Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 427, May, 1851

But a truce to this strain. A very pleasant book has most innocently led us into very unpleasant themes. Believing that the reign of delusion is drawing to a close, and that a spirit of juster legislation will soon prevail in the councils of the nation, and that the time draws nigh when the occupants and owners of the soil may prosecute their affairs with better hopes than they at present have, of enjoying a fair reward for their toil and enterprise, we again earnestly commend to their attentive perusal The Book of the Farm. To the landed proprietors it ought to be invaluable, if they wish to be qualified to discharge those duties which Providence has laid on them, and which they owe to their tenantry, to the agricultural poor, and to the nation. While the rights of every petty interest are pled in Parliament by parties who prove their intimate acquaintance with the disadvantages – fictitious or real – under which it labours, the ignorance prevailing, in the present House of Commons, on the subject of agriculture, and on its various bearings in reference to national prosperity, is so flagrant as to have excited universal remark. A large body, however, of that august assembly are country gentlemen, and the charge might imply a reflection on their education and attainments. But it would be base ingratitude to forget that patriotic band of country gentlemen in Parliament, as well as out of it, who, in the face of discouragements more disheartening than a great party were ever subjected to before, have fought the battle of just legislation so gallantly, patiently, and prudently – who have identified themselves with the suffering tenantry – and are now contending, with brighter hopes and revived energies, for a fair protection to native and colonial industry, as the only mode in which the labouring poor of the land can permanently enjoy the just reward of their industry, as that system of policy by which alone the taxes can be paid, the national honour kept untarnished, and the constitution and the monarchy saved from dilapidation. There are many others for whose return to their right mind we have waited patiently. We believe that in their case an ignorance of agricultural affairs may be the source of their present apathy. To all gentlemen, however, living in the country, although they may have no stake in its soil, we recommend Mr Stephens' work, as containing most agreeable reading. We do not say that, from such, a continuous perusal is required. They may intercalate an agricultural season from The Book of the Farm, now with the corresponding season from the "Bard of the Seasons," and now with an eclogue from Virgil. The pleasures of a country life will thus be infinitely multiplied; for, startling although the paradox may be, there are multitudes resident in rural parts who look ignorantly on rural sights, and have no knowledge of rural employments, and no sympathy with rural habits, and who know not in reality how to live in the country. Mr Stephens' work – or a better, if it can be got – ought, of course, to be in the hands of every factor and land-steward, otherwise they must be unfit for their business; and it ought to have a place in every parish library, that it may be accessible in the winter nights to the agricultural labourers. It is particularly, however, the tenant-farmer's manual, if he is to keep pace with the progress of his art. He may think it costly, but not with reason, if he considers that it comprises an agricultural library in itself. The thrifty and buxom housewives of our homesteads, too, will find admirable instruction in The Book of the Farm regarding the important branches of duty that fall to their charge. Mr Stephens is copious regarding everything touching the management of the dairy. Indeed, our author seems somewhat recherché on the matter of dairy produce. We acquiesce in his approval of the deliciousness of new-made, unwashed butter, churned from sweet cream – a luxury which our southern friends never tasted. "Such butter," says Mr Stephens, "on cool new-baked oatcake, overlaid with flower virgin honey, accompanied with a cup of hot strong coffee, mollified with crystallised sugar, and cream such as the butter is made from, is a breakfast worth partaking of, but seldom to be obtained." Most excellent sir! on such terms we shall breakfast with you on the morning of Saturday se'nnight, provided you add to your matutinal cuisine a veritable "Finnan" and a mutton ham of the true flavour, (if possible, let it be from one of the Keillor four-year-old Southdowns;) for we have long conscientiously entertained the opinion of a late ingenious professor of Church History in our metropolitan university, "that Edinburgh eggs are not to ride the water upon!"

