person. If it is a property right with reference to the publication of a catalogue of private etchings and entitled to be protected against invasion,' as Lord Cottenham held in Prince Albert v. Strange (i Macn. & G., 25, 47), why is it not such with reference to name and reputation?" Here then is a very nice question, which might be decided either way without doing violence to rules of law, and which depends wholly upon the discretion of the tribunal addressed. It depends upon the size of the chancellor's foot. Chief Judge Van Brunt and Judge Peckham differ very widely in their notions of the right of privacy, and where such men differ, it would be unbecoming to express any ex cathedra opinion either way, but we must say that our sympa thies are with the family, and that we prefer the views of the general term and of Judge Gray. No member of the celebrated families of Hamilton and Schuyler would object to the commemoration of their great ancestors of Revolutionary fame by public effi gies. Probably Mr. Schuyler was unduly exercised in this case, for we do not believe the requisite sub scriptions could have been obtained to pay for the statue — unless it was a very cheap and bad one. The decision also has lost all significance, except as a precedent, for the Fair is a thing of the past. We do not object to such commemoration of public per sons. The senior Judge Peckham•s portrait hangs on the wall of the court room where his son now sits, and his son's will some time hang there, and the son will not object to either, nor to having his own some time in the Supreme Court Chamber at Washington. But there is a sense of fitness and propriety about this matter which we miss in this decision — a want of sensibility. We hazard the guess that if the pro posal had been to show at the Chicago Fair a statue of a female relative of Judge Peckham, it would have come to him in a different measure, and that some high language would have been held and some stren uous opposition displayed. It makes a great differ ence whose ox is gored. And now we find we have written ourselves up to such a strain that we are willing to say that we consider the proposal of the defendants to have been exceedingly unjustifiable and impudent, not only in its conception, but in the ob stinate determination displayed. If loud-mouthed women want to pay statuesque and posthumous com pliments to some other woman, let them select some one who would have been willing if living, and whose family are willing when she is dead
Napoleon Wagers. — Apropos of Mr. Jenkins' account of the wager case about Napoleon, Phillips v. Ives, 1 Rawle, 36, in the December Green Bag,
Gilbert 7'. Sykes, 16 Fast, 150, not mentioned by Mr. Jenkins nor cited by the Pennsylvania court, attention may usefully be called to an English case, which involved a wager about Napoleon and was decided in 1812, sixteen years earlier than the Penn sylvania case. The defendant received one hundred guineas on the 31st of May, 1802, in consideration that he should pay the plaintiff a guinea a day so long as Napoleon, then First Consul, should live, the bet arising out of a conversation upon the probability of his coming to a violent death by assassination or otherwise. This was held void on grounds of im morality and impolicy. The bet was made at a time when Napoleon's life was in constant danger from conspiracies formed or fomented in England, and when the Bourbons maintained sixty paid assas sins in Paris. Napoleon put a Stop to this enterprise by his summary execution of the Due d'Enghien. The defendant paid his guinea daily until December 25, 1804, when he stopped. The plaintiff claimed ,£2296. It appeared that the bet arose at dinner at the defendant's table, that it was not intended seri ously, and that although the plaintiff offered to can cel it, the defendant stuck to it out of a sense of honor. Having expended about thirty-three hundred dollars in vindication of his honor, he began to take counsel of Falstaff about the value of honor, and concluded that he had paid enough. The jury found in his favor. Lord Ellenborough gave heed to the sugges tion that the bet was impolitic because it gave the plaintiff an interest in the life of a foreign sovereign and enemy. He dwelt on Napoleon's hostile demon stration against England on the opposite shore of the Channel, at Boulogne, and alluded to the fact that "every Sunday the minds of the subjects are kept alive to the danger " : and he demanded to know if "the loss of 365 guineas a year depending on that life would have no operation on his mind when opposed to the call of active duty toward his country," and at the same time he declared that it would be "an object to us to prevent even the suspicion and to repel from us the malignant imputation that we countenance in any manner the idea of assassinating an enemy, and thereby guard against any attempt on his part to retaliate upon a life most dear to us all."' (The king, to wit.) Certainly this was a doubleedged and diabolical wager — binding the plaintiff to neglect his patriotic duty to kill Napoleon, and bind ing the defendant to kill him in order to end his obligation to pay. Our private impression is that Ellenborough was nervous lest he should be called out in arms to resist the Little Corporal, for he was turned out of the awkward squad of the Lincoln Inn soldiery, on account of incorrigible unfitness for military affairs. (See Browne's " Humorous Phases of the Law," article, " Wagers.")
