Various

“ He may storm away as long as he has a mind to; but I tell you what, my dear, he shan’t prevent me.’
‘I don’t mind a bit about it now, Nora, since you’re come at last to me.’
‘Mind it, darling! I should think not! Why on earth should you mind it? It’s too preposterous! Why, Marian, whenever I think of it—though I’m a West Indian born myself, and dreadfully prejudiced, and all that wicked sort of thing, you know—it seems to me the most ridiculous nonsense I ever heard of. ”

“ In England or any other country of Europe, we should be white—as white as you are. But such external and apparent whiteness isn’t enough by any means for our West Indian prejudices. As long as you have the remotest taint or reminiscence of black blood about you in any way—as long as it can be shown, by tracing your pedigree pitilessly to its fountainhead, that any one of your ancestors was of African origin—then, by all established West Indian reckoning, you are a coloured man, an outcast, a pariah.—You have married a coloured man, Marian ”

“ One will appear habited as a workman, unshaven, and giving one the notion of being out of employment; to be followed by another dressed in the most faultless style. They are all remarkable for giving their evidence in an admirable manner, beginning at the beginning, never using a superfluous word, and leaving off when the end has arrived. This is in strong contrast to the ordinary witness, especially the female witness, whom it is difficult to keep to the point. ”

“ It is true that when an Act of Parliament creates a new offence, and a person ignorant of its existence is convicted of the breach of such new enactment, a slight penalty is inflicted as a warning to other persons rather than as a punishment for the offender; but still the stigma remains of having been convicted for an offence against the law, which is worse to some sensitive men than a heavy fine would be to some other persons of different temperament and less unblemished previous character. ”

“ And every person who uses or has in his possession for use in his trade a weight which is not of the denomination of some Board of Trade standard, is liable to a fine not exceeding five pounds, or in the case of a second offence, ten pounds; and the weight is liable to be forfeited.
There is, however, one distinction between underweight and overweight which many persons lose sight of; or rather, they mistakenly deny its existence. When any article is sold by weight, it is essential that full weight should be given, or the person who sells will become liable to a penalty. ”

“ This being a mistake of fact, is not a criminal offence. But if another man, mistaking the law, thinks that he has a right to kill a person who is excommunicate or an outlaw, and acts upon that belief, he would be liable to be convicted for wilful murder. It may be observed that the right of a householder to kill a burglar in his dwelling-house is not an unqualified right; for in that case, a private individual would be empowered to inflict a greater punishment than would be awarded by the law after conviction. ”

“ Companionship and a fresh point of view lighten most things. Nora stopped with the two Hawthorns all that day till nearly dinnertime, talking and laughing with them much as usual after the first necessary explanations; and by five o’clock, Marian and Edward were positively ashamed themselves that they had ever made so much of what grew with thinking on it into so absurdly small and unimportant a matter. ”

“ In civil actions, when the facts on which the supposed cause of action arose are in dispute, and if either party has been led to make concessions to the other party by means of fraudulent misrepresentations, the ignorance of the victim of the fraud will not prevent him from taking proceedings to set aside the agreement so fraudulently obtained, when he becomes acquainted with the facts. But if the compromise were founded upon a misconception of the law, he would be bound by it; for he ought to have known the law, or employed some person who knew it to protect his interests in the matter. ”

“ The witness who thought that if he told a lie after having taken the oath, all the jurymen would be sent to everlasting perdition, was an extreme illustration of the misconceptions which exist on this subject. Most people know that the invocation of the Almighty—‘So help me God’—is one the consequences of which are intended to be personal to themselves. But they dishonour their Maker if they try to escape from the consequences by a trick. ”

“ I had taken an interest in all these details, as my mates had done, and, as with them, my sympathies were on the side of Captain Laurenston, yet only as a stranger, for I had never, to my knowledge, heard of him before. But after a while it began to be said that the captain was the officer who had been so long a visitor at Elm Knoll, and was the accepted suitor of Miss Cleabyrn. ”

“ The fear of punishment has a deterring effect upon some; but the offence is one which is very difficult of detection if well managed. If two or three persons swear to a consistent story, and an equal, or even a greater, number contradict their evidence on oath, who is to decide which set of witnesses are to be believed, and which are to be prosecuted for perjury? The punishment on conviction may be any term of penal servitude not exceeding seven years, or imprisonment, with hard labour, for a term not exceeding two years ”

“ The social popularity which many beadles enjoyed not unfrequently encouraged them to take certain liberties, which, nowadays at all events, would not be permitted either within or without the ‘sphere’ in which they lived and worked. What would be thought of a beadle, for instance, who would presume to correct the precentor in announcing from his box a proclamation of marriage between parties, as once did a beadle of a parish near Arbroath? ”

“ Some persons have a variety of ingenious but vain expedients which they hope will enable them to lie in the witness-box with impunity; and while gratifying their personal spite, or earning the wages of falsehood, to evade the pains and penalties attendant upon the practice of perjury, and the object of this paper is to show how futile the supposed precautions are, and in what consists{216} the essence of the oath, and the violation of it which will render the offender liable to punishment for the perjury committed by him. ”

“ After all, how little it was, compared with their worst fears and anticipations! ‘Thomas,’ he cried to the negro butler, ‘bring round our horses as quick as you can saddle them.—Darling, we must ride up to Agualta this moment, and speak about it all to my father and mother.’
In Trinidad, everybody rides; indeed, there is no other way of getting about from place to place among the mountains, for carriage-roads are there unknown, and only narrow winding horse-paths climb slowly round the interminable peaks and gullies. ”

