and, secondly, blisters filled with serum: that the former is an invariable effect, but that the latter is not always observable when death follows the burn in a few minutes.

Before these appearances can be assumed as indicating that the burn was inflicted during life, it remains to be inquired whether they can be produced or imitated immediately after death, while vitality still lingers in the body, or (to use Bichât's phrase) while organic vitality survives the extinction of animal life. For this end the following experiments were instituted, partly by myself, partly by my friends at my request. In every instance the appearances are described from my personal inspection:

--

Experiment 1st. In a stout young man, who poisoned himself with laudanum, a very hot poker and a stream of boiling water were applied to the skin of the chest and inside of the arm one hour after death. Next day no blisters or redness were visible on or near the burns. At the parts burnt with scalding water, the cuticle appeared as if ruffled, and could be very easily rubbed off; but there was not a trace of moisture on the true skin beneath. At the parts burnt with the poker, the whole thickness of the skin was dried up, brownish, and translucent, but entirely free of redness or blisterings on or around them.

Experiment 2d. A stout young woman died in ten or twelve days of a low typhoid fever, and at her death was but little attenuated. Ten minutes after death, boiling water was poured in a continuous stream on the breast and outside of one of the legs. The body was examined in a day and a half. On the leg, no trace whatever could be discovered of the action of heat. On the breast, the place where the water had been poured on it was of a very pale brownish hue, the cuticle slightly shrivelled, dry, brittle, and easily scratched off. The surface of the true skin below was dry and around the burnt part there was not a vestige of redness or blistering. In this instance the heat was applied so soon after death, that the gentleman who applied it felt convinced he observed the chest heave up when the hot water was poured on it.

Experiment 3d. A very powerful athletic young man poisoned himself with laudanum; and, although the stomach-pump was successfully applied not many hours after he had swallowed it, continued completely comatose, and without any sign of sensibility under the ordinary stimulants. Four hours before death, a tin vessel, filled with boiling water, was applied on several parts of the arms; and a hot smoothing-iron was held on the outside of the hip-joint. Half an hour after death, a red-hot poker was applied to three places on the inside of the arm. The body was examined in thirty-eight hours.

Some of the spots burnt during life presented a uniform blister filled with serum. On two there was no blister; but the cuticle was gone, and the true skin dried into a reddish translucent membrane, at the edge of which there were drops of serum, and also particles of the same fluid dried by evaporation. Round all these spots there was more or less scarlet redness, particularly round the two spots last mentioned. A bright red border, half an inch wide, surrounded the whole burns; and the redness was not in the slightest degree diminished by firm pressure. The spots burnt after death were some of them charred on the surface and not elevated; two presented vesications, but the blisters were filled with air; the cuticle over them was dry and cracked, and the surface of the true skin beneath was also quite dry. On the white parts of the skin there was no adjacent redness. At a part of the edge of two of the burns, however, the lividity which appeared on this, as on most dead bodies, approached very near the margin; but the discoloration could be almost entirely removed by moderate pressure continued for a minute.

Experiment 4th.-Half an hour after amputation of a leg, a cauterising iron was applied to it. Around the cauterised part whiteness and dryness were produced, but no redness or vesication.

Experiment 5th.-Two hours after death, subsequent to amputation of the arm, a cauterising iron was applied to the remaining arm. The appearances were the same as in the last experi

ment.

Experiment 6th. Ten minutes after the amputation of a leg, a cauterising iron was applied to it. The effects were the same as in the fourth experiment, except that blisters were formed round the burn; dry, however, and filled with air.

From these experiments it appears that the application of heat to the body even a few minutes only after death, cannot produce any of the signs of vital reaction formerly described. It farther appears, that the lividity which follows death in most instances may assume such an arrangement as to imitate the red border produced by a burn during life. But an experienced person can easily recognise the appearance put on by lividity; and if its general appearance should not serve to characterize it, it may at once be known by the effect of continued moderate pressure in removing the redness. It should be understood, then, that, so far as the preceding experiments go, a line of redness near the burn, not removable by pressure, and likewise the formation of blisters filled with serum, are certain signs of a burn inflicted during life.

Lord Chancellor Brougham. On the first of September last, the Chancellor concluded the sittings with a speech beginning as follows:

'It is a great satisfaction to me, in taking my leave of the bar and of the suitors, to know that I have been able to dispose of all the arrears of the business of this Court, and that there are no appeals undisposed of-no petitions unanswered - and no causes now unheard, except those which are not ready, and which have been put upon the files of the Court subsequently to last June.

"It is a very great relief to the Court - it will be a very great relief to the bar - it will be a very great relief to all professional men, as I know it will be a very great relief to the suitors, — for them to feel that they shall have their business henceforth going regularly on, not encumbered by arrears, and not having their minds oppressed with the harassing prospect of never getting through their business.

'In the course of next term, the benefits of all this will be felt; and it will be found that the time has been well bestowed which we have been lately occupying, though it may have pressed hard upon the bar, upon suitors, and upon other professional men, who have been anxiously attending the Court. It has pressed hard also on the Court, but I have been willing to bear that pressure, knowing well the public will feel the full benefit next term. was said to a great man, the most illustrious of all my predecessors, that he allowed the pressure of business upon him to be more than he could bear; to which he replied, "The duties of life are more than life," memorable words, to be had in everlasting remembrance by all men who serve their country.'

