examined the facts connected with the story of the diamonds, and having read several letters to prove that Madame de Léotaud had kept up, after her marriage, a correspondence with her former lover, he asked the jury to infer that she had given the jewels to the prisoner to prevent the disclosure of her frailty. After this extraordinary episode the president summed up the case. and left the following question to the jury: "Is Marie Fortunée Capelle, widow of Pouch Lafarge, guilty of having, in December and January last, caused the death of her husband by means of substances capable of occasioning death, and which, in fact, did occasion it?"

At the end of an hour the jury returned into court and gave in the following written verdict :—

"Yes; by a majority, the accused is Guilty.

"Yes; by a majority, there are extenuating circumstances in favor of the accused."

The judges then retired, and after remaining in deliberation for an hour, resumed their seats and pronounced their sentence, condemning the prisoner to the hulks for life, and to exposure on the pillory in the public square of Tulle.

Thus ended this famous trial; and the question may still be asked--Guilty, or not Guilty? In England, there is little doubt that, upon the evidence, the verdict would have been Not Guilty; in Scotland, it is equally certain that it would have been Not Proven. The amount of arsenic found in the body of the deceased was too infinitesimally small to admit of a safe conclusion that he had died from the effects of poison; especially, when we consider that, if the evidence for the prosecution is relied upon, he must, for many days before his death, have swallowed a large quantity of arsenic: and when we recollect that arsenic enters into the texture of human bones, and that the body, when exhumed, was in a state of extreme decomposition, we see that the risk of an erroneous opinion on the part of the chemists was

COMMENT ON THE TRIAL.

293

increased. It is important to bear in mind the fact that the soil of graveyards often contains a compound of arsenic, though generally in an insoluble form. In eight trials on four different soils Orfila found that three of them were arsenical. He used about six pounds of earth in the experiment.'

But, yet it is difficult, after a review of the whole case, to resist the conviction that the accused was really guilty. Her previous conduct, and her actions while her husband. was laid on the bed of sickness, all seem to point to that conclusion, and our moral sense is by no means shocked by the verdict of the jury. Of the mode in which the trial was conducted, we can hardly speak too strongly in terms of reprobation. Almost every principle of the law of evidence, without reference to our own technical rules, was violated; and we hardly know which most to condemn, the indecent eagerness of the attorney-general for a conviction, the cross-examination of the prisoner herself, or the injustice of the court in permitting, contrary to the remonstrance of her counsel, the affair of the diamonds to be dragged into discussion. Upon the whole, the result is that, however much we may regret that the unbending strictness of the English law sometimes excludes testimony which, perhaps, ought to be admitted, and thereby facil

1 See Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, p. 83 (third edit.) "If the coffin be cracked or entirely destroyed, so that the earth has become intermixed with the remains, and that which surrounds the coffin yields traces of arsenic, it is evident that no reliance could be placed upon the inference that the arsenic existed in the dead body, unless the poison found in the remains was in extremely large proportion. . A difficulty of this kind, cannot, however, when proper precautions are taken, often present itself in practice."-Ib. It is right to mention that in cases of rapid death from arsenic, even when no traces of the poison can be found in the stomach or contents of the viscera, it may always be discovered in the tissues.-Yo. pp. 81, 82. It is remarkable that Mr. Taylor, in his extremely able work, although he cites several French cases, including that of the Lu de Praslin, does not allude to that of Madame Lafarge.

itates the escape of guilt, a party who is accused in England of a crime of which he is innocent, may congratulate himself that his trial takes place here and not in France.

As

CHAPTER VIII.

ADVOCACY IN ENGLAND

S the object of this work is not to write a history of the bar, but merely to consider the office and functions of a lawyer in his capacity of an advocate, charged with the defense of the rights and interests of his fellow-citizens in courts of justice, it is not necessary to enlarge upon what may be called the archæology of the profession, nor transcribe from ancient writers the curious particulars they record of its state and condition in very early times in England. Nor need we dwell at any length upon the venerable degree and dignity of sergeants-at-law, of whose creation and appointment Fortescue in his work De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, and Dugdale in his Origines, give such ample details. Great was their state and solemn their inauguration in the olden time. When called to receive their office by the Lord Chancellor, "after that the company is so assembled in their hall, thence cometh down to them the new sergeants: and after that the new sergeants be so come down to the company, then all they standing together, the most ancient of the company rehearseth the manner of learning and study; giving laud and praise to them that have well used them, showing what worship and profit cometh and groweth by reason of the same, in proof whereof those new sergeants, for their cunning,

discretion, and wisdom, be called, by the king's highness and his honorable council, to the great promotion and dignity of the office of a sergeant of the law: and then he giveth them a laud and praise for their good conversation, and pain and diligence that they have taken and used in their study, presenting to them the reward of the house. beseeching them to be good and kind to the com. pany" (Dugdale, Orig. Furid. 114). When they had refreshed themselves with "spiced bread, comfits, and other goodly conceits, with hippocrass," the labors of the first day were over. Afterwards they counted upon their writs, a legal mystery which it would not be easy to make very intelligible, and then proceeded to attack a right goodly feast, which Fortescue says "shall continue and last for the space of seven days; and none of those elect persons shall defray the charges growing to him about the costs of this solemnity, with less expenses than four hundred marks." The grandeur of these entertainments in former times was remarkable, and they were generally held in Ely House, where "divers great and solemn feasts," says Stow, "have been kept, especially by the sergeants at the law;" and where royalty did not disdain to appear, accompanied by "all the Lords and Commons of the Parliament." Henry VII. and his queen dined there more than once, and in the twenty.. third year of the reign of Henry VIII., he and Queen Catherine honored the newly-created sergeants with their company, "but in two chambers,” at a sumptuous repast which lasted for five days. The monarch, however, and his queen were present only on the principal day. “It were tedious to set down the preparation of fish, flesh, and other victuals spent in this feast, and would seem almost incredible: and as to me, it seemeth, wanted little of a feast at a coronation." So says honest Dugdale (Orig. Jurid. 128), and agreeing with him, I may spare the reader the enumeration which he gives of the great beefs, fat muttons, porkes, capons, cocks of grouse,