such thumping from sunrise to sundown and not cry craven; that also proved the innocence of him who hired the body to be thumped. I have not spoken with Teligious awe of cudgel playing, that ancient mode of duelling by battel, when the lord or knight who had the broadest back and thickest skull was sure to turn out the elect of God, and have his adversary hanged for being beat." "I have spoken rashly of that judicium Dei, called the ordeal; where guilt or innocence was proved, according to the rank of the accused, by fire or water, in person or by deputy; persons of high condition judged innocent if they could hold three pounds of red hot iron in their hands, or walk barefoot and blindfold over nine red hot ploughshares. "I have made too free with that most righteous trial, where, for small offences, the hand was plunged in boiling water; for capital ones, the arm up to the shoulder; that is to say, where a fore quarter of the man was boiled to try the fact whether the rest was good; when he whose flesh could not resist the boiling caldron was put .to death. Of these and all such things, I have spoken too disrespectfully; because these sublime doctrines are to be found not only in the laws of 'Ina,' the 'Mirror,' and in ' Bracton,' but in more modern works laid down as law." Returning to the passage attributed to Hawkins, but derived from 8 Modern, he insists "that the modern authorities are nothing more than echoes of one single error," referable to " that miserable book," which " ought to be weeded out of our libraries as a very rank weed which scatters its bad seeds, and has already overrun the soil and choked all reason. The gentlemen, in their round of references, have driven us, as Tony Lumpkin drove his dear mamma, so many turns round Crackscull Common, still never quitting the point he started from." "The numerous references of the learned gentlemen mean no more than what a merchant does when he draws his bills per duplicata, triplicata, quadruplicata, and so on, they being all referable to one single case, and that, in point of credit, no better than a blank endorsement. What is
it all but pouring from vial into vial, unless it be that they have shaken the bottle and raised up all the dregs that had precipitated to the bottom?" Passing to another authority he continues : "This wonderful compilation of the learned Mr. Wentworth, with all its labyrinths of in dexes and apologetic prefaces, in which the au thor seems to accuse the dulness of mankind for not comprehending his methods and his meanings, and which has caused more nervous headaches than tobacco or strong drink, is called a very high authority. Pile the ten volumes upon one another, like ' Pelion upon Ossa,' it is breast high, but otherwise it is no higher than the sun after he sets and leaves the world in darkness. Call it deep, or call it dark, but never call it high." His antagonists having cited Bolton's Justice, he demolishes it by citing from it the record of a conviction of " a most wicked widow " who " did, with her English charms and enchantments, so inthral a proud, milkwhite steed in so diabolical a manner that he pined and languished," and was condemned to imprisonment for a year and every quarter to stand six hours in the pillory. Of course, two such Irish patriots as Sampson and Emmet must lug in Ireland and her woes and their causes, and Sampson having detected some incongruity between Emmet's argument on this trial and some opinions in Emmet and MacNevin's " Pieces of Irish History," thus dresses down his compatriots : — "I have read of Cato, the censor, to whom (for the best features of his character, his simple integrity and his successful eloquence) I may compare my friend, that he had two mantles. The one he put on when he went to the forum; that was for splendour and parade. When he retired to the bosom of his family, he slipped that off and covered himself with one more simple, which I shall call his mantle of peace. There in the bosom of his family he was again himself. No doubt he often did and said for the clients he protected what no private interest could ever have urged him to say for himself. Such is the
