TRIAL OF JUDGE PECK. PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. On the 8th day of December, 1826, the Hon. John Scott, Representative from the State of Missouri, presented in the House of Representatives of the United States the following Memorial from LUKE EDWARD LAWLESS, a citizen of that State. To the Honorable the House of Representatives of the United States. The petition of Luke Edward Lawless, a citizen of the State of Missouri, and of the United States, RESPECTFULLY SHOWETH: That, on the 30th day of March, in the present year, 1826, there appeared in the Republican, a newspaper printed in the city of St. Louis, State of Missouri, an article purporting to be the final decree or opinion of the Judge of the District Court of the United States for the District of Missouri, in the cause in which the widow and heirs of Antoine Soulard were plaintiffs, and the United States defendant. That the said opinion was sent to the press and published at the request of James H. Peck, Judge of the aforesaid District Court, whose opinion it purported to be. That, in fact, a final decree had been rendered by said Judge in the above cause, and an appeal taken therefrom by the plaintiffs, to the Supreme Court of the United States, previous to the publication of said opinion. That, for the purposes of said appeal, all the necessary steps had been taken by the appellants, and said Judge Peck was no longer, at the date of said publication, invested with any judicial control or consideration of said cause. That your petitioner having, after an attentive perusal of said published opinion, discovered, or believed that he discovered, in it, many and serious mistakes in fact and doctrine, did, on the 8th day of April, 1826, in an article signed "A Citizen," published in the Missouri Advocate and St. Louis Enquirer, a newspaper printed in the city of St. Louis, submit to the public a concise statement of some of the principal errors into which your petitioner conceived that the said Judge Peck had fallen. |