Punch (8.1845)

74

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PUNCH'S NOY'S MAXIMS.

of GRAMMAR.

ages the law has re-
5JUfflBBiSL"_*» garded Grammar as a
guest at a dinner-party
regards Champagne,
taking it when it hap-
pens to be there, but
never insisting on hav-
ing it. " It has been
settled," says an old
jurist, "that Alfred
the Great lived before Lindley Murray, and as
Alfred made a very good code of laws without
the aid of Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, or
Prosody, it does not seem that the law absolutely
requires any one of them." Lycurgus, the Spartan
Lawgiver, was no great grammarian ; but it was
facetiously said of him that he could decline though
he would never conjugate ; for he declined his
brother's widow, and refused to enter into the conjugal state with her.
The only law maxim bearing on Grammar, is—■

3. Ad •proximnm antecedens fiat relatio, nisi hnpediatur sententia.—
The antecedent bears relation to what follows next, unless it interferes
with the meaning of the sentence.

An indictment against John, the husband of Elizabeth Yeoman, is
good ; for though Lindley Murray would say the Yeoman meant
Elizabeth, the law would say that a woman can't be a man, and that
John, the husband, must be considered as the Yeoman referred to. So,
in the case of the actor who burst in upon Richard the Third, exclaim-
ing, " My lord, 'tis I, the early village cock,'1 and forgot the remainder of

not become good in time, have served the tooth with an ejectment, ami
ousted it accordingly. The old saying, that " bad beginnings make goof)
endings," is quite at variance with the maxim we have just been treating
of. Perhaps the best translation of this maxim is one which we find
nowhere in the books, but which we beg to recommend to the attention
of harsh creditors—Quod ab initio non valet, Quod is of no use in the
beginning ; in tractu temporis non convalescit, and for a length cf time it
is of no use either.

PARSONS, AND THE GAME LAWS.

It is a happy coincidence of circumstance when Game Law penal-
ties are inflicted by clerical magistrates. The sentence obtains a
certain solemnity from the religious character of the judge. In some
parts of India, we are told, it is the priests who feed the sacred
crocodiles. In like manner would we always have a clergyman upon
the Bench to appease the crying wrongs of the Game Laws.

The Rev. Joshua Thomas Horton has been singularly fortunate
as an instrument to vindicate these outraged statutes. Even Ms,
Grantley Berkeley, with the bloom and glory upon him of his
" twenty-six" personal encounters in defence of the unprotected
pheasant, might envy the good fortune of the reverend magistrate.
We take the following from the Liverpool Mercurij :—

OF LOGIC.

and costs, and inflicted an additional fine of eight pounds.'

Lord Skelmersdale has, doubtless, acted like a true patriot
4. Cessante causa cessat effectus—When the cause ceases, the etiect , . , . ,, -r, , , j • j j~

" . . ,M , , , , c a e which, m Mr. Berkeley s enlarged mind, means a defender of the

:eases. This maxim may be read either backwards or forwards : for ' . , . . , „ p ' , . ,

If it be true that when the cause ceases the effect ceases, it is, a fortiori, \ S*™ of hls nat?ve land- He *>as very properly prosecuted the

a greater truth that when the effects cease the cause will cease ; for the \ unconscious trespassers, who, m the solitude ot their prison, will we-

lawyer, when he finds the effects all gone, will let the cause come to a j trust hold profitable communings with their souls. We trust they

stand-still

Though it is a general rule that effects cease with causes, there are
cases to the contrary. And the books tell us of a man who had a
thrashing which caused him much pain, and the pain which was the
effect did not cease when the thrashing, which was the cause, had been
for a long time over.

5. Some things shall be construed according to the original cause
thereof.—Thus, if two men have a quarrel, and some long time after-
wards fight, it is presumed they fought because they quarrelled ; but in
the Irish Courts, and some of the Courts about St. Giles's, it has been
decided otherwise. It has been there held that fighting may be carried
on from mere love and affection, and the fight is quite independent of
any quarrel that may have preceded it.

6. Some things shall be construed according to the beginning thereof.
—Thus, if J. S. throws a stone at J. D. and misses him, and J. D. runs
after J. S. to thrash him, and J. S. is before-hand and knocks him down,
J. S. is guilty of the assault, for he began by throwing the stone ; and
J. I). stands in the best position in the eye of the law, though in other
respects he has got rather the worst of it.

