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tions necessarily compelling them to the performance of a duty, incompatible with those feelings which they hitherto had been called upon to exercise in the capacity of jurymen.

BENEFIT OF CLERGY.

As the true meaning of the term may perhaps not be generally known, the following definition is given: felony, which comprehends almost numberless species of crimes, is subdivided into two classes-with, or without benefit of clergy.

The benefit of clergy, at present, signifies an exemption from capital punishment in all felonies where the legislature has not taken away that benefit by express words. The origin of this principle, which is very little understood, is as follows: At the time the Romish faith was prevalent in this country, the clergy claimed an exemption from punishment for all secular offences, and the legislature was so far duped by them as to grant them that privilege; therefore, whenever a priest was convicted of a crime, for which another man would suffer death, he was discharged without punishment, on proving himself to be an ecclesiastic. The clergy did not fail to avail themselves of this advantage, and committed all sorts of enormity with impunity.

This induced the parliaments at various times to subject them to capital punishments for particular offences, by taking away from those offences the benefit of clergy. In those dark superstitious times, every person who could read, was presumed in law to be a priest in orders; and till the reign of Ânne, a man who was not possessed of this qualification, was liable to be hanged for an offence, which one possessed of it would only be burnt in the hand for; but since that time, laymen are allowed the benefit of clergy, once. The clergy, however, are entitled to claim it as often as they have occasion, and are exempted from the punishment of burning in the hand by the statute of 1 Edward VI., which extends the same privilege to Peers of the Realm, whom it also exempts from capital punishment for the crimes of housebreaking, highway robbery, horse-stealing, and robbing of churches. Felony without benefit of clergy, are capital offences, of which Sir William Blackstone, in his time, enumerates 160. By the recent statutes for the improvement of the criminal code, commonly called Peel's Acts (7 and 8 George IV. c. 28), it is enacted, "that benefit of clergy with respect to persons convicted of felony shall be abolished."

BOROUGHS.

As we are constantly hearing the word Boroughmonger made use of, the original signification of the term borough is here introduced.

Borough originally meant a company, consisting of ten families, which were bound together as each other's pledge. Afterwards borough came to signify a town, having a wall or some kind of enclosure round. And all places that in old time had the name of borough, it is said, were fortified or fenced, in some shape or other. Borough is a place of safety, or privilege; and some are called free boroughs, and the tradesmen in them free burgesses, from a freedom they had granted to them originally, to buy and sell without disturbance, and exempt from toll. In July, 1833, a royal commission was issued to inquire as to the existing state of the municipal corporations in England and Wales, and to collect information respecting their defects. Their Report was laid before the House of Commons, and ordered to be printed in March, 1835. Upon this Report was founded the Bill, "for the regulation of municipal corporations in England and Wales." The total number of the cities, towns, and ports, reconstituted, under the general name of “Boroughs" by the Municipal Reform Act, is 178.

CORPORATIONS.

It is difficult to account for the origin of charter and corporation towns, unless we suppose them to have arisen out of, or been connected with, some species of garrison service. The times in which they began justify this idea. The generality of those towns have been garrisons; and the corporations were charged with the gates of the towns, when no military garrison was present. Their refusing or granting admission to strangers, which has produced the custom of giving, selling, and buying freedom, has more of the nature of garrison authority than civil govern

ment.

Soldiers are free of all corporations throughout the nation, by the same propriety that every soldier is free of every garrison, and no other persons are. He can follow any employment, with the permission of his officers, in any corporation town throughout the nation.

FEUDAL LAWS.

The feudal (from feodum) laws, or the tenure of land by suit and service to the owner of it, was introduced into England by the Saxons, about 600. The slavery of this tenure increased under William I., 1068. This was dividing the kingdom into baronies, giving them to certain persons, and requiring those persons to furnish the king with money, and a stated number of soldiers.

FOREST AND GAME LAWS.

The ancient kings of Media were the first preservers of game. Their extensive paradises, or royal parks, contained numerous

species of animals; lions, bears, camelopards, deer, antelopes, wild sheep, and wild asses. But as all those creatures in confinement underwent a kind of civilisation, and lost the wild propensities which distinguished them in their natural state, the more adventurous portion of Median youth always sallied forth to the mountains and forests, when they were desirous of exhibiting their courage or prowess. By the common law introduced into this country by the Normans, all game was the property of the king; no person whatsoever could enjoy the diversion of sporting, unless authorized by royal grant of a chase or free warren; and to kill a deer was deemed almost as heinous an act as to kill a man.