“ Law is supposed to be universally known, though few if any persons are acquainted with all the multifarious laws which are in existence, many of them being practically obsolete, others repealed by implication, though not expressly, and the effect of others being rendered doubtful by means of inconsistent enactments, which from time to time puzzle the judges, who have to interpret the law in case of differences of opinion on the part of other persons. ”

“ Every tradesman who values his reputation ought to have his scales and weights verified frequently; and in any case of any part of his weighing apparatus being out of order, the authorised inspector ought to be visited without delay, or some other efficient test should be applied. Nothing injures a tradesman more than a conviction for having defective weights or inaccurate scales in his possession. ”

“ I am neither doctor nor nurse by profession, but have had twice in my lifetime to abandon my ordinary occupation and take charge of members of my family who suffered from severe illness. Like others who were not taught ‘the regular way,’ I had to meet difficulties as they arose, and, as often happens, necessity became the mother of invention.
My first patient was my father: he suffered from nervous fever; and the slightest noise caused him great suffering, every sound appearing to be magnified to an extraordinary degree. ”

“ My remaining trouble was putting coals on the fire. If I shook them out of the scuttle into the grate, it made a deal of noise; if I rooted them out with a scoop, the sound was nearly as great, and more irritating, because more prolonged. I managed to get out of that difficulty by making up the coal in parcels. I brought my coal-box downstairs, and taking a couple of scoopfuls of coal at a time, I folded it in a piece of newspaper, and then tied each parcel with string. I put the parcels one upon another in it until the coal-box was full, and took them to my patient’s room. ”

“ I well remember that it was on one of these afternoons that Miss Beatrice rode through with a small party. Ah! I recall them easily enough. There was one other lady, and three gentlemen. To open the gate for them, for her, was the opportunity I had been longing, waiting for, and wasting my few hours of holiday for; so I offered to do this to assist my mate, who had relieved me, and who was glad enough to be spared the labour; and I caught a full glance from the eyes of Miss Beatrice. ”

“ Whatever suspicions his customers may entertain as to their parcels being underweight, the certainty of such a conviction will impress them far more; and many who never previously thought of weighing their purchases, will begin to do so in consequence of seeing the conviction reported in the papers; and yet we are willing to believe that in many cases the conviction has been brought about by carelessness, and has not been a punishment for deliberate fraud.
IGNORANCE OF LAW AND OF FACT.
There is a great difference between the consequences of ignorance of law and ignorance of fact. ”

“ Soon did our worthy friend feel that the big, busy world, of which he and his villagers had heard but little, and knew less, was now beginning to push itself upon them, until at length one day it was discovered that his and their identity were being merged and lost in the ever-increasing crowds of men. ”

“ Perjury is a crime which strikes at the very root of the administration of justice; for if no reliable evidence could be obtained, it would be impossible to enforce by means of legal proceedings the rights of those who had been wronged, or to settle in a satisfactory manner the thousands of disputes which come yearly before the various courts. ”

“ It is a result of the inevitable law to which everything human, every institution of man’s making or developing, is finally subservient. Assuredly, there is no feature or characteristic of life, whether viewed in a national or in an individual sense, but has to submit sooner or later to this universal order of things ”

“ In case a burglar should attempt violence which appeared likely to lead to murder of any of the inmates of the house, the law would hold the person attacked justifiable in defending his own life, even though in doing so he were compelled to take the life of the assailant ”

“ I signified that I had done so.
‘You know that he is pursued by the police;{221} and you know, I have no doubt, that he is the gentleman who was here in the early part of the summer?—I thought so. He is in this neighbourhood; is not far from here. He dares not enter our house at Elm Knoll, as that is not only under special watch, but we have reason to think that one or more of our servants are bought over, and would act as spies and informers. He cannot get away without assistance; and you, he thinks, are the only man he can trust.’
‘I am!’ I exclaimed. ”

“ It is worthy a pilgrimage to explore those tapestried halls, for they are full of interest, and the Hall itself is beautifully situated. But he who has never studied the hundreds of views of Haddon which are in existence, will be the happier man. ”

“ Dr Begg, in his Autobiography, tells a story—not, however, for the first time—of a grave-digging beadle who, in reply to a question put to him by his minister, said that ‘Trade’s very dull the noo; I hae na buried a leevin’ cratur for three weeks.’ This same beadle, who was very much an eye-servant, was appointed to watch the gooseberries (Scotticé grosets) during the days of the communion, when, amongst a multitude of worthy people, some doubtful characters came about. ”

“ If ‘the good man struggling with the storms of Fate’ required instant rescue from his troubles, a rich uncle from India appeared upon the scene. So in our day the villain is run to earth by a supernaturally gifted detective. But making allowances for the fact that a great part of our fiction is the work of women, who cannot (presumably) have come in contact with the detective class, the sketches of these useful individuals by feminine pens are tolerably close to nature, although they are copies of pre-existing portraits ”

“ The Elementary Education Acts have so extended the facilities for the acquisition of the art of reading, and the taste for reading is so cultivated by cheap periodical literature, that there is much more chance now than formerly of all classes knowing something of what is being done in the way of new enactments for the guidance of the people, the parliamentary reports forming an important part of the contents of every newspaper, and newspapers have come to be classed among the necessaries of life, even by those whose incomes are of the smallest. ”