to him, when A made a statement as to how the accident happened. It was held that this statement was receivable in evidence on the trial of the prisoner for the manslaughter of A. In the latter case, which was an action by husband and wife for wounding the wife, Lord Chief Justice Holt allowed what the wife said immediately after the hurt received, and before she had time to devise anything for her own advantage, to be received in evidence as part of the res gestæ. We have not seen any English murder case cited in support where a similar statement has been held admissible, and we are not aware of there being any. An Irish case is that of Reg. v. Hugh Lunny (6 Cox C. C. 477), tried in 1852 before Monahan, C.J., on the Irish Home Circuit. The deceased had died from the effects of a wound on his head inflicted by a stick. A girl in the neighbourhood had heard a cry, and coming out had found the deceased standing with his cap in his hand and apparently weak and injured. The deceased did not survive more than a few hours. It was objected on prisoner's behalf that it could only be as a dying declaration that what the prisoner said to the witness could be evidence, and they had not shown that at this time the deceased knew he was dying. His Lordship ruled that what the deceased then said was evidence as part of the res gestæ, and upon the question being put the witness said, "I asked him what was the matter with him. He said he was robbed by the man who walked with him from the cross roads." The prisoner was convicted of murder. It would be difficult to find a more parallel case to the one under discussion than that we have just cited, and the conclusion to be derived from the two is that if Monahan, C.J., was right in the one case the Lord Chief Justice is wrong in this, and vice versa. An American case of a similar kind is that of The Commonwealth v. M Pike (3 Cush. 181). There it was held that the declaration of a person who is wounded and bleeding that the defendant has stabbed her, made immediately after the occurrence, though with such an interval of time as to allow her to go from her own room upstairs into another room, is admissible in evidence after her death as a part of the res gesta. This case furnishes an à fortiori argument against the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice. On the other hand it must not be forgotten that it is extremely difficult to lay down particularly any rules for determining whether such statements come within the res gesta. Apart from the Irish case, which was only a circuit case, the English cases where such statements have been admitted, were not cases involving the punishment of death. If they had been it is probable that the judges would have discussed the admissibility of the statements at much greater length than the reports represent them to have done. Further, it must be remembered that the rule is an exception to the general rule as to hearsay, and it is not always advisable to extend such exceptions too far. Mr. Greaves mentions a striking instance of the danger of trusting to statements made after a mortal wound has been inflicted as having been tried at Gloucester Summer Assizes, 1842. The prisoner, one Macarthy, was indicted for murder, and the deceased had been stabbed by the prisoner whilst he was pursuing him in order to give him into custody for an assault, and the deceased expressly stated that the prisoner had knocked him down, but two companions of the deceased, who were present during the whole time, distinctly proved that the deceased was not knocked down at all. This is, of course, no argument against the rule as to admitting statements forming part of the res gesta, but it is one to cause judges to exercise with caution the discretion they are allowed to exercise in admitting such statements upon trial for murder.-The Law Times, Nov. 22. Correspondence. ACCURACY ABOUT ADJUDICATIONS. (To the Editor of the Journal of Jurisprudence.) SIR, I have read with care and interest Professor Mackay's letter in your last number, in reply to one from myself in the previous number. The cause of my writing to you was that Mr. Mackay had called in question a statement of mine to the effect that "all adjudications in use were at one time [before 1672] competent in the Sheriff Court." Mr. Mackay now explains that he had misunderstood my meaning. It appears that he read my words as if I had said that "all adjudications were in use before 1672, and were then competent in the Sheriff Court"-a statement which, had I made it, he would have been right in saying was inaccurate. The fact that a gentleman of Mr. Mackay's intelligence has misunderstood my meaning shows that the statement cannot have been so clear as it might have been, but I cannot help thinking that it was clear enough. Mr. Mackay gives as his reason for misunderstanding it that he could not suppose that I intended to except "adjudications for debt" from the statement. In this view, however, he was correct, and when he saw so much of my meaning, I cannot make out why he failed to see the whole. I certainly included those adjudications, to the effect of saying that if they were competent before 1672, they were as competent in the Sheriff Court as they were in the Court of Session. On the question whether "adjudications for debt" were competent anywhere before 1672, Mr. Mackay throws no additional light. I gave some reasons for venturing to say that they probably were competent. Mr. Mackay replies, epigrammatically, that the question is not one of probability but of fact;" and then says (with great distinctness) that they were not competent; and then thinks the discussion closed. He cites, at any rate, no direct authority for his opinion. I gather that he regards a previously quoted passage from Stair as containing an exhaustive enumeration of the kinds of adjudication which were in use before 1672 (Stair, iii. 2, 45). If the passage was so meant, it certainly does not say so; and, moreover, that passage has been discredited, for if the account which it gives of the origin of adjudications be correct, the decisions which have held any of them to be competent in the Sheriff Courts were wrong. In the "adjudication in security" Mr. Mackay believes he has found one kind used before 1672, but never used in the Sheriff Court. I admit that this kind never was used in the Sheriff Court, but I dispute that it was used before 1672. Not only is there an entire absence of mention of it before that time, but its origin at a subsequent period can be traced. Mr. Mackay on this point has said: "Mr. Wilson, by a slip in his letter to you, has said, 'The adjudication in security is the only kind of which it may be safely said that it was introduced after 1672.'" This was no slip: it was said purposely, and I shall presently show you that it is correct; but I must first dispose of Mr. Mackay's authority for saying the contrary. Mr. Mackay's authority is a passage in Professor Bell's Commentaries, which he has adopted, I fear without examination, as correct. On turning to the