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examined, and similarly all the rest of his side; all being considered again as the same person, each attending carefully to what is said, each bound to answer definitely every question asked, and careful to avoid "blots." When blots are made, the opposite side again appeal, and score as many to their side, up to three, as the judge appoints. Whichever side at the end has made fewest blots wins. The chief amusement of the game will be found to depend, if those playing have any humour or imagination, on the strange falsehood of the replies given, the ingenuity requisite to sustain them, and the curious web of self-consistent impossibilities which will have to be invented to prop up a statement; and again, on the cleverness which will frequently be employed to palliate or explain away a blot.

We will now imagine an example. A accuses a of murdering his page, stealing a spoon at dinner, smoking in the railway, lying in bed till twelve, or anything whatever. Suppose, for instance, he declares that a murdered his "buttons." In answer to questions, he says, that a did it last night, in the coal-cellar, at 11.25 P.M.; he knows the time, because he heard a scream at that time by the Horse Guards clock, which he saw by moonlight, across two miles of houses, with a telescope, bought in CochinChina. When asked by a why he, a, murdered the boy, A replies that it was partly from general blood-thirstiness, partly for the sake of the buttons.

a. What did I do with the buttons? A. Sold them.

a. To whom? A. To the Emperor of France.

a. When? what for? A. At seven this morning-to make bullets of..

a. Who told you? A. The Emperor himself.

a. When did you see him?-&c. Or again, when b is examining:b. Where was the body found? A. In the canal.

b. How do you know I killed him in the coal-cellar? A. The knife was found there.

b. How did you get into my coalcellar A. Crept in.

b. What for? A. To steal coals.-&c. Presently, in the course of the game :c. (asks D). Did he struggle much when I killed him? D. No.

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c. What did he say? D. "Take care my wife and children."

c. (asks E). How did they identify the body? E (remembering that the buttons had been cut off). Because your knife was found sticking in him.

All a's side at once shout for a blot, since E had said before (or A, who is identical with E, had said) that he himself had found the knife in the coalcellar. E justifies himself by urging that a had used two knives; but the judge thinks the excuse poor, and awards a blot for three. The last answer is disallowed.

Possibly, again, b may ascertain from C that the struggle lasted three-quarters of an hour in solemn silence; and then may appeal for a blot, because D had mentioned his dying words. C gets out of it by saying that this was when the struggle was over, and the judge lets it pass. Again, perhaps, a asks B by what light he killed him; and is told that it was by a moderator lamp which he took down with him. B next replies that he took it down at 11.25, priding himself on the accuracy with which he has followed A's statement. A blot is called for, because A said that after the long dying struggle the scream was heard at 11.25 by the Horse Guards. B explains that, on this particular night, the Horse Guards clock had been stopped by order of the Commander-in-Chief, because his youngest child had got the measles. The judge allows a blot for one.

The above suggestions will probably be enough to explain the game. They, no doubt, wear a childish appearance in print; but almost all the humorous fancy which is the zest of such a game must appear childish if coldly written down. After the quarter of an hour, A sets up his alibi, saying, for example, that he was at his club-over the firereading-with Jones and Brown-reading Froude's History-the tenth volume.

it was that they were doing so, when ten volumes are not yet published? The reply will be, that they are published, the day before yesterday, and so on; falsehood being, in "Ural Mountains," rather a virtue than a vice.

Having explained the principles of the game, it might now be sufficient to commend it to an enlightened public; but for the sake of candour a postscript appears necessary. The account above

given of the origin of the game is purely and utterly fabulous. There is no Örula tribe of Kafirs; there never was such a person as Sir Frederick Manson; there was no British expedition in 1853. The game has not been played for a hundred years; it has only been played once since the Creation. It originated in the brain of two ordinary persons, the writer of this article and another, who are not foreign travellers nor African barbarians, but individuals chiefly occupied in calm study, and more given, generally speaking, to work than to play. Observing with pain the distressed state of our country for the want of quiet, social amusement, we determined to remedy the defect, and invent the Game of the Future. We set to work in a truly workmanlike manner. As Edgar Poe declared that he had composed the "Raven" by working from first principles, building up a gradual structure on mere naked theory, so we decided that we would do. We meditated profoundly on the subject of games, and laid down, one by one, certain canons for our guidance, adding each new one as it suggested itself, and shaping our ideas of the game according to them.

