The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-21

stealing any horse or mule, or of rob ping in any highway or road in this territory, and shall prosecute him or them till he or they shall be convicted of such offense, shall, for every such of fender so convicted, receive, within one month after such conviction and demand thereof made, warrant on the territor ial treasury for the sum of fifty dal lars, -,"-and the following: And be it further enacted, that whenever on any criminal prosecution it shall appear to the satisfaction of the court that there can be no reasonable expectation that the family of the prisoner will be brought up in honest courses, it shall be the duty of such court to certify the same to the overseers of the poor for the district in which such family may reside. provided the same be within the limits of tho jurisdiction of such court; and the said overseers shall thereupon bind out the children of such person to honest. re- spectable and virtuous citizens. .....as in other cases of orphans and poor chill dren.'
 The obtaining of divorces during the time that we were still a part of the Mississippi territory, was not quite as easy a matter now in some respects. While the statutes now grant divorce, among other things, for abandonment for two years. the law then read in this par ticular That divorces from the bond of matrimony shall be decreed. also for willful, continual and obstinate de- sertion for the term of i've years" And while the press of the. day was doubtless a little more secretive in touching upon such delicate questions than Is now the case, the legal procedure was of a pain fully public nature, as the following sec ton from the first state constitution indicates. "Divorces from the bonds of matrimony shall not be granted but in cases provided for by law, by suit in chancery, and no decrees for divorce shall have effect until the same shall be sanctioned by two-thirds of both houses of the general assembly" It the chapter embracing these extracts appears quite a lengthy and interesting list of divorce suits which were before the legislative council and house of representatives of the Alabama territory for the sanction of that body.
 It might be interesting to know that Alabama had been state for some time before the repeal of the law authorizing Imprisonment for debt, and the follow ing Is a part of the sheriff's return on capias ad satisfaciendum: By virtue of this writ, to me directed, I have taken the within named A. B., whose body be- fore the Judges within named, at the day and place within contained, I have ready to satisfy c. D. of the debt and damage swithin mentioned" In another place is found a section which must have been made necessary through the masterful cunning of some deeply insolv- ent debtor,-doubtless of tho Semitic type,-it reads as follows: That when any debtor is in custody on several exc cutions, 1t shall not be lawful for such debtor to demand any more or other diet than if he was in custody on one exc cution..."
 The first law against dueiling was h. troducted with such a certain denuncia- ton of the practice In the preamble there to, that so much of the act Is worth quoting. It follows: "Whereas, from a false sense of honor, the inhuman, injuri- ous and destahle practice of duellfng has