It

On the 23d of September, in reply to Lord Londonderry's (we must say) most injudicious and illiberal attack, he explained the manner in which this feat had been performed: 'I sat on Good Friday and on Easter Monday, from ten in the morning till six at night, when almost all other persons were resting from their labors and enjoying their vacation. I believe I am the first Chancellor who ever sat on Good Friday, and that I am the first Chancellor who ever sat on Easter Saturday and Easter Monday, since the institution of the office. I claim no merit for all this. I seek no praise for so doing but it is only mere justice to myself that compels me to state the fact. In performing my duty in the Court of Chancery I have uniformly acted upon the maxim, "Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves." Acting up to to that maxim I have made it my constant practice to take my seat in the Court as the clock was striking ten, and I have

continued to sit there until eleven or twelve o'clock at night. I attend to every thing that is said there. I endeavor to get acquainted with the case before me as quickly as I can, to shorten as much as possible the discussions with regard to it, and in fact, to go through with it with as much rapidity as I can. This is the way in which I endeavor to despatch the business of the Court.'

On Lord Mansfield's once intimating an intention to sit on a Good Friday, Serjeant Davy is said to have observed to him, that if he did sit on that day, he would be the first judge who had done so since Pontius Pilate. Lord Brougham, however, beats Pontius Pilate hollow, having sat on Easter Saturday and Easter Monday too; and we have little doubt that, by the time the Marquis attacks him again, he will be in a condition to add Christmas day and Sunday to his list of disregarded observances. But we are not overburthened with scruples ourselves, and have a deadly antipathy to cant; so let us pass on to the great question in dispute, whether the business, so miraculously disposed of, has been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily got through. Now we have taken the greatest pains to arrive at a just conclusion on this matter by inquiring of all sorts of practitioners, and the result is certainly unfavorable to the Chancellor. We are not, indeed, prepared to maintain that many of his judgments are wrong, though some are currently spoken of as hardly fit to bear the test of a bona fide appeal; but his ordinary mode of proceeding in Court, his habit of interrupting counsel by curt and testy remarks, pretending to anticipate all the bearings of the case, and seizing all possible occasions for the exercise of his rhetorical skill, have given very general offence; whilst, on the other hand, his unacquaintance with the practice of the Court, not unfrequently exposes him to the ludicrous necessity of coaxing counsel to speak at length upon points which an efficient Chancellor would dispatch by a word. Although, therefore, the professional opinion of Lord Brougham be not quite so bad as his venerable friend's—the ever-lauded but uncompromising philosopher of Westminister-it is undoubtedly very different from that which those who judge from newspapers have formed of him. London Law Magazine.

Rewards to Informers. The following curious facts appear in the article Informer in the Encyclopedia Americana :

To encourage the apprehending of certain felons, divers English statutes of 1692, 1694, 1699, 1707, 1720, 1741, and 1742, granted rewards of from 10 to 50 pounds sterling, to such as should

prosecute to conviction highwaymen, counterfeiters, and thieves. These acts were passed at the time of the troubles in Great Britain, occasioned by the risings of the Jacobites, when, with the increase of political criminals, the number of private offenders was thought to be increasing also. By the law of 1699, besides the £40, an immunity from all parish offices (overseer of the poor, churchwarden, &c.) was allowed to any person who should prosecute to conviction a felon guilty of burglary, horse-stealing, &c. The Tyburn tickets (as the certificates of exemption were called) could be sold, as the first was of no use to a man who received a second, and were actually sold in large cities, like Manchester, at high prices (from 250 to 300 pounds sterling.) The amount of the rewards (without including the Tyburn tickets,) in the 40 counties of England, for 1798, was £7700, and, in 1813, it had risen to £18,000. The abuses which originated from this system were horrible. The police officers made a trade of it, by seducing poor, ignorant persons, chiefly foreigners, to crimes (principally the issuing of counterfeit money,) in order to gain the reward by prosecuting them for the offence. A certain McDaniel confessed (1756) that he had caused, by his testimony, 70 men to be condemned to death. He was brought to the bar with two others, but the people, fearing they were to be acquitted, treated them with such violence, that they were killed on the spot. In 1792, a similar case happened, in which 20 men had become the victims of an informer. A more recent case, in 1817, excited greater indignation. Four police officers, who had entered into a conspiracy against the life of poor men, were condemned to death, but, on account of some judicial formalities, were released by the twelve judges (the united members of the three chief tribunals in Westminster hall), and escaped without punishment. They had induced several poor women to pass counterfeit money, and seized them in the act. In other cases, such men endeavored to change a small offence into a capital crime; for instance, if one had stolen the work-bag of another, they swore that it had been tied with a string or ribbon to the arm, and torn from it by violence, by which theft was transformed into robbery, and, instead of imprisonment, the punishment was death, and the informer received the price of blood (£50). A revolting case of this kind happened (1817) when two soldiers, who were wrestling with another, in sport, for a wager of one shilling, were condemned for robbery by the artifice of a police officer, and escaped with the greatest difficulty from an undeserved punishment. Small offences were kept secret by the police officers, and the perpetrators watched, until as they

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