The

following is we are now speaking boná fide the order in which they occurred to us, as we wrote them down at the time; and when the "Ural Mountains" has been established for centuries as the national English amusement, the statement will no doubt possess an historical interest. In the first place we settled that we would exclude physical materials, in order to make the game universal. This was Canon 1. Canon 2 was, that there must be two sides, as in all the really good games. Canon 3. Some of the

in the game than others. The reasons of this are many and obvious. 4. There must be a score of some kind kept. These canons were obtained, it may be observed, chiefly by an induction, separation, and collection of all the best points of other games, partly from consideration of human nature. 5. There ought to be, in the Ideal Game, no distinction of sexes, which always breeds some awkwardness, or some vulgarity. 6. There must be no writing-no poetry-no display of knowledge. 7. On the whole we decided, this being a social game, that question and answer ought to be brought in. But the game must not depend on mere words. 8. Chance must be an element. 9. It will, probably, be most successful if some relation of life is introduced, by way of parody or otherwise; we thought of three, viz. that of king and court, army and generals, judge and jury. 10. Perhaps, let it have some hard names, as in "squails;" though this is almost unworthy of the Game of the Future. 11. There should be progress in the game by a series of separate efforts, a distinct advance, step by step; perhaps alternately. 12. There should be something in it involving the possibility of dispute. 13. The question arises now, How is each side to add one to its score? Two methods chiefly suggested themselves; by guessing some puzzle right, or by some fault, e.g. selfcontradiction, of the other side. We thought the latter the best. 14. There must be not only the play of fancy, but some absurdity and incongruity as well.

Such were the laws which we conceived necessary for a perfect game. They were distinctly laid down, in the above order, before the game abovedescribed shaped itself finally, after some days of consideration. It is now offered to England. offered to England. The Anglo-Saxon race will receive it with eagerness, and will hand it down as an heir-loom to ages. If it should indeed fail, it will only be a fresh proof of the weakness of the deductive method; if it succeed, the world will not be slow to recognize the Creative Might of Genius.

E. E. B.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF TRIAL BY JURY IN BRITAIN.

AUTHOR OF

BY THE REV. W. BARNES,

POEMS IN THE DORSETSHIRE DIALECT," &C.

TRIAL by Jury seems to have been a true and most early law of the social life of the Britons, and therefore of Britain, and to have been practised by the Celtic people, as by many other kindreds of men, in their times of free tribeship.

In the earliest forms of men-gatherings, a father was the law-head of his house, and therefore the law-head of his sons, and even of their children, and of all the souls-men, women, children, and war-slaves-who were under his múnd or protection. Thence were formed patriarchal tribes, and afterwards greater chief-led tribes, which our forefathers in early times called cin, the head of which was the cining (our king or kinhead), as the head of the Arab tribe is the Shaikh; of the Tartar, the Khan; of the African, the Gerad, Sultan, and others. That of the Britons was called the Pencenedl, or tribe-head; and that of the Israelites the Goel, or Goel-hadum, the redeemer of blood.

In this kind of tribeship the more usual law is that, if a man of a tribe A slay a man of the tribe B, there must be a clearing by the tribe B of the blood of their slain tribesman, and that, until there be such a clearing of his blood, it lingers as a stain on his tribe or himself. The Arabic word "thar" for the taking of blood for blood, means cleansing; and in the Edipus Tyrannus, 1. 313, there was a stain (μinoua) from a slain man; and (line 255) his murder ought not to be left uncleansed (ἀκάθαρτον).