AN EVENING WALK

BY THOMAS AIRDThe Patriarch mild, who mused at evening-tide,Saw blessings come: they who with ordered feetGo forth, like him, their blessings too shall meet, —Beauty, and Grace, and Peace, harmonious side by side;Whether the down purpled with thyme they tread,Woodland, or marge of brook, or pathway sweetBy the grave rustling of the heavy wheat,Singing to thankful souls the song of coming bread.The restless white-throat warbles through the copse;High sits the thrush and pipes the tree upon;Cloud-flushed the west, a sunny shower comes on;Up goes the twinkling lark through the clear slanting drops.In straight stiff lines sweet Nature will not run:The lark comes down – mute now, wings closed, no check,Sheer down he drops; but back he curves his neck;Look, too, he curves his fall just ere his nest be won.Here stands The Suffering Elm: in days of yoreThree martyrs hung upon its bending bough;Its sympathetic side, from then till nowWeeping itself away, drops from that issuing sore.Dryads, and Hamadryads; bloody groans,Bubbling for vent, when twigs are torn awayIn haunted groves; incessant, night and day,Gnarled in the knotted oak, the pent-up spirit's moans;And yonder trembling aspen, never still,Since of its wood the rueful Cross was made; —All these, incarnated by Fancy's aid,Are but extended Man, in life, and heart, and will.Your eye still shifting to the setting sun,The diamond drops upon the glistening thornsAre topazes and emeralds by turns;Twinkling they shake, and aye they tremble into one.Clouds press the sinking orb: he strikes a mistOf showery purple on the forest tops,The western meadows, and the skirting slopes;Down comes the stream a lapse of living amethyst.Beauty for man, O glory! yet how vain,Were there no higher love to correspond,Lifting us up, our little time beyond,Up from the dust of death, up to God's face again.The Word apart: Nature ne'er made, in whim,An organ but for use: our longing hopeOf life immortal, like our hand, has scopeTo grasp the things which are: that life is thus no dream.We tread on legends all this storied land:Here flows a ferry through the mountains blackWith pinewood galleries far withdrawing back;Man's heart is also here, and dwarfs those summits grand:The virgin martyrs, half the ferry o'er,By ruthless men were plunged into the tide,Singing their holy psalm; away it died,Bubbling in death. The moon a blood-red sorrow wore.And aye, they tell, when, wan and all forlorn,Sickening she looks upon our world of wrong,And would be gone for ever, far alongThe mournful ferry dim that dying psalm is borne.Yon peasant swarth, his day of labour done,Pipes at his cottage door; his wife sits by,Dancing their baby to the minstrelsy:To temperate gladness they their sacred right have won.Rest after toil, sweet healing after pain;Repent, and so be loved, O stubborn-viced —The Tishbite girt severe runs before Christ:Such is the double law complete to mortal men.Yon lordly pine bends his complying headTo eve's soft breath, and the stupendous cloudShifts silently: Man's world is fitliest bowedBy power when gently used: Force not, love thou instead.One cool green gleam on yonder woodland high,And day retires; grey twilight folds with dewThe hooded flowers; in gulfs of darkening blueThe starry worlds come out to Contemplation's eye.Home now to sleep. No part in all man's frameBut has its double uses, firm to keep,Help this, round that, and beautify: of sleep,Complex of sweet designs, how finely 'tis the same.Touched with the solemn harmonies of night,Down do we lie our spirits to repair,And, fresh ourselves, make morning fresh and fair;Sleep too our Father gave to soften death's affright:In sleep we lapse and lose ourselves away,And thus each night our death do we rehearse.O, at the last may we the oblivion pierceOf death, as aye of sleep, and rise unto the day.

MODERN STATE TRIALS.10

PART V. – THE ROMANCE OF FORGERY —Concluded

"Alexander Humphreys, or Alexander, pretending to be Earl of Stirling," said Lord Meadowbank,11 addressing his prisoner, on his being first placed at the bar, "you have been served with an indictment charging you with the crimes of forgery, and of feloniously using and uttering as genuine, certain documents therein described, and alleged to have been forged and fabricated, you knowing them to be so. Are you guilty, or not guilty?"

