The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1884-07-18

The progress of the world from the
crudeness of the past is, perhaps, in no
particular made more manifest than in
legal proceedings. | do not refer to the
trial by ordeal by poisoned water, or
by the duello-for which some apology
may be found in the faith of the times
;hat the Deity is so regardful of the
maintenance of the truth as to be willing
at the demand of crisis to perform mira
Giles in its behalf. We may pity such
credulity now; but sense of the ridIcu-
lous is awakened when we read hat four
or five centuries ago, brute animals were
made subjects of legal process and treat
cd by courts of Justice as amenable to
sentence and judgment equally with
/ their biped owners. They were liable to
arrest as responsible for misdemeanors
and crimes, imprisoned and held for
trial. On set days they were arraigned,
a formal indictment was read in their
hearing, and their cases pleaded by the
! public prosecutor and defending law
yer. If the verdict were against the ami
nal, sentence of death was passed upon
the culprit with all solemnity and exc
cuted variously, the condemned being
sometimes clad as human beings. In the
ancient law looks of Europe may be
read accounts of the trials of swine,
bulls, horses and other beasts Tor muir.
der.
In those early days of jurisprudence
ecclesiastical courts held jurisdiction
over a certain class of cases, and their
decisions were no less absurd than those
of the civil courts. For example, rats.
rs race, were in one instance cited be
fore an ecclesiastical tribunal for DESTROY
ing the grain Of certain region. The
lcarne counsel assigned for their de
( Tense maintained that his clients desired
to cmigrate from the country but were
+ prevented by the multitude of cats lying
in wait for them; that necessity com.
PEELED them to eat while they remained
and so the barley suffered The deci
sion of the court was in their favor. In
two other countries the Spanish flies and
wccvils were respectively prosecuted.
and their lawyers endcavorcd to forestall
condemnation by ctitioning that dis
tant region might be assigned them, to
which they might be warned to retire.
The case was pending so long in the
GLORIOUS uncertainties of the law that
cold weather removed it from the court
by destroying the defendants before
decision was reached. Do we here find
an explanation of practice still
continued in this year of grace
1854, of warning rats on premises by Il
writing to that effect laid in some of
their runsl Abbott mentions a case in
Brazil of legal proceedings against
swarm of ants, and even so late as the
settlement of Canada, turtle doves were
communicated for mischief. He par
tally accounts for this seeming boys
play and nonsense by the vague belief,
then floating in bcnighted world. in
the TRANSPORTATION of souls, which
claimed for the lower animals similar
treatment as was due to human beings,
lest injustice be unwittingly done to the
souls OF poor wrctches, once in human
form, which had been compelled to So
iourn for time in bestial, and even
lower, shapes until their final disposal.
Strange as it may seem, this opinion was
held by Louis Ronard, a French gentle
man in New York, the disposition of
whose fortune by will on his death in
1871 was directed by his peculiar belief
to placing the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Anima,s on an independent
monetary footing. -SpringfcU ReppJi-
run.