Star.
London, England, 1830-06-02 00:00:00

TRIAL RY JURY.

The result of. the case of " M'Kenzie v. Roy," re-
candy tried before the Jury Court in Scotland, is evict:
commented upon in the Scottish journals, in referen,:u
its heating upon the bill now !sending in P irlia.tntt
perpettritim; the trial by jury in civil uses is Scothmj.
The object of this suit was to set aside, upon the
grounds of imbecility of mind, ft and, and circumvention,
a deed executed by the late Mr. M'Kenzie, of Dunden-
nell, in Rossehiro, by which, pas lug over his next of
kin, he, in default of heirs of his orul body, ,:ettled his
'states upon his brother-in-law, Mr. Voltert Roy, writer
to the signet, with remainder, in of similar de-
fault, to two other gentlemen in surTession, one of
whom is married to a sister of Mrs. M'Kenzie. The de-
ceased had been from 10 to 11 years in possession of the
property, during which time he had sold part of it ; hal
executed several deeds affecting it, to one of v.lich the
plaintiff was a party ; and had married, and had charged
the estate with a life-rent of 5001. a-year to his wife,
trim the day of his marriage. During all this period,
,I.). a whisper was breathed by his relations of his labour-
,i m; under any unsoundness of intellect. But it appearing,
upon his decease, that the lands of an old Highland fa-
' ;-; ily were transferred to a Lowland dynasty, all Rossshire
••v is in an uproar; the disposition of entail was represented
1.1 monstrum horrendum ; and it was suddenly disco-
vered that Mr. M'Kenzie had, from his infancy, been a
killing (half witted person.) Testimony was, of course, ad
d aced in support of this allegation; but from the evi-
dence brought forward in its rebuttal, it appeared that
the deceased had been a lieutenant in the Itusssliire
militia, a captain in the Invemessshire militia, and a
justice of the peace, in neither of which situation:
had he betrayed any deficiency of intellect; and that
in all his transactions with his solicitor;;, stet% anis,
and tenantry, and in the management of the clncerni
of the family domain, he had evinced a minuteness o
attention to the details of business seldom e-:ercisedf
by the landed proprietors of the Highland.:. It fur-
ther appeared, that the conduct of his brother (the
plaintiff) towards him bad been such, that disherison
ought not to have been to him a matter of surprise or dis-
appointment. The deed, nevertheless, by which he was de-
prived of the succession, was not the result of a sudden
fit of resentment ; for between four and five years
elapsed from the date of the first instructions being given
for its preparation, until the period of its exec.itioc ;
and, during the interval, the wife and brother-in-law a
the deceased exerted themselves with apparent sincerity,
to prevent the completion of his purpose, by endeavour-
ing to effect a reconciliation between him and his
relatives.

The trial of this cause occupied the Jury Court four
days, and the result was that the jury, after being in-
closed twelve hours, were discharged without delivering
a verdict. "We understand," observes the editor of the

Caledonian Mercury, " that the expenses of each party
are not far short of 2,0001. which, in the event of an-
other trial, we suppose will be doubled, with the chance
—by no means an improbable one—of another similar
result. Between Edinburgh lawyers and Highland wit-
nesses, we suspect that the subject in dispute will he
likely to share the fate of the cheese in the hands of the
monkey lawyer, with which the fable impressed on us
from childhood has made us so familiar."
The editor then remarks upon the composition of the
jury is this case, whom he thinks equally qualified to
determine the longitude as the question submitted to
them : he maintains that the abolition of civil jury trial
in Scotland would be decided by a large majority, if fairly
put to the vote of the Scottish nation ; and despairs of
his countrymen being ever reconciled to it, unless the
exaction of unanimity in the verdict is done away, and
some mode of selection adopted analagous to the forma-
tion of special juries in England. He concludes with
alluding, in the following terms, to the similar case of
" Grindall v. Sturt," recently tried in London :
" Deciding entirely on the evidence laid before them,
and not upon prejudices or erroneous impressions, the
jury merely turned round, and returned a verdict for
the defendant; and they had the satisfaction to hear
from the judge this confirmation of their conduct—that
if he had been one of them, he would have done the same.
But our Scottish jury (consisting of blacksmiths, masons,
roadsters, change-house-keepers, &c.) w e sur,pose, had
got some crotchet into their heads about a Gilbert
Glossin and a Laird of Ellangowan, and perhaps a Rob
Roy, and were determined that their verdict, at least,
should make the might and the right once more unite."