The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-14 00:00:00

THE LAW OF FX.DENCE.

Not the least important legislative measure of the
year is the important change—coming into opera-
tion at once—which has been made in the law of
evidence. The Evidence Further Amendment Act
prescribes that parties to actions for breach of pro-
mise of marriage are now competent witnesses, but
no plaintiff is to recover a verdict unless his or
her testimony is corroborated by some other
material evidence. Parties and their husbands
or wives in suits for adultery are competent
witnesses. No witness is to be asked, or
bound to answer, questions leading to show that ho
or she has been guilty of adultery unless the witness
has already given evidence in disproof of adultery.
The judge is empowered to dispense with an oath
whenever a conscientious objection is raised. The
object of this measure is to facilitate the discovery of
truth in courts of Justice by the further removal of
restrictions on evidence. It is scarcely necessary to
obsvrve that hitherto principals in divorce and breach
of promise suits have not been admitted as witnesses.

A SCENE ON THE SCAFFOLD.

Jonah Detheridge, whose execution at Dorchester
for the murder of a warder in Portland Prison was
yesterday recorded, is a strange study—one of a
species of which happily we get rare examples. Of
a bad disposition and morose temperament, ho seems
in his life to have been ripening into hardness of
heart, and the prospect of death made him harder
still. He lived a life of crime and died in
despair. Not softened in the least, he
was executed while almost in the act of charging the
Almighty with causing the end to which his violence
had brought him. For days he has been sullenly
silent. To the Wesleyan minister who visited him
he paid no heed ; and on the scaffold ho treated
with scorn any reference to prayer. Here
are his last words, reported as taking place
after the cap had been drawn over his eyes :

The Rev. J. Mann (most earnestly pleading, and holding
Detheridge by the hand) : " Try to pray ; pray ! Pray to
the Lord to have, mercy on you."
Prisoner (fiercely and defiantly) : " Who must I pray to ?
Who has brought me here? That is what I want to know.
Has God brought me here ? "
Mr. Mann (imploringly) : "I want you to try to be
saved. The Lord have mercy upon you."
Prisoner : "What arc these men here now, and what
are they come for ?"
Mr. Mann : " Try to pray! try to pray 1 "
The rev, gentleman shook hands with him, and said.
"Good bye, God bless you," and left the scaffold.
To Calcraft the convict muttered " What does he
say ?"
Calcraft : "Pray to the Lord to save you."
Detheridge (in a scornful tone) : " Pray to the Lord Iry
save me ! "

The convict within three minutes was dea.d,

TIIE KNIFE.

The use of the knife seems to be on the increase;
hardly a street row occurs but somebody is assailed by
it, or threatened with it; nearly every assize pre-
sents a calendar of violent attacks with it. There
are several murder eases now being preliminarily
investigated in which the knife was used in a fit of
passion. At Gateshead a man has killed his
drunken wife with that weapon ; and at Liverpool, on
Wednesday, a public-house dispute ended in a man
being taken off to the hospital stabbed with a dagger.
The dagger, indeed, seems to becoming an indis-
pensable article to a certain class. There used to be
a wholesome contempt for the " Italian method of
attack." Has the prohibition of prize-fighting and
the decline of the "noble art of self-defence"
brought about a revolution in our national mode of
quarrelling?
COINAGE.

Colonel Smith writes in support of Mr. Lowe's
proposition to stop the deterioration of the coinage
by imposing a charge for the expense of converting
bullion into money. He replies to the argument
that such a charge would tend to debase the currency,
by pointing out that though the currency has been
debased in past times by rulers who forced bad
money on the people to secure a profit, the proposal
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is very different.
It lowers the value of the sovereign only to the
extent of twopence, and for a just purpose—to pre-
vent the melting and exporting of sovereigns. To
debase the coinage for profit is one thing ; to debase
it for the purpose of reform is another.