"Not guilty, my Lord," replied the prisoner, standing beside his friend Colonel D'Aguilar. But now occurs the question – how was he to be tried? – as a peer of Scotland, or as a commoner? If as a peer, the court before whom he stood was incompetent to try him; for he was entitled, by the Treaty of Union, as a peer of Scotland, to be tried as peers of Great Britain are tried – viz., in the Court of the Lord High Steward; and the mode of procedure is that prescribed in 1825 by Statute 6 Geo. iv. c. 66, which required the Scottish judges to be summoned and to sit with the English judges, and according to the law of Scotland, [pp. 5, 6.] This privilege, however, as will be presently seen, the prisoner waived. Then came another question: was he to be tried as a "landed man?" – by which is meant a landed proprietor. It is a very ancient privilege of landed men, by the Scotch law, that they should be tried only by their peers —i. e., their brother landed proprietors. In process of time, however, this right has been so far modified as to entitle the prisoner to a majority only of his landed brethren. This right also, as will shortly be seen, the prisoner waived – having probably no pretence to the possession of any lands in Scotland, except such as he claimed as Earl of Stirling. To meet any possible difficulty, however, on this score, two lists of assize had been prepared – respectively consisting of "landed men" and common jurors, and "special jurors" and common Jurors: the former to be adopted "if the said Alexander Humphreys claimed, and was entitled to, the privilege of a landed man;" the latter, "if he did not claim, or was not entitled to, the privilege of a landed man."

After the prisoner had pleaded not guilty, the clerk in court read aloud the defences which, according to the procedure in Scotland, had been lodged in court for the prisoner, signed by his two counsel. They were entitled "Defences for Alexander Alexander, Earl of Stirling,12 against the indictment at the instance of her Majesty's Advocate."

These Defences were comprised in two paragraphs. The first stated that, as Lord Cockburn's interlocutor, though not final, had decided against the prisoner's claim to be the heir of the Earl of Stirling,13 "he was advised that he was not in a condition to plead the privilege of peerage; but was bound to acknowledge the competency of that court to proceed under the indictment before it." The second proceeded thus: —

"The panel pleads not guilty of the libel generally; and, even particularly, he denies that he had the slightest ground to suspect that all, or any, of the documents libelled on were forged or fabricated. He produced them under legal advice, in the belief of their being genuine, and useful for the support of his interest."

"A third paragraph consisted of an application to postpone the trial, on the ground that the prisoner was not prepared for it, as one of his counsel and his agent had gone to London and Paris to make inquiry as to several of the witnesses for the Crown, and such further investigation as might be necessary for his defence." The words which we have placed in italics indicate a course of procedure altogether at variance with that adopted at the English bar.

As soon as their Defences had been read, the prisoner's counsel rose and said, "My lords, I do not mean to claim for the panel the privilege of a landed man; nor do we intend to state any objections to the relevancy of the indictment." By "relevancy" (a technical term in Scotch law) is signified "the justice and sufficiency of the matters stated in the indictment to warrant a decree in the terms asked;"14 and, according to the criminal law of Scotland, this objection must be taken, if at all, before the trial. If it be not, the prisoner cannot make it the subject of arrest of judgment by the court, but must refer it to the law advisers of the Crown, after the sentence has been pronounced by them, to have such weight attached to it as may be deemed proper, with a view to pardon or mitigation of punishment.15

"Let the relevancy of the indictment be determined," said the Solicitor-General, "by your lordships pronouncing the usual interlocutor."

Lord Meadowbank. – "Alexander Humphreys, or Alexander, attend to the interlocutor of the court," which the clerk read as follows: —

"The Lords Commissioners of Justiciary find the libel RELEVANT to infer the pains of law, but allow the panel a proof in exculpation and alleviation; and in respect that the panel has by his counsel waived his right, if he any have, to be tried by a jury, of which the majority shall consist of landed men, remit the panel, with the libel as found relevant, to the knowledge of the ordinary assize."

Lists of all the witnesses and documentary proofs, on both sides, were, as it would appear, interchanged; and the trial having been postponed from the 3d to the 29th April 1839, on the latter day it commenced – not however, as in England, with a preliminary statement on the part of the prosecutor of the course of expected proof, but with the evidence itself in detail. After that on both sides had been adduced, the counsel for the Crown addressed the jury, and then the counsel for the prisoner; after which Lord Meadowbank summed up. We beg to say that we think the English course of procedure greatly preferable to the Scottish, in commencing the trial with a temperate and lucid statement of the case intended to be made out by the Crown, enabling both the Court and the jury – but especially the latter – to obtain an early clue through the labyrinth of oral and documentary proof, to see the drift of it, and appreciate, in going along, the significance of what is being done. In the present case, for instance, the jury were plunged instanter into a series of details of somewhat complicated legal proceedings, and legal and other documents: the Solicitor-General feeling the necessity many times of interposing, to intimate that "the object of this or that evidence was to show so and so," &c. &c. And, indeed, if the jury really saw their way with only middling clearness through the evidence, as it was being adduced, they were a far shrewder and more experienced jury than it has been our lot to see for many a long year, even at Guildhall or Westminster. In the present case, a half-hour's calm preliminary statement, by the Solicitor-General, of the points of the charge, and the application to them of the evidence, would have greatly assisted the jury, possibly even the Court, and, long afterwards, ourselves. In despair, we leaped out of the intricate evidence into the speeches of counsel, and the summing up of the judge, afterwards recurring to the evidence and appendices. At length we found ourselves on sure ground, and in a clear atmosphere; and grudged not the effort we had made to overcome the obstacles of which we have been complaining, and also the difficult technicalities of Scottish criminal law procedure.

