great authority in matters of earlier history." (Citing Palgrave and Reeve.) We really don't know what might not happen to Mr. Morse, if he should drop in at the Supreme Court at Washington, and Mr. Justice Gray should recognize him as the person who attributed to him such faith in the Mirror. His conclusion in the case cited was quite to the contrary. The question whether the king was subject to suit was very learnedly examined by Iredell, J., in the celebrated cause of Chisholm & Georgia, 2 Dall. 419. He cites Comyn's Digest to the statement that " until the time of Edward I, the King might have been sued in all actions as a common person." This appears to be derived from Thelwall's Digest, printed in 1579. We have not access to that ancient authority, but neither Comyn nor Iredell, J., says anything about the Mirror. Mr. Justice Gray quotes Bacon to the statement that the king could be sued was " an old fable," and referring to the fines paid to the king, before Magna Charta, to obtain justice, he says : "It can hardly be believed that the subject could have a writ, as of course against the king, when he was de pendent on the king's favor for the right to sue a fellow-subject."
The Sage Case. — Mr. Russell Sage does not deserve his name. He is a very foolish man, for instead of buying off that person whom he hysterically pulled between his body and the threatening dyna miter, to the grievous corporeal injury of the unwilling intervener, for a few thousand dollars, or paying off the first verdict, $25,000, he has persisted and gone through the courts three times, until a verdict of $40,000 has just been affirmed by the Supreme Court, and now he asks the Court of Appeals to give him a new trial so that another jury may increase the award! A hundred thousand dollars will not cover his outlay. On the other hand, it might be a curious speculation to imagine how much will be left to the victorious party. " But 'twas a famous victory," and like many another such, it will leave the victor but little, if any, better off than the vanquished.
Unexpected Fike. — Another case in which the plaintiff contended for too much foresight on the part of the carrier is one in Missouri, Sullivan v. Jefferson Ave. Ry. Co., 32 L. R. A. 167, where it was held that a lady passenger whose light, gauzy summer dress is ignited on an open street car in the summer by a match carelessly thrown by another pas senger after lighting a cigarette cannot hold the street railway company liable for her injuries, where the servant in charge of the car was not chargeable
with any negligence. It was quite enough that the car was promptly stopped and that the driver burned his hands in his efforts to pull the dress off. The Court thought that " the most prudent man would never have thought of such an accident, nor have furnished such a car in such weather with fire-extin guishers." Certainly not — not half so much as of having on board a chest of ice for possible cases of sunstroke.
NOTES OF CASES. Perfervid Counsel. — In State v. Shawn, 40 W. Va. 1, the defendant, convicted of murder, and condemned by the jury to death, demanded a new trial on account of the following language of the prose cuting officer to the jury : " If you sentence the prisoner to the penitentiary for life, it won't be five years till he will be let out on some excuse or pretext, and return home to enter on a new course of crime." ' ' This is the grand culmination ofan epidemic of crimes that have been committed in this county." " He is so steeped in crime that he has no friend to sit beside him during his trial." The first sentence quoted was uttered in connection with a reference to the pardon of the Chicago anarchists by Gov. Altgeld. There seems to have been no exception by the prisoner's counsel except to that sentence, and the Court re marked that " the attorney was perhaps going too far away on examples," but gave no instruction to disre gard it. The Court denied a new trial, on the ground that the language did not appear to have pre judiced the prisoner. There was no doubt of the murder; the Court said it was " a sedate and atro cious murder," and that " the evidence showed him wicked, and desperately bent on great crime." One judge, concurring in the result, dissented from the ar gument of the main opinion, apparently because of his opposition to capital punishment. He thinks that "no man who is not totally depraved " should be de nied the opportunity for repentance afforded by lifeimprisonment, and winds up with an aspiration to God for mercy on the soul of the prisoner. In strong con trast with this decision is that in Kansas City etc. R. Co. v. Sokal, 61 Ark. 130, counsel for plaintiff pro posed to read the papers on which a change of venue had been granted to defendant on account of local prejudice. Defendant's counsel objected, and plain tiff's counsel said : "It is the hit dog that always howls." The court said, " I expect that is an im proper argument." Plaintiffs counsel insisted that he had a right to read the record to show that the feeling in the original county was deemed by de fendant so strongly against them that they could not have a fair trial there. This was held to be prejudicial error, and a new trial was awarded.
