by a club with a sharp corner, which cut open the scalp nearly across the top of the head, as though struck with a knife. He further testified that if Aimes had been wounded in the store, blood in considerable quantities would have immediately followed the blow, staining the floor where the head fell; that as there was no blood found, except where the head of Aimes rested when he was first discovered, it was certain he received the wound on the very ground where the officer found him. midnight assassin, whose perjured lips have added deep damnation to his cut-throat life, undertakes to explain how George Aimes was found, wounded and nearly dead, near the scene of this crime. His story is uncorroborated, and his honor, the judge, has said, at your discretion you may disregard it. Gentlemen, there is a limit even to the capacity for doing atrocious deeds, and from the abundance of a foul and wicked heart the mouth of this wretch has spoken his own condemnation. Convict George Aimes on such testimony! Human nature, justice, hatred of perjury and confessed crime revolts at the very thought." The counsel then dwelt, with telling scrutiny, on the many instances of contradiction in the evidence of Skidmore. Barker called Mrs. Aimes to prove the character of the prisoner. To this the district attorney strongly objected; but the judge permitted the evidence to at least show the history of the accused who and what he was before charged with this crime."It is said," continued the judge, "that the woman is deeply interested in the result of this trial. The jury will weigh her evidence in the light of that interest, and give it the weight it deserves." She gave her evidence in a manner that convinced all in the court-room she was testifying under the awful responsibility of her oath, and that her desire to tell the truth was paramount to every other consideration. She could not, of course, say anything concerning the crime with which her boy was charged. But she related, under frequent objec-glarized store, stumbled, fell and struck his head tions, the story of her son's life and, incidentally. that of her own, calmly and candidly. She endured the cross-examination of Mr. Livingston without one variation from her direct evidence. When she left the stand the hitherto good character of George Aimes was fairly established in the minds of a majority of those in the court room. With this evidence Barker rested his case and opened his address to the jury. In all his brilliant career he never was more eloquent or convincing. It was not an appeal more affluent in words than in thought, logic and learning. It was terse, pointed and effectual, with just enough oratorical drapery to strongly enforce attention. "I stand before you, gentlemen," he said, "a stranger. We are met here for the first time in life to discharge highly responsible duties. Under the providence of God, I am here to protect one whom I feel in my heart of hearts to be guiltless of the crime with which he is charged. I shall make no appeal to your sympathy and yet sympathy is that gift which bespeaks the angel within us. If sympathy for this poor youth, whose young life has been darkened by strange vicissitudes, springs inherent in your hearts, it is because you have sympathy with his innocence. "If you believe the evidence of the distinguished surgeon, whose wonderful skill and whose graceful pen have shed effulgence upon his profession and honor upon the city in which he dwells, then you must acquit the prisoner. It is the triumph of the surgeon not only to convict the guilty, but to save the innocent. Skidmore swears that Aimes, being in the bur against the corner of the counter, receiving a dangerous wound which rendered him insensible; that his accomplices, fearing detection if he were left in the store, attempted to remove him from the scene. They were surprised, and the prisoner was left on the ground. This is the only evidence the learned district attorney has to convict the prisoner. The surgeon tells you the wound could not have been made by falling against the sharp edge of a counter, and he gives you the reason why it could not; first, because the wound was on top of the prisoner's head, and could not have been produced by falling against the corner of a counter; second, he says the wound must have bled copiously the moment it was inflicted, and yet no blood was found in the store where the witness says it was inflicted, but there was a pool of fresh blood under the head of the prisoner where he was found insensible. But we have proved that the counters in the store were all rounded, and could not have produced a cut like the one on the top of his head. How did the prisoner receive the wound, and how came he on the spot where he was found? These are questions which, if George Aimes could answer to you, as he has to me. would show what the great