It will be recollected that the indictment embraced three distinct classes of alleged forgeries – the excerpt charter of Novodamus, the Le Normand packet, and the De Porquet packet. To establish the "using" and "uttering" of these instruments, evidence was given of their having been adduced, on the part of the prisoner, in the various Scottish courts in which he had from time to time asserted, and endeavoured to maintain his claims. Lord Cockburn's important judgment of the 10th December 1836 was also put in evidence, as were also the examinations of the prisoner, some of his correspondence, and the instruments charged by the indictments to be forgeries. Let us take these latter in their order; and —

I. The Excerpt Charter of Novodamus of the 7th December 1639. Was this a genuine or a forged document? The acute and learned scrutiny to which it was subjected elicited remarkable and most decisive results. We know a little more than was disclosed to the Court – namely, that the mysterious discovery of this "excerpt" was communicated to the prisoner from Ireland by his indefatigable agent, Mr Banks, on the 17th March 1829. All that was proved before the Court was, that the prisoner delivered it in that year to his law-agents, who immediately commenced proceedings in the Scotch courts to "prove its tenor." Let it be observed, that "this most suspicious scrap of writing," as the Solicitor-General styled it,16 professed to be only an "excerpt" of a lost charter of King Charles I., dated the 7th December 1639 – not an entire copy, but only "an abridged copy;" and the exigencies of the prisoner's case had required that that identical excerpt should have been in existence at least as long ago as the year 1723,17 since it bore an indorsement18 by "Thomas Conyers," attesting its authenticity, dated the 10th July 1723. It will be impossible, however, to appreciate the force of the delicate but decisive evidence brought to bear upon this unlucky document, unless we have a distinct idea of the different stages of progress through which a royal charter would have to pass in the year 1639. They were explained at the trial by several learned and experienced officials; and we have taken some pains to clear away technicalities, and present their evidence briefly and popularly. The stages, then, through which a royal charter had to pass were three.

First came the Signature. This was not, as the word would ordinarily import, and in England, a mere name signed, or mark, but an entire document, constituting the foundation of the proposed charter, and containing its essential elements. It is drawn up in English by a Writer to the Signet, and brought by him, on a given day, to a Baron of the Exchequer to be examined, in order to ascertain that it is correct, especially as to the "reddendo," or annual feu-money due to the Crown. On being satisfied of its accuracy, the Baron marks the signature as "revised;" and in due time the sign-manual is affixed to it. It is then complete – is recorded in the Exchequer Record – and retained by the Keeper of the Signet. There is subscribed to it only the date, and the words, "At Whitehall, [] the day of [] ."

Secondly, Warranted by the possession of this revised "signature," the Keeper of the Signet issues a "Precept to the Privy Seal," which is simply a Latin translation of the English signature, and is recorded in the Privy Seal Office. That office then issues this precept to the Great Seal; and it is to be noted that this Privy Seal Precept has subscribed to it the words, "Per Signetum," which seems to be an abbreviation of the words, "per preceptum datum sub signeto nostro."

Thirdly, As soon as this Privy Seal Precept has reached the Chancery Office, the functionaries there draw up formally, and in extenso, the Charter, which is sealed with the Great Seal; the Privy Seal Precept on which it is grounded either remaining in the Chancery Office, or being lodged in the General Records of Scotland. This completed Charter, alone, has a testing clause; and it is the Privy Seal Precept only which bears, as we have seen, the words "per signetum."