It is generally allowed by all who have made remarks, that the game laws, as they subsisted for ages, were a disgrace to the noble fabric of our free constitution; and it is not the more remarkable, since they had their origin in slavery, as the following passage from Blackstone sufficiently demonstrates :

In

"Another violent alteration of the English constitution, consisted in the depopulation of whole counties for the purposes of the king's royal diversion, and subjecting both them, and all the ancient forests of the kingdom, to the unreasonable severity of forest laws, imported from the continent; whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man. the Saxon times, though no man was allowed to kill or chase the king's deer, yet he might start any game, pursue, and kill it, upon his own estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions vested the property of all the game in England in the king alone; and no man was allowed to disturb any fowl of the air, or any beast of the field, of such kinds as were especially reserved for the royal amusement of the sovereign, without express licence from the king, by the grant of a chase or free warren; and those franchises were granted as much with a view to preserve the breed of animals, as to indulge the subject. From a similar principle to which, though the forest laws are now mitigated, and grown by degrees entirely obsolete; yet from this root has sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of the Game Laws, now arrived to, and wantoning in, its highest vigour; both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures; and both productive of the same tyranny to the commons; but with this difference, that the forest laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land, the game laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor; and in one respect, the ancient law was much less unreasonable than the modern; for the king's grantee of a chase or free warren, might kill game in any part of his franchise; but now, though a freeholder of less than one hundred a year is forbidden to kill a partridge on his own estate, yet nobody else (not even the lord of the manor), unless he hath a grant of free warren, can do it without committing a trespass, and subjecting himself to an action."

By a statute passed in 1831 (1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 32), the old system was materially improved. The whole of the former provisions respecting qualification by estate or birth were removed, and any person obtaining a certificate is now enabled to kill game, either upon his own land, or on the land of any other person with his permission.

THE+ AS A MARK.

It is said that Withred, king of Kent, used the sign of the Cross for his mark to his grants, he being unable to write his name; and that from him originated the custom. It is said also, that the majority of the barons who signed Magna Charta made their marks, being ignorant of the science of writing.*

The sign of the Cross was first used by Christians as a distinction, in 110; that of our Saviour, found on Mount Calvary, 326.

STAMP DUTY ON RECEIPTS.

The Stamp Duty on Receipts was first imposed during the celebrated Coalition Administration, in 1783, which gave occasion for the following jeu-d'esprit, at the time generally attributed to Sheridan :

"I would," says Fox, 66 a tax devise,

That should not fall on me;"

"Then tax receipts," Lord North replies,
"For those you never see!"

MAIL COACHES.

Mail Coaches were first established to Bristol, in 1784; to other parts of England, and an Act to regulate and encourage them, and exempt them from tolls, in 1785.

POST OFFICES.

Post Offices were first established in Paris, 1479; in England, 1581; in Germany, 1641; in the Turkish dominions, 1740; regulated by parliament, and made general in England, 1656, and in Scotland, 1685.

PENNY POST.

The Penny-Post was set up in London and suburbs, by one Murray, an upholsterer, in 1681, who afterwards assigned the same to one Dockwra; afterwards claimed by the government, who allowed the latter a pension of £200 a year, in 1711. First set up in Dublin, 1774. It was improved considerably in and about London, July, 1794. Mr. Rowland Hill's plan of a uniform inland rate of postage of one penny per half ounce, came into operation 10th January, 1840.

*See Magna Charta.

RYE-HOUSE PLOT.

The Rye-House is a farm near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, through which Charles II. usually passed in his road from Newmarket, which farm belonged to Rumbold, one of the conspirators. It was proposed by them to attack the king and his guards by firing from the out-houses, while another party should attack them when they were separated by the gates, and embarrassed in the inclosures; but a fire happening at Newmarket, his majesty returned to London sooner than he intended, and before the conspirators were prepared to put their design in execution. This occurred, June 14th, 1683. The conspiracy was discovered by a letter from one John Keeling, in a letter to Lord Dartmouth and secretary Jenkins.

WALLER'S PLOT.

The nobility and people of distinction in London, as well as the most substantial citizens, being weary of the parliamentary war, associated together, and came to a resolution to endeavour to depose the chiefs of the opposition, to offer his majesty equitable terms of peace, and if this was refused, to form a party strong enough in the city to oppose the levying taxes on them for the continuance of the war; which Pym having some intelligence of, pretended there was a plot to destroy the parliament, and deliver up the city of London to the king; and Mr. Waller being one of the most considerable men, or most active in promoting the said object, it obtained the name of Waller's Plot.

POPISH PLOT.

In the reign of Charles II., in the year 1678, Doctor Tongue, a physician, laid certain papers before the lord treasurer, Danby, importing a conspiracy against his majesty's life, and the Protestant religion, by the Jesuits. The chief promoters of this plot were said to be the pope, Innocent XI., Cardinal Howard, and numerous others in England, of the Roman Catholic religion. The said Tongue, and one Titus Oates, having drawn up a narrative, made oath of the truth of the same. From the circumstance of the origin, it obtained the name of the Popish Plot.

GUNPOWDER PLOT.

The famous Plot, which was intended to have blown up the king, lords, and commons, with gunpowder, was discovered on the Fifth of November, the day on which it was to have taken place, 1605; when one of the conspirators, wishing to save William Parker, Lord Monteagle, wrote him a letter of caution. *James the First.

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