Judge of all knows, the perfect innocence of the accused. "But, gentlemen, there is a witness whose appearance and sacred character shed a hallowed influence over everything she says; it is the defendant's mother. I revere the sacred source whence that testimony came. She is the only person here who has known the defendant from his birth to the present moment. I trust, with most implicit faith, in the untiring anxiety and sleepless watchfulness of this mother's love, and her beau- terrible cross-examination, I venture to say, ever tiful allegiance to truth. The story she relates of her son's life and character shows him incapable of committing the crime with which he is charged. Under a strong objection, this mother's testimony was given. Although the facts were related by one deeply interested in the fate of the defendant, there was that in her whole appearance which convinced you that every word she uttered was the immutable truth. Gentlemen, I ask you to restore the son to the mother. Give her back all that is dear to her all to which she can cling in her declining years. Give him back to her tender care, her matchless love. Give him back to her, for she has tenderly, prayerfully and patiently reared him for honorable and successful manhood. Give him back to her from his sufferings in a dungeon, from manacles and chains, not in sympathy for the mother, nor pity for the son, but because infinite justice, allegiance to your oaths, to your consciences and your hatred of perjury demand it." Mr. Livingston's reply was all that could have been expected from a lawyer so distinguished -a prosecuting officer so successful. But the defense of his opponent had taken him by surprise; he saw in it an effort that would have reflected credit upon the most eminent member of the Albany bar, always pre-eminent for the talent and learning of its members. His argument to the jury was long remembered. It was presented with vigor, clearness, precision of thought and learning, united with a singular facility of diction. It was dangerous to the liberty of poor Aimes. As a faithful, able legal servant of the people, he did his duty in a manner that reflected honor upon him and his office. 66 "The prisoner at the bar," he said, must be convicted. His guilt has been fully established. His is one of those dark crimes the very thought of which causes the boldest to shudder - a midnight burglary. The testimony proves him to be a burglar. In the perpetration of his crime he was rendered unconscious by a wound, given in his dark enterprise. The prosecution proves him very near the place where the crime was committed. This is an overwhelming circumstance against him. Proximity to the place of the crime is always regarded almost convincing proof. This evidence has another significant force; it corroborates the testimony of Skidmore. He swears the man was wounded while in the act of committing the crime, and he is found wounded near the place of commission." Mr. Livingston attacked the evidence of the surgeon with great force. His effort to do away with Barker's most searching and damaging crossexamination of the witness Skidmore was plausible and ingenious. "My learned and, permit me to say, rarely gifted opponent subjected Mr. Skidmore to the most witnessed in this court-room. It is, therefore, not strange he should be confused and somewhat contradictory under this fearful ordeal. A sharp and powerful cross-examination is often the means by which the most trustworthy evidence is destroyed. But, gentlemen, in your deliberations study closely and remember well the witness Skidmore's candid and truthful testimony. Take that for your guide, and your verdict will add another bulwark of safety against criminals who plan by day and prowl by night, executing their horrible purposes to the terror of citizens and the destruction of property. The evidence of the prisoner's mother can have no weight whatever in determining your verdict. She testified under every incentive to give a glow of respectability to her son. But, even admitting his character to have been respectable, that is only a slight presumption in his favor. Men, good men, all about us, by sudden temptation fall into crime; and so did George Aimes." Many believed Livingston's powerful argument would convict Aimes. After an able and impartial charge from Judge Vanderpoel, the jury retired. Their consultation was protracted. At length the peculiar tramp of the returning jury was heard. Who that has ever listened to the footsteps of a returning jury has ever forgotten it? Even lawyers, whose lives have been spent in the court-room, hardened bailiffs and constables, find in a returning jury about to pronounce a verdict, that perhaps will send a fellow-being to the scaffold or consign him for years to a living tomb, an intensity of feeling hard to conceal. But how deep, how terrible