Star.
London, England, 1821-06-18 00:00:00

VERSES,
BY A YOUNG LADY BORN BLIND.

If this delicious, grateful flower,
Which blows but for a little hour,
Should to the sight so lovely be
As from its fragrance seems to me,
A sigh must then its colour skew,
ror that's the softest joy I know;
And sure the rose Is like a sigh,
Born just to sooth, and then—to die !
My Father, when our fortune smird,
With jewels deck'd his eyeless child ;
Their glittering worth the world might see,
But, ah ! they had no charms for me !
A trickling tear bedeVe'd my arm—
I felt it—and my heart was warm;
And sure the gem to me most dear,
Was a kind father's pitying tear !

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

COURT OF KING'S BENCH, JUNE 16.
DAY AND MARTIN V. BROWN.
This action was brought by Day and Martin, black-
ing-makers, against the defendant, for an imitation
of their label. The trick was discovered by a typo-
graphical error in the counterfeit publication. The
damages were laid at £l,OOO.
Mr. SCARLETT felt no hesitation in opening the
case, as one of the darkest which had ever been pre-
sented to a Jury. Quicquid agunt hoinines, were words
which had blazed upon the proscenium of a Theatre;
and perhaps the same motto might be equally germane
to the parties of a Court of Justice—a stage upon
which the scene was varied even from the palace to
the pothouse, and where almost every character, from
the prince to the pedlar, in turn presented himself to
public attention. Of Counsel certainly it might be said
with truth, that one man in his time played many
pacts:" labouiing in their vocation, they lent tOeir aid
alike to all; and the man who was the opp&ent of
royalty to-day, might stand up for the right of a
chimney-sweeper to-morrow. To introduce the pr
sent plaintiffs formally to the Jury, would scarcely
(Mr. Scarlett thought) be requisite; for who, with
the slightest pretension to polish, could be unac-
quainted with the names of Day and Martin? Could
it be necessary of those Gentlemen to say, that by
stooping to the feet, they had raised themselves to
the head of society? Needed it to be observed, in
Cie year Dell, that their fame had spread through
every clime where shoes were made of leather ? Did
not their puffs and poems (passing even those of
Packwood) astutiate every newspaper of the day?—
and would not they themselves go down to posterity
the blackest, yet the brightest characters of the age?
The Jury were men, and they would know mankind.
The Jury wore boots, and they would know the me-
rits of Martin's blacking—of that inestimable fluid.
dark as the jetty plumage of that bird whose name
the maker bore. But tame raised enemies; success
raised rivals; and, even as with others, so had it fared
with the present plaintiffs. Pietenders had put up
f.r public favour ; people had been poisoned for a
while with their pernicious preparations; but frail as
t ,eir own bottles had been their standing in the trade.
Like those bottles, they had broken, and the long
hands of sweeping assignees had left not a hamper
behind! Yet there was one—and now the Leaned
Counsel came to the gravamen of his case—there was
one man who played a deeper game. An envious
oilman dwelt near Golden-square, who saw and
grudged the plaintiffs' rising fortunes. The caitiff's
true was Brown; and he could make a liquid which
he called black, but which, like him, was brown!
Each flask, like Pandora's box, contained a thousand
ills: it burned up good men's shoes, did harm to har-
ness, and, lustreless, defied the sweating valet's toil.
To sell this villainous composition, however, was
Brown's chiefest care; and how did the Jury think
the wicked end had been attained? Knowing that
his own name would bring no buyers, the man of
guile resolved to take another's: lie printed a quan-
tity of labels in imitation of the labels of the plain-
tiffs, pasted them at leisure upon his spurious bottles,
and uttered his own base compound to the world a; the
genuine blacking of the ii:ustrious Day and Martin.
Even thus did error steal into authority; and thus
was High Holborn cheated of its homage! The
means by which the fraud in question had been car-
ried into effect, would be sufficiently detailed in the
course of the evidence ; but, upon the effect and cha-
racter of the deceit, a few words might be permitted.
The plaintiffs did not ask vindictive damages, but
the defendant, they submitted, was a double tres-
passer; at once a depreciator of their inestimable
ware, and a destroyer of the shoes and boots of the
community. And there was another topic to which
Mr. Scarlett would advert—his comment would be
brief, but it would not be thrown away upon the
Jury : be did feel it his duty to add a sentence as to
the influence of such conduct upon the general inte-
rests of trade. It would be painful to say that the
high and honourable feeling which had distinguished
Blitish commerce was on the decline ; but the plain-
Vffs were not the only pet sons who, within the last
few years, had suffered by mean and piratical prac.'
tices. There was a Mrs. Lazenby who had disco.'
vered a pickle so piquant as to tickle the palates of
all the Aldermen in London—she had been unable
to keep possession of her own name. Mr. Cocks,
too, the inventor of a most delicious sauce, with which
a man might eat his own father, had been obliged to de-
fend himself at law : and the Learned Counsel really
apprehended, unless the Jury made an example of the
present defendant, that some rogue would go down
into the country, redden his face, put on a powdered
wig, and call himself Mr. Scarlett; or, playing the
same trick upon the Learned Solicitor-General, re-
ceive all those fees and emoluments of office to which
that Learned Gentleman stood entitled!
Mr. E. Custance had been many years in the habit
of :using Day and Martin's blacking. He bought a
bottle of blacking (purporting to be of Day and
31attin's manufacture) from the defendant Brown.—
Finding it vile stuff, he carried it to the house of the
plaintiffs, in High Holborn, who abjured it.
James Barton proved the purchase of one of the
same bottles. The grim counterfeits were then put in.
Thomas Richardson was printer to the plaintiffs.
.Their labels were printed from a stereotype plate.—
. ‘He•ebuid swear that the labels on the spurious bottles
were not printed frons4Use plate of the plaintiffs.—