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The rudest form of the law of bloodclearing is, that any man of the tribe B may slay any man of the tribe A; which, I believe, is the law of blood among the tribes of Australia.

unfair law, as we should rather hold to the more righteous one of the Judge of all the earth, that the soul that sinneth it should die. But yet, in practice if not in law, great tribes, such as highly cultivated nations, will sometimes act on the barbarous rule; for it was said by some men, a little before the taking of Pekin, that the English would show little quarter to the Chinese, owing to their putting to death some of the English prisoners who had fallen into their hands; or, to put it more in the form of the barbarous rule, that, as some Chinese had slain some Englishmen, so other Englishmen would therefore slay other Chinese-a form of blood-clearing which, as long as there are wars, will be, and very likely must be, taken up, whether at Pekin, at the Peiho, in India, or elsewhere.

The next step in the law of bloodclearing is that the man-slayer shall be slain only by a kinsman of the slain, as was the rule of the Goel, or redeemer of blood by the Divine law, which declared that the sinning man only should die, and should die only by the protector of the lost life, and that the slayer of his neighbour unawares should be shielded in a city of refuge.

The next state of the law of blood is a usage that, for the sparing of bloodshed, a compensation in goods shall be given by the kin of the slayer to the kindred of the slain; and then a setting forth, such as there was in the SaxonEnglish and British laws, of the lawworth of man's life or limb, which lifeworth or limbworth was called by the Britons galánas, and by the English geald.

While tribes are asunder and even rather free of each other, the law seems to

blood-money, instead of blood itself. A writer on some African tribes says::"In most cases war arises from blood"feuds, when a member of one clan "kills the subject of another, and will "not pay the recognized valuation "(geald) of the party injured, or allow "himself to be given up to the venge66 ance of the family which has sustained "the loss. In such cases as these whole "tribes voluntarily march out to avenge "the deed by forcibly taking as many "cattle from the aggressor as the mar"ket valuation may amount to;" so that even this violence is a measured

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In Arabia," If a man commit homi"cide, the Cadi endeavours to prevail "upon the family of the victim to accept a compensation in money or in kind (geald), the amount being regulated according to custom in different tribes," as it was regulated in Britain by law. Should the offer of blood-money be refused, the "thar” comes into operation; and any person within the "khomse," or the fifth degree of blood of the homicide, may be legally killed by any one within the same degree of consanguinity to the victim. The law holds between distinct tribes as well as between families. Hence an Arab is mostly unwilling to tell a stranger his own name, or that of his tribe or his father, lest there should be "thar" between them; and in most encampments there are found refugees, who have left their tribe on account of some homicide. In case, after a murder, a man within the "thar" takes to flight, the law allows him a scope of three days and four hours from the hands of any pursuer; and, if such a man does not embody himself in another tribe, he will sometimes wander from tent to tent, or even rove through towns and villages, with a chain round his neck, and in rags, begging contributions to make up the blood-money.

When kins or tribes are gathered into a kingdom, the kingdom's law will begin to restrain the law of blood-clearing, which is then taken up by the

geald. Thus, among the Israelites the early blood-law was restrained by the Divine law of the Goolah, or redeemership of blood.

The Goel, or redeemer of blood (a type of Christ), was the eldest of the firstborn sons of the kin, and it belonged to his office (1.) to redeem lands which had been alienated from the kin. (See Ruth, ii. and iv.) (2.) to redeem his kinsmen from slavery; and (3.) to right their wrongs, and take the life of any shedder of their life-blood.

This

There was not under the Mosaic law any hired executioner, such as the man whom we call by the horrid name of Jack Ketch-which Ketch means choker -but the law gave over the murderer to the Goel of the dead, as it gives him into the hands of our sheriff. should be borne in mind by readers of the Bible, since it tells of many takings of life by Goels, in such a way that, if the Goolah be not understood, the Goels will seem to be acting only with bloodthirstiness; whereas they were fulfilling an office which they could no more shun than a sheriff of a county can shun his sad office on the scaffold.

