxim, "Fiat justitia ruat celum," was
forgotten, precisely as it was in two recent
instances, and a verdict of "Not Guilty" was
unblushingly returned. The murderer was
absolved and his life saved for the benefit of
landlord and juryman. In the hours of future
conviviality, his liberator made no secret of the
successful exploit.

The constitution of country juries is often
very incongruous—farmers whose muscular
systems are in constant exercise, but whose brains
are rarely called into exertion, are mixed up with
tradesmen who are quite as little in the habit of
thinking or troubling themselves on any other
business but their own. The motley materials
are composed of men often from remote districts
of large counties, who have never by any
evolutions of chance probably met before, and may
never meet again. As the wisdom of our law
requires unanimity from this varied-coloured
group, suddenly clubbed together, the effect of
dovetailing into one mass such discordant
elements must necessarily be that his ill-assorted
associates generally bend to the shrewdest or
most obstinate of the company. From the
absence of capacity to separate evidence which is
valuable from what is valueless, to weigh what
is important against what is immaterial, and to
reason on results, juries have frequently
determined the rights of parties by tossing up for
their verdict. The courts, however, refuse to
listen to such exposures from repentant jurors,
who must themselves have been participators.
Perverse verdicts are not unfrequent. A jury
empannelled in an action against a stakeholder,
to decide which of two horses won a race, could
arrive at no other conclusion than that they
should run the race over again; and a Welsh
jury, who tried a husband for beating his wife
so brutally that she died, on being satisfied by
the evidence that she was a scold, found a
verdict, "Served her right"!

An extraordinarily perverse verdict was
mentioned in parliament on the 16th of February,
1836, on the authority of Charles Kendal Bushe,
then Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and it was
represented that the statement of the facts was
from his own lips. After the rebellion of 1798
an amnesty was passed granting pardon for all
crimes committed during that fearful period,
murder alone excepted, and the distinguished
judge then at the bar was engaged as counsel
for a prisoner at the Wexford assizes. The man
was indicted for the murder of a yeoman of the
name of James White, and the case came on for
trial before Sir Michael Smith, then a baron of
the Exchequer. Two witnesses were examined