is the emotion of that awful moment to the prisoner and his friends. Each step of the jurors seemed to press the very life-blood from the hearts of young Aimes and his mother. Slowly they filed into their seats, and the clerk called their names. Barker glanced at their faces to catch some expression touching the fate of his client; but all wore a solemn, fixed look, giving no indication of their verdict. Amid breathless silence the clerk propounded the momentous question: Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your ver dict?" "We have." "How say you; do you find George Aimes, the prisoner at the bar, guilty or not guilty?" There was a moment's silence, in which liberty or prison was involved. All bend forward to catch the answer. The foreman rises, and the next instant a verdict of "Not guilty" resounds through the court-room. With a cry of joy the mother sprang to her son and folded him to her heart. "He is saved! He is saved! George, my boy, I knew you were not guilty!" she exclaimed in ecstasy. There were many, very many moist eyes, "unused to the melting mood," in the court-room; many half-suppressed sobs were heard in all parts of it. What would have been the fate of Aimes had not George P. Barker thus been brought providentially to his defense? His rich reward was the almost frantic joy with which the verdict was received by the mother and son. "The God of the widow and the orphan sem you to us, sir, in our distress. His blessing will descend upon you through all your days. We have no money, sir, with which to reward you, but our prayers to that Gracious Being who sent you to us, imploring His blessing upon your head, will never cease. And now I can only thank you from my heart of hearts," said the widow on taking leave of their benefactor. Some day I shall reward you for saving me from a felon's doom. It will be the happiest moment of my life, except this, when I can do so," said young Aimes, with his eyes full of glittering tears. Years passed rapidly away; honors clustered around Barker, political, professional and official. One morning, during the winter of 1843, while at Albany discharging the duties of attorney-general, a well-dressed, gentlemanly appearing man called at his rooms, desiring a private interview with him. It was readily granted. When they were alone the stranger said: "I see you do not remember me, Mr. Barker." "I do not; I have no recollection of ever having met you before." My name is Aimes - George Aimes. You must remember the name. I am indebted to you for more than my own life - the life of my mother, now a saint in heaven." A moment's reflection brought back to Barker's memory one of his earliest struggles at the bar, under circumstances that made him happy in the recollection of it. "You have been prosperous and honored," continued Aimes. 'My mother, while she lived, watched your success. She said it was in answer to her prayers. I, too, have been prosperous in the world; the years that have flown since we parted have made me affluent, and I have come to thank you for it all." When the interview ended, as Aimes was about to take his leave, he said: "I have brought this small package, which my wife and myself prepared for you, to prove the truth of what I said to you when I parted with you after that terrible trial." Aimes and his defender many years ago passed from the trials of earth to that "better land;" but a son of the former, an eminent and wealthy citizen of a western city, survives him, who treasures the name of George P. Barker with reverential respect. To him, as well as to notes of the trial taken by the late George Dawson, for many years the editor of the Albany Evening Journal, the author is indebted for the story he has relateda story whose truth needs neither poetic fancy nor fervid imagination to give it a place in the category of real events stranger than fiction. THE THE TANSAN LABEL CASE. HE ALBANY LAW JOURNAL is indebted to Edwin G. Adams, Jr., civil engineer, of Tientsin, China, for the following relating to the decission rendered recently at Kobe, Japan, in the Tansan label case. Undoubtedly it will be of interest as indicating the sort of justice dealt out by the Japanese courts wherein foreigners are concerned. When Japan first notified the various nations and asked for treaty revision, the foreign residents in Japan were decidedly opposed to any change that would give the Japanese full jurisdiction over them, intimating that it would be impossible for a foreigner to obtain justice in dealings with the Japanese courts. The absurdly unjust decision appended would seem to indicate that the foreign resident in Japan understood the class of people he had to deal with: A funnier and more absurdly unjust decision has seldom been rendered than that given on the 10th of October, at Kobe, Japan, in the Tansan Label Case by Mr. Tamika