We have a markworthy case of this kind in Judges, viii. 18, &c., where Gideon takes Zeba and Zalmunna, who had slain his brothers at Tabor, and said to them, "If ye had saved them alive I would not slay you," and seemed sorry that they must die. "And he "said unto Jether his firstborn, Up, and "slay them. But the youth drew not his "sword: for he feared, because he was "yet a youth." Now, why did Gideon, in the full strength of his manhood, defer the office of justice to his little boy? Because that boy was the Goel of his kin, and as such the protector even of his own father. He was his father's firstborn; and that Gideon could not be a Goel is clear from vi. 15, where he says, "I am the least (the small one or youngest) in my father's house."

From the law of Goolah we can also understand how it was that in many cases fathers were as nobodies as law guardians of their own children; how it

kah's father Bethuel, and how high over him was holden her brother Laban, in the case of her marriage; and why Jacob (Gen. c. xxxiii.), who was not a Goel, on hearing of the dishonouring of Dinah, held his peace until his sons, one of whom was a first-born, came home; and why the sons of Jacob, not he himself, answered Shechem and Hamor, and told them that in such and such cases they would give their daughters unto them, or otherwise they would take their daughter and they would be gone; and why Reuben (a first-born), finding that Joseph was not in the pit, rent his clothes and uttered that wail, which is in Hebrew so touching from its sounds, "The child is not, and I, whither shall I go?"

Having thus perceived the steps by which the law at last settled the giving of compensation in goods, for blood, we will next inquire who were to pay the geald or galánas. With the Britons the galánas was to be paid by the kinsmen of the slayer or wrong-doer, out to the fifth degree of kindred.

For our authorities as to ancient British law we have the Law Triads, and the so-called Laws of Hywel Dda, which are really the Laws of Hywel Dda and others (Cyfreithieu Hywel Dda ac eraill). The laws state that one of those others was Moelmud, who lived before the birth of Christ, and was the first who made good laws in this island, and that his laws had holden down to the time of Hywel Dda, who changed some of the old ones and made othersthough the new ones, as is clear from the older law triads, could not have been great constitutional ones. It has been the fashion to doubt the truth of the old Welsh writings; but I can only say that the more I can understand them the brighter they make to me the truth of other ancient writings on Britain, Latin or English.

Now there is a markworthy coincidence in the law of blood-clearing with the Britons, as it is given in the Law Triads and the Laws of Hywel Dda, and the law of the same among the Arabs.

khomse (an Arabic word meaning fifth), or fifth degree of kindred of the slayer, may be killed for his crime; whence we may infer that a man of wider kindred than the fifth is bloodguiltless. So the British laws ask, "Is there a case in which a father is bound to pay galánas and his son is not?" and the answer is, (Oes. Gorchaw) "Yes, a Gorchaw;" that is, a fifth-blooded kinsman, "is bound to pay galánas and his son is not."

We need not hence believe that the Britons got their law of the Gorchaw from that of the khomse of the East; for, if we were to hold their practice of blood-clearing, we should most likely learn by experience that it ought not to reach beyond the fifth blood.

We now come to another important inquiry. How was it to be tried whether a reputed slayer was or was not guilty of the blood which was required at his hands, and whether, therefore, his kin was bound to pay his galánas or not? A charge is not always a conviction, and a belief may not be truth.

Among the Britons the accusation, whether it were one of murder, of debt, of theft, or of other wrong, was to be tried by the reputed wrong-doer's kinsmen, those who were bound to right his wrongs-wrongs done and wrongs borne; and this was the rise of our Jury.

"If a debtor," says British law, "shall "have denied a bondsman (mach), let "him be cleared by the oath of himself "and six men, the nearest to his own "state (nesaf ei werth), his peers, four "from his father's kindred, and two of "his mother's." Elsewhere, "They "must be of the same kindred to the "debtor as those who would take or "pay his galánas."

If a man denied a contract he was to be cleared in the same way, by the oaths of four men of his father's kin and two of his mother's kin; and so strict was the law that a man was to be tried by his kinsmen or peers, that it declares that, if a plaintiff should challenge one of these oathsmen, no ground of outcasting him would be good but that of a want of kindred (namyn na hanfo o'i

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