passage in Bell (M'Laren's edition, vol. i. p. 752), it will be found that it says plainly enough that adjudications in security were introduced before 1672, but that no authorities for this are quoted. The statement is a mere dictum, and however much Professor Bell's opinion is to be respected, it is too much to ask his unsupported statement in regard to a question of fact occurring in the seventeenth century to be accepted. Perhaps Mr. Mackay may know the authority for the passage, but I have been unable to trace its origin. Possibly it is repeated from the case of Queensberry's Executors v. Tait (11th July 1817, F. C.), where the reporter quotes a similar statement as having been "observed upon the Bench." If any of the judges really made the statement, the authority on which it was made has not been preserved. Turning from these, to the contemporary evidence, the matter is put beyond doubt. I have searched through all the ordinary sources of information on such a point, and, so far as I have been able to find, there is no report of, or reference to, any decision upon "an adjudication in security" before 1672; and no mention of such a thing in any writer before that time. And the absence of these things is important, because before 1672 there was no other way in which the purpose of an adjudication in security could be attained-an apprizing in security having been incompetent (Kinghorn v. Strang, July 19, 1631, M. 96). Stair, who wrote soon after 1672, is also silent about it. At the time of his first edition (1681) the use of VOL. XXIII. NO. CCLXXVI.-DECEMBER 1879. 3 A the process had not begun, so far as I have been able to discover; and though it had been used before the second edition was published (1693), Stair had been abroad at the time of its introduction, and either was not aware of the fact or thought its mention unimportant. There is a passage from Dirleton's Doubts with Steuart's Answers, quoted by Mr. George Ross in his leading cases (Land Rights, vol. i. p. 292), which shows the period when to look for the origin of the adjudication in security. Dirleton, whose work was published in 1698, but written (as the context shows) before 1672, being well aware that an apprizing in security was then incompetent, asks what course should be taken when the debt is in diem and the term of payment not come? Steuart, whose work was published in 1715, replies that he thinks the creditor "might be allowed to adjudge in security" (Dirleton's Doubts with Steuart's Answers, p. 69). This fixes the period, and the decisions during it (which are all to be found in the Dictionary, and are mostly quoted in Shand's Practice) show the rest. In 1684 the adjudication in security was allowed, and as the Bench then differed in opinion as to whether the remedy should be given, this probably was the first time (Bruce v. Hepburn, Jan. 2, 1684, M. 57, and footnote p. 58). In 1685 it was twice allowed (Barncleugh, Feb. 1685, 2 Br. Sup. 72; and Burnet v. Vietch, Nov. 1685, M. 140). In 1699 a case (Chalmers v. Shaw, M. 8148) is reported, where the Bench, after hesitation, ended by refusing the remedy as incompetent. Finally, in 1711 the leading case of Blair (M. 8149) was decided, settling its competency for all time to come; and there its origin also appears, for in the argument for the successful party (as reported in M. 12908) the remedy is described as having been introduced since 1672, "by custom, on the analogy of the statute." This statement appears only in the argument, but every one knows that in those days the argument for the successful party represented closely the opinion of the Court, and any one may judge for himself whether counsel or reporter was at all likely to misrepresent a matter of fact, then well within the knowledge of many living persons. I think these authorities show very distinctly the time and manner of the introduction of the adjudication in security, and quite bear out my statement that it came into use after 1672. If Mr. Mackay knows of any authorities to the contrary, let him cite them. All the authorities seem to me in the meantime to corroborate my view, that before 1672 the jurisdiction of the Sheriff Court in adjudications was coextensive with that of the Court of Session. Mr. Mackay has suggested that my view on this point may have been influenced by my having on other occasions advocated that some heritable jurisdiction ought to be restored to the Sheriff Court. The suggestion has possibility in its favour, but no proba bility. The circumstance that the Sheriff Court has practically been stripped of its jurisdiction in adjudications I have never thought a matter of moment. Only a very old-fashioned conveyancer requires to resort, except in the rarest cases, to adjudications for the purpose of making up titles; and as to their use in recovering debts, little inconvenience can be caused by their not being competent in the Sheriff Court, when a creditor has the power of using in that Court a diligence which at one stroke deprives his debtor not only of heritable property, but of every sixpence which he possesses. I have never asked the extension of the Sheriff Court jurisdiction to meet merely imaginary grievances. If I have advocated the giving of a moderate amount of heritable jurisdiction, it has been because, time after time, it has happened to me to see either that the want of it has caused a denial of justice under circumstances of great hardship, or that the costly remedy given elsewhere has been worse than the ailment.—I am, etc., J. DOVE WILSON. SHERIFF'S CHAMBERS, ABERDEEN, Nov. 12, 1879. LAW AND LEGISLATION OF THE PAST YEAR. SHERIFF COURT HOUSE, GEO. IV. BRIDGE, SIR,-In the November number of your Journal just delivered to me, you make a grave-I had almost said a disgraceful-charge against me. My meaning is that the charge would be a disgrace to me if it were true. I shall quote your own words: "It is not upon them [the officers of the Crown] that the vials of Mr. Hallard's wrath are poured forth. All his energy is reserved for the Bench; and his attack must be characterized as, to put it in the mildest language, highly improper. He delivered a philippic to a body of gentlemen intimately connected with the Supreme Court against one of the most eminent of Scottish Judges." It is sufficiently hard on me that, as your publication is a monthly one, I must for a month submit to this charge without contradiction. I plead not guilty with a clear conscience, and request, as matter of fair dealing, that you will in your next publish this letter, and any words or sentences of my address on which your accusation is based.-I am, etc., FREDERICK HALLARD. [We have cheerfully afforded space for Sheriff Hallard's letter, and no doubt the profession will be glad to learn that, so far at least as intention went, there was on his part no "philippic" against any judge. The learned gentleman asks us to point to any passages in his address capable of such an interpretation, and we fulfil his desire by turning to p. 13, where, after quoting from the direction |