Shigeo, Chief Judge of First Department, Kobe District Court, and Messrs. Shimoyama Eigoro and Hiyama Hikojuro, judges. Tansan - by way of explanation — is a natural mineral water obtained from certain springs in Japan and is familiar to all residents not only of Japan but to China and Australia also, and is procurable at all the ports in the Far East. Some two years ago Mr. Clifford Wilkinson, the owner of these springs (these facts are taken from the judgment), registered his label at the Japanese Patent Bureau. It bears on it the word "Tansan" and other matter. A Japanese being of an imitative turn of mind and envious of Mr. Wilkinson's success started a water of his own, adopting a label which was a close copy of Mr. Wilkinson's, and registered his label in the spring of this year, Handing the package to Barker, he left the also at the Patent Bureau. Mr. Wilkinson went room. On opening it the lawyer found a draft for five hundred dollars folded in a letter containing these words: to the court to get an injunction against the Japanese who was trading on the reputation of his spring water. "The defendant uses this label for waters manufactured by him. The plaintiff (Mr. Wilkinson) informed him several times that he was violating the Trade Mark Regulations, but the defendant did not stop the sale of his waters. Consequently the plaintiff applied for the cancellation of the registration of the defendant's Tansan label to the Patent Bureau. The Patent Bureau canceled the registration of the defendant's label. The decision of the Patent Bureau has already been given to the defendant. The defendant may appeal to the Court of Cassation against the decision of the Patent Bureau within sixty days of the decision. We cannot find any reason to think that the decision was rendered contrary to law. The plaintiff and the defendant have been fighting for the monoply of the label. The defendant can only appeal to the Court of Cassation on a legal point. The defendant will continue the use of the unjust label which it was decided could be used by the plaintiff only. The plaintiff will thereby suffer loss. This is a point. The plaintiff has suffered great loss. The amount of the water sold by the plaintiff has been increasing at the rate of 20 or 30 per cent. per day, but it began to decrease. This has injured the name of the plaintiff and it will damage his business. This is very clear. The plaintiff has sustained a great loss, but the actual amount cannot be ascertained. The plaintiff is about to sue for damages, but as his customers are scattered all over the eastern ports of Asia, he states that he applied for interdict while he engaged in investigating his loss." clear This is the judicial statement of the plaintiff's case, and the judgment then goes on to state the defendant's case, which does not traverse that of the plaintiff in a single particular; the defendant owns that his label has been canceled by the Patent Bureau on account of its "strong likeness" to the plaintiff's, but he claims that he is allowed sixty days to appeal to the Court of Cassation "and he is entitled to his label until the decision of the Patent Bureau is confirmed." The court refuses Mr. Wilkinson his injunction, and then proceeds to give its reasons, which are as follows: It is an acknowledged fact that the label registered by the defendant at the Patent Bureau of the Agricultural and Commercial Department was pronounced void and that the decision of the Patent Bureau awaits confirmation. The defendant is entitled to use his label which he registered legally until such a time as the decision rendering his label void has been confirmed. The plaintiff declares that the use of the defendant's label has caused him considerable loss, but Fukami Shukichi, sole agent for the defendant's water, and a sworn witness, stated in the court that the weather is now becoming cold and that there is not much demand for Tansan water. Thus it cannot be admitted that a great loss is likely to be sustained by the plaintiff if the defendant uses his label. The statement of the plaintiff regarding his loss be comes only a matter of the past and will not affect him in the future. Moreover, the time for confirmation of the decision of the Patent Bureau is drawing near and there is practically no necessity to enforce the interdict applied for by the plaintiff. A decision was delivered accordingly. It is not necessary to explain about the second protest by the plaintiff, seeing that it has been decided that this application is unreasonable on the ground stated above. If this is a fair sample of the sort of justice the foreigners are to endure in Japan now that treaty revision has given the Japanese full jurisdiction over them, it is high time that the Japanese carried out their reported design of establishing a separate court to deal with cases where foreigners