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53i tent to prove the date of birth of a member of the family, though it may also be recorded in the family record, the one kind of evidence being of no higher dignity than the other. Miller v. Black, 47 N. C. 341, since thrice affirmed, decides that an action may be maintained in the courts of this State, though both plaintiff and defendant are citizens of other States. State v. Samuel, 4H N. C. 76, holds

that where a husband slays, on the spot, one taken in the act of adultery with his wife, it is manslaughter, not murder. The Georgia Statute makes homi cide under such cir cumstances excusa ble. It would add to the respect for the law if this were the stat ute everywhere; for juries will invariably acquit on the ground of emotional insanity or some other pretext. In a recent case in this State where jury law and book law came in conflict, the jury returned without a verdict, and told the court there was a conedwin g. flict between the law and the evidence, and that a verdict was impossible. In 1856 the legislature laid a general tax on all salaries. The question arose whether this tax could apply to judicial salaries in purview of the provision of the Constitution forbidding that they be diminished during the term of office. Chief-Justice Nash at the instance of the court addressed a letter to Hon. Joseph B. Batchelor, the then Attor ney-General, stating that the court felt a delicacy in expressing an opinion upon a subject in which the members of the court

were interested, and asked his opinion as the highest law officer of the State. The very able reply of the learned Attorney-General is published in the appendix to the 48 N. C. (3 Jon.), and is to the effect that the power to tax salaries is the power to diminish them, and is therefore prohibited by the Constitu tion. This has ever since been deemed the law in this State. Judge Nash mar ried in 1803 Miss Mary Kollock at Elizabethtown, N.J. He and his wife were de voted members of the Presbyterian Church. They left several chil dren; among them Henry K. Nash, long a prominent lawyer in Hillsboro, and Misses Sarah and Maria Nash, principals of the famous female school in Hillsboro, to whose excellent training and care so many men are in debted for most ex cellent wives, whom their husbands deem the best in the State. Judge Nash spent reade. a long life of honor and usefulness, and dying "left no blot on his name." Truly, "The remembrance of the just Smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust." He was succeeded on the bench by Hon. Matthias E. Manly of Craven. William Horn Battle was born in Edge combe County, Oct. I, 1802. Elisha Battle, the founder of the family and a prominent member of the Baptist Church, removed to Edgecombe County, in this State, from Virginia in 1743. He served for many years in the legislature for that county,