7. Some things are construed according to the end thereof—Thus, a
brilliant finale may save a dull opera, and a prosy speaker makes us feel
satisfied with him at the end because we are pleased to find his speech
is over.

8. Derivativa potestas non potest esse major primitiva.—No power
derived can be greater than that it is derived from. The application of
this maxim is clear enough : for instance, " the bailiff of the disseisor
shall not say that the plaintiff has nothing in the land," which is a nut
that the legal student may crack at his earliest convenience. There are,
however, cases in which a derivative power is greater than that from
which it is derived ; " as where a ticket-porter," says Finch, " is em-
powered by me to carry a chest of drawers on the top of his head,
surely his power is greater than mine in this respect V Howell, in his
Familiar Letters, alludes to this as a knotty point, and makes no attempt
to unravel it.

9. Quod ab initio non valet, in tractu temporis non convalescil—That
which is not good in the beginning no length of time can make good.
Thus, if an infant makes a will it is bad, and if the infant lives to be a
hundred the will does not become good, though it is otherwise with port
wine, which improves by keeping. So a bad toothache may get better ;
though some, acting on the maxim that what is bad in the beginning will

will leave their jail, wiser if not sadder men : that for the remainder
of their lives they will be incapable of any such guilty mistake as-
entering for one moment upon the Paradise of a nobleman's land
and thereupon doing damage to at least the amount of half-a-farthing.
We hope that this paternal lesson of his Lordship will sink into theii
guilty hearts : that it will also have its influence upon all the sur-
rounding peasantry. Indeed, it deserves to be written, as the saying
is, in letters of gold ; although we are aware that such Game Law
lessons are more likely to be registered in blood.

As for the Rev. Mr. Horton, he must have sweetly felt the full
force of his Christian mission, when he condemned the accidental
trespassers to the penalty of crushing costs. He must have been
sublimated by the recollection that he was humbly imitating the
acts of the fathers of the Church, all of whom (it is, doubtless, some-
where written in their lives) were rigid protectors of game. We
think it was St. Francis who, in the overflow of his love for all
created things, addressed birds and brutes as his " brothers and
sisters." Some of our magisterial clergymen must, in like manner,,
look upon game as something of their own flesh and blood ; they
are so sensibly acute to any wrong committed on it. " All our
flesh," says Sir Thomas Browne, " was once upon our platters." And
in the full belief of this subtlety, many parsons may lock upon their
whole carnal frame as only so much transmuted deer's-flesh ; so
much game of all kind, under a different arrangement of particles.

We repeat it, the Game Laws receive dignity when administered
by clerical magistrates. England has, in these laws, her sacred
crocodiles as well as India; and if peasants are to be offered
up to them, who so fit to preside at the sacrifice as a Cniistiatt
Churchman ?

Military.

The passage of the Burlington Arcade was effected on Thursday last
by Master Jones, a private of the London light infantry, whilst ths
Beadle was bivouacking in an easy position taken up in the interior of hi?
arm-chair on the frontier of Piccadilly. Before the beadle had called out
his staff, the enemy had passed the boundary line, and cleared the Arcade,
uttering, in his flight, a tremendous war-whoop, that was distinctly heanf
on the plains of Waterloo, in the back room of the Egyptian Hall.

" Ormskirk Game Lords and Rabbits. — On Saturday last, Thomas Edge, oi
Hoskar Moss, and three other young farm-labourers, appeared before the Rev. Joshua
Thomas Horton, clerk, in the public-house justice room, to answer a charge of tres-
pass, preferred against him by Lord Skelmersdalk, father-in-law to Lord Stanley,
one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. It appears that the young men
had obtained permission of Thomas Morris, Esq., to have a day's ferreting fon
rabbits, as a sort of Christmas gift, on his lands near Hoskar Moss, in Latham ; aDd in.
the course of the day they inadvertently walked into a field adjoining the one of
Mr. Morris's, belonging to his Lordship, erroneously supposing it at the same time to
belong to the former gentleman. They were seen by his Lordship's gamekeeper, who
informed them that they were trespassing, when they immediately retired, expressing
the passage—it is clear he could not have been sued as the early village ! their regret to the keeper, and telling him that the trespass was not committed
cock : for such a description, though grammatically correct, would have i knowingly. The damage done to the herbage of the field does not amount to more than
been at variance with all probability. half-a-farthing, rated at the very highest. The gamekeeper appeared to support the

o.u .aiuiM^, r " J information, and the reverend magistrate convicted the parties m damages of 40s. each