See, then, the origin, progress, and completion of a Royal Charter in 1639 – Signature; Privy Seal Precept; Charter; each having its appropriate depositary or record – the Signet Office, the Privy Seal Office, the Great Seal Office; to which, indeed, may be added a fourth, the Comptroller of Exchequer's Register, where also was recorded every instrument of the above description, to enable that officer to account to the Crown for the feu-duties. These four old registers, or records, are all completed from periods long anterior to the year 1639, down to the present day, with the exception of a hiatus of twelve leaves at the commencement of the fifty-seventh volume of the Great Seal Record; but the contents of these twelve leaves were clearly ascertainable from the indexes of other records. "It is the boast of this country," said Lord Meadowbank, in summing up, to the jury,19 "and always has been, that its registers have been kept with a regularity unknown elsewhere."

If, therefore, there ever had been such a charter as that of which the document under consideration professed to be an excerpt, that charter ought to have been found in every one of the four records or registers above mentioned.20 Add to this, that William Earl of Stirling was himself, at the time, the Keeper of the Signet,21 and also "a man of talent, and attentive to his own interests – not likely to have received grants of such unusual importance as those contained in the charter in question, without seeing them properly carried through the seals."22

Now for the excerpt itself, and its aspect. It was written on several single leaves of paper, not numbered, apparently cut recently out of some book, and stitched together, the outside leaf being brought round and stitched down on the remaining leaves. The colour was a uniform deep brown – equally so underneath the margin covered over at the stitching. There were ruled red lines round the pages. The writing appeared "fresh" – at all events, not so old as the paper; and was not in a Scotch chancery-hand, or any hand used in the Register Office, but like that used in engrossing deeds in England and Ireland. The language of the excerpt was Latin – but such Latin! and it extended to about thirty English common-law folios, containing seventy-two words each. At the beginning of the charter, on the right-hand side, were the abbreviations, "Reg. Mag. Sig. Lib. LVII." —i. e., "Registrum Magni Sigilli, Liber LVII."

The only portion of the excerpt with which we shall trouble the reader in extenso, is the conclusion – the testing part – which (especially the part in italics) is worthy of the utmost attention; and we adopt the translation used at the trial: – "Witnesses: the most reverend father in Christ and our well-beloved councillor, John, by the mercy of God Archbishop of St Andrew's, Primate and Metropolitan of our kingdom of Scotland, our chancellor; our well-beloved cousins and councillors, James, Marquis of Hamilton; Earl of Arran and Cambridge; Lord Aven and Innerdaile; Robert, Earl of Roxburghe; Lord Ker, of Cesford and Casertoun, Keeper of our Privy Seal; our beloved familiar councillors, Sir John Hay of Barro, Clerk of our Rolls, Register, and Council; John Hamiltoun of Orbestoun, our Justice-Clerk; and John Scot of Scotstarvet, Director of our Chancery, Knights. At our Court of Quhythall, the 7th day of the month of December, in the year of God 1639, and of our reign the 15th year.

[Gratis]Per Signetum."