are concerned. The judge admits that Mr. Wilkinson registered his label two years before his Japanese competitor; that the Japanese label is an infringement of Mr. Wilkinson's; that as being an unjust infringement it has been canceled by the Patent Bureau; that the loss has been pecuniary and injury has been done to Mr. Wilkinson's name; but he refuses Mr. Wilkinson an injunction and gives judgment against the foreigner and in favor of the Japanese defendant on the ridiculous grounds "that the weather is now becoming cold and that there is not much demand for Tansan water." -- A Yokohama paper, commenting on this judgment, points out that the facts are that outside of Japan and China the sales of Tansan are larger in the winter than in summer notably in Australia, for it is the hottest time of the year. We learn that since the judgment has been rendered, large shipments have been made to outside ports, expecting to profit by the illegal label before the higher courts can decide the question, thus adding to the injury already done." It is quite natural that the foreign merchants in Japan should view with alarm the consignment of their rights and property to the care of such utterly incompetent courts as that which has just refused an injunction against the manufacturer of fraudulent Tansan. The editor of the Law Quarterly Review confesses himself unable to invent an abbreviation of 1900 for the quotation of the Law Reports. The London Gazette states that the queen has been pleased to grant to Sir Ford North, late one of the justices of the High Court of Justice, an annuity of £3,500 for life, beginning from the 10th of January, 1900, inclusive. There are now five judges enjoying their pensions, namely, Sir Edward Fry, Lord Field, Lord Brampton, Sir Arthur Charles and Sir Ford North. The patriotic poem "To Arms," recently written by the poet laureate, has, by his special permission, been set to music by Mr. Cyril Broxholm, son of Mr. F. A. Broxholm, of the Middle Temple, who is himself well known in musical circles. Mr. Broxholm, Jr., belongs to the law, having just been articled to a well-known firm of solicitors in the city. Mr. J. P. Wallis, who has been appointed advocate-general at Madras, is the son of the late John E. Wallis, of the Inner Temple, who was for some years editor and proprietor of the Tablet, and afterwards judge of the Mixed Tribunals in Egypt. He graduated at the London University, taking the gold medal in classics at the M. A. examination in 1882, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1886, and joined the Northern Circuit. He has edited several volumes of the State Trials for the State Trials committee, and served two successive terms as one of the readers to the council of legal education. When the Imperial Yeomanry reaches the front the Irish Court of Appeal will be well represented in the war, says the Law Times. No fewer than four of the judges of that court have sons who have joined the Irish company of the yeomanry corps, namely, Mr. Victor Gibson, the fourth son of Lord Ashbourne; Mr. A. M. Porter, Mr. William Holmes, and Mr. Maurice FitzGibbon. The first three of these are members of the Irish bar, having been called in 1899, 1898 and 1895, respectively. The inspiriting words of Mr. Justice Ross, who recently declared that he would rather be at present shouldering a rifle in South Africa than delivering equity judgments at the Four Courts, have already borne fruit, The Personal Property Law of the State of New York. By Robert Ludlow Fowler. New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co., 1900. This volume contains not only the Personal Property Law, chapter 47 of the General Laws, but also the text of the original statutes from which the various sections of that law were derived by the commissioners of statutory revision. The Personal Property Law, though a brief act, is a very important part of the latest revision of the statutes, containing not only those provisions which relate to the limitations of future and contingent interests in personal property, but also a large part of the former Statute of Frauds, as well as a very complete collection of cases and principles bearing upon it. In addition to the commentary and notes of the editor of this volume, it also includes the reports and notes of the commissioner of statutory revision on this new law, and also the notes of the old revisers of the Revised Statutes on the portion of their revision now re-enacted in "The Personal Property Law." To complete the usefulness of the book in the preparation of briefs, the text of the original Statutes of Frauds (both of England and New York) is inserted in the appendix, that text being the substratum of all the modern law on the same subject. The little work, which has been prepared with care, cannot fail to prove exceptionally useful to the profession. |