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Essays and addresses

The Chief Justice has written out his charge, which to a lawyer at least is of extraordinary interest.

He begins with the serious nature of the duty of judge and jury and warns the jury against being led away by their feelings.

He then defines with perfect legal accuracy the nature of the offence charged and the criminality of the duel, but he inserts the significant sentences : " The practice of private combat has its immediate origin in high example, even of Kings.

Juries have not been known to convict when all was fair, 29 yielding to the practices of Society that sometimes no one being present the fact could not be proved at whose hands the party fell, at other (times) they may have felt it difficult to infer that malice aforethought essential to mur- der.

" He deals with the facts of the duel and then with the antecedent facts " not as legal evidence but as the only palli- ative the prisoners could offer and was usually heard.