On the back of this document was written – "Excerpt from the original charter to William, Earl of Stirling, 7th December 1639. T. C." [i. e., Thomas Conyers.] This indorsement was also alleged in the indictment to be a forgery. Here, then, we have an "excerpt" or "abridged copy" of a royal charter, dated the 7th December 1639, granted by King Charles I. to one of his most distinguished subjects, conferring high dignities and vast possessions; a charter yielded to the anxious importunity of the Earl in his old age, "when labouring under great dejection of spirits, after losing three of his sons, who had given him the highest hopes, and fearing, from the declining health of two of the survivors, that his honours might, at no distant period, pass to a collateral branch of his family."23 And this Earl, too, the head of the office in which the charter originated. Now, First, the records of every one of the four departments above mentioned – viz., the Signature Record, the Comptroller of the Exchequer's Record, the Privy Seal Record, and the Great Seal Record – had been rigorously searched, and not the faintest trace of such an instrument appeared in any of, them! – it being sworn that, had it ever existed, it must have been found in ALL! "This might possibly have been accounted for," said the Solicitor-General,24 "had there been but one register only; more especially if a blank had occurred in that register, through the obliteration, imperfection, or loss of a volume, or part of a volume. But where there are four independent registers, and these all concurring to supply, in the fullest detail, the necessary evidence as to all other charters, [of which various instances were proved at the trial,] and when you find that this charter is not recorded in any one of them, it is quite impossible to believe – it would really be asking too much of credulity itself to believe – that such a document could ever have existed." If this instrument were the handiwork of a forger, it may be reasonable to suppose him capable of appreciating the efficacy of the negative evidence which might be brought against him, and to endeavour to supply it. This brings us, Secondly, to the memorandum in the margin of the first page of the excerpt —i. e., Reg. Mag. Sig. Lib. LVII.– which meant that the charter itself was to have been found "in the fifty-seventh volume of the Register (or Record) of the Great Seal." We have already seen25 that, in point of fact, twelve leaves, at the beginning of that volume, were amissing; and the suggestion, or rather assertion, of the prisoner, when he commenced his legal proceedings to prove the tenor of the missing charter, was, that it was to have been found in one of these twelve leaves, "which had perished, or disappeared – that being a matter of public notoriety, and was so observed by the Lords of Council and Session in their return of the 27th February 1740, to an order of the House of Lords of the 12th June 1719, respecting the state of the Peerage in Scotland."26 Here, then, are only twelve leaves missing; and on referring to one of the writings indorsed on the map of Canada, (in the Le Normand packet,) the writer stated he had seen the charter, and "it extended over fifty pages of writing."27 On this subject, Lord Meadowbank proposed the following question to the jury – "Putting aside the evidence of this index, could you have believed, when there is no evidence or trace of this charter in the volume where it should be found, that it could, out of its place, have been crammed into the twelve pages that are lost, when the prisoner's own evidence tells you the charter extended to fifty-eight?"28 To proceed, however – What will the reader suppose was proved at the trial? First, two ancient indexes of the missing twelve pages of vol. lvii. were produced, unerringly indicating the charters which had stood recorded there, and among which was not the charter in question, but only those of date subsequent to the year 1639; while all the charters of that year 1639 stood regularly recorded in the previous – the fifty-sixth volume; and among them, also, was not to be found the charter in question. Mr George Robertson, one of the Joint-Keepers of the Records, thus certified on oath: "I have searched the principal record of the fifty-seventh volume of the Great Seal Register, and at the beginning of the said fifty-seventh volume, twelve leaves have been destroyed or lost. The charters originally recorded in these missing leaves are, however, ascertained with precision from two ancient indexes of the Great Seal Record. I have examined these, and can state as the result, that the twelve leaves now lost did not contain any charter, diploma, patent, nor other grant, in favour of William, Earl of Stirling, nor of any Earl of Stirling, nor of any person of the name of Alexander." Still further, however: the words on the margin, "Reg. Mag. Sig. Lib. LVII.," purported to have been written there by the framer of the excerpt, in the year 1723; and three experienced official gentlemen declared their confident opinion, that no such marking was coeval with the making of the excerpt itself. It was established at the trial, that this mode of referring to the Great Seal Records was quite a modern one, commencing with the year 1806 only: a fact proved by the very author of the arrangement, and his assistant; by whom, in the latter year, the Records were re-bound, and the titles made uniform, for facility of reference, in lieu of the loose and discordant methods of reference till then in use! Other experienced officials proved that till the year 1806 no such mode of reference as "Reg. Mag. Sig." existed, and they gave specimens of the former mode: e. g. "Chart. in Archivis," appeared in a law book of 1763; and in a subsequent edition, in the year 1813, the reference was altered to "Mag. Sig." If, therefore, the "excerpt" were a modern forgery, it would almost appear as if the fabricator, aware of the missing leaves of Vol. LVII., but not knowing how very recent was the lettering on the back– "Reg. Mag. Sig." – had taken it for granted that it was coeval with the original formation of the volume, or at least had been there for a century – viz. since 1723. But if this reference – "Reg. Mag. Sig. Lib. LVII." – were a forgery, it must have been a very modern one, necessarily later than the year 1806, the date of Mr Thomson's rebinding of the Record, and changing the titling. But we have seen that the prisoner had accompanied his father to France in the year 1802, and did not return to England till 1814; and in the subsequent year told his own agent, Mr Corrie, that he had no documents to support his claim. Is it a fair inference from these dates that, down to at least the year 1815, the famous excerpt was not in existence – or at least unknown to the prisoner? So much for the negative evidence that any such genuine document as the alleged Charter of 7th December 1639 had ever existed. But,