the loss sustained up to the time of verdict, and would pay him for putting the land into its original state. If he chose to leave the trespass after this, it would clearly be because he thought it advantageous to himself; and if so, he ought not to be allowed to sue again. There is one case which is almost in accordance with this view. It was an action on a covenant to repair premises, and judgment for plaintiff on demurrer. The premises had got into worse repair since the commencement of the action, and the jury in assessing damages computed the expense the plaintiff had been at in doing repairs which became necessary between action brought and writ of inquiry. The judgment upon this point was affirmed in error. It is quite clear that in this case there was a new breach of covenant in allowing the premises to go into worse repair since the issuing of the writ, for which a new action might have been brought, and new damages recovered. The jury, however, took the common-sense view of the matter, and gave, as every jury practically does, such damages as would reimburse him for all loss incurred up to the time the case came under their cognizance." We have made no specific mention of damages in actions for crim. con. and seduction, and purposely. We fully concur in the opinion lately expressed by Lord Campbell as to the action for crim. con. being a foul blot on our system of jurisprudence, and on our national character, and hope most sincerely that we may at last indulge in the anticipation of such a blot being speedily erased. But as we entertain precisely the same opinion of the action for seduction, we regret that the same statute does not abolish this also. It is not easy to discover how or when they arose. Adultery and fornication were originally punished by fine and imprisonment (see 3 Inst. 205), and there seemed no trace of these actions until after the Restoration, when the imprisonment was done away with, and the amount of the fine was probably thought more capable and proper of ascertainment by juries, who then, by legal fictions, obtained the cognizance of these offences. But there can be little doubt, apart from all higher considerations, if damages are, as Blackstone and Sayer have truly defined them, "a pecuniary re VOL. I. NO. II. 2 N compense, a compensation and satisfaction for an injury sustained," that the giving damages for seduction or crim. con. is but a mockery of justice, and a mere miscarriage of law. ART. IV.-AMERICAN FACTION-MOB INTER- WH HEN Washington, sixty years ago,1 pronounced to his countrymen, on his approaching retirement, that memorable address which has always been regarded as standing at the very head of state papers for the wisdom of its counsels and the severely impressive dignity of its language, he solemnly warned them against the evils of party, and more especially of party grounded on geographical distinctions, as if he had foreseen whence must, sooner or later, proceed the great danger of the Union being dissolved. But he did not perceive, or did not venture to touch on, the shape which that danger would assume; on the contrary, he describes the American people as having, "with slight shades of difference, the same manners and habits;" no less than the same religion and political principles." How little then could he have believed it possible that the spirit of party, in its most hateful form, with the worst passions which selfish propensities can engender, would, within the period of one generation, have inspired a portion of the people with a fanatical fury never before excited upon any matters of merely secular concernment! The spectacle which the United States at present exhibit in this respect is unparalleled in the history of human folly and human guilt, and it is fitted to inculcate, with tremendous force, the wisdom of Lord Denman's alarm at all interference, how slight soever in its commencement, of the multitude in the administration of the law; for we see in what excesses it may end. When the galleries (tribunes) at Paris 1 17 September, 1796. began feebly, even respectfully, to express their applause at the debates of the National Assembly, it might not have been expected in the Convention that those galleries and their allies from the streets would end by having the entire control over the proceedings of the members themselves. The American mob in like manner "Parva metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras, Nor can it be said that it does not exercise a portion at least of the functions of the Government. It is no doubt necessary to receive with distrust all the accounts which have reached Europe of late transactions, because there may be supposed to exist as much prejudice on the one side as on the other. But it is certain that the Pro-Slavery men (as they term themselves, somewhat ostentatiously) far from concealing, or at all softening, the repulsive features of their violence, appear rather disposed to exaggerate the acts to which it gives rise; so that we can have little hesitation in trusting to the accounts of their proceedings. The condition then of the districts where the contest prevails appears to be this. Armed multitudes assemble, with more or less of discipline, but always acting in concert, or only differing in their plans and operations, as some may be more furious in their violence than others. They attack the settlements of those who refuse to admit of slavery as part of their institutes; sometimes they are repulsed, sometimes they succeed; they stop not short of shedding blood; and either put their antagonists to death in the combat, or after their victory; and not seldom they seize and imprison, or kill, individuals or families without any fighting, merely making an irruption with the design of doing mischief, and without the hope of keeping possession. The same town has been several times taken, retaken, pillaged with bloodshed before being abandoned; or retained, and the greatest cruelties inflicted upon its inhabitants. The force, whether of peace-officers or militia, of the Government is sometimes in conflict with them, but it has generally been unable to cope with them. There is every appearance of it having been exerted without zeal, and perhaps only colourably and collusively. The electioneering manœuvres of the retiring President and his colleagues are more than suspected of being addressed to the Pro-Slavery interest. But the degree in which this slavery enthusiasm prevails, and the openness with which those subject to its influence avow it, can best be seen in a single, though a most remarkable, incident that has lately occurred, and excited, as well it might, unusual attention both in the United States and in Europe. A senator of great respectability, and looked up to as one of the most distinguished party chiefs, Mr. Sumner, a gentleman well known too, and highly esteemed both in England and in France, had made some remarks, in the course of a debate, upon the slavery question, and the conduct of a South Carolina gentleman as connected with it. The nephew of that individual, Mr. or Colonel Brooks, endeavoured to find Mr. Sumner, in order to insult him and provoke a personal quarrel, that is, a duel; but he failed to meet him:-we are now giving his own account of it, not Mr. Sumner's. Resolved to wreak his vengeance upon him at all hazards, he entered the hall of the Senate just after the meeting had ended, and when no one remained save Mr. Sumner, who was seated at his desk, and, from the construction of the benches, wholly unable to rise suddenly if assailed. After a few words of question as to his speech, he made a furious assault on the unarmed, defenceless man, thus unable to rise, and with repeated blows threw him bleeding on the ground, from which he was with difficulty raised by two senators, who appear not to have interfered at the moment of the attack, possibly from observing the state of rabid excitement in which Brooks was. But it appears quite certain that one, if not two, of his Pro-Slavery associates were present, who might have restrained him; and one of them, a fellow member of the House of Representatives, has avowed that he did not choose to interpose, because he entirely approved of the attack. Mr. Sumner's wounds were so severe, that they have been pronounced dangerous, and supposed to make his recovery doubtful. On this we offer no opinion, nor is it necessary. Whether or not his life has been endangered by the outrage is immaterial; because the fact of the wounds having been most severe is not merely admitted, but is made the ground of exultation by the personal friends and political partisans of the wrongdoer. The fact then is, that a member of one house comes armed to attack a member of the other unarmed, for words spoken by him in debate as a senator, and in the discharge of his public duty; that he inflicts upon his defenceless adversary heavy and dangerous injuries; and that he and his friends glory in this outrage, because they are zealous friends of negro slavery, and their adversary opposes, not the continuance of that negro slavery in the old states where it has long been established, but the extension of it to new settlements, and the adoption of additional slave states into the Union. Such then being the fact, how do the Americans act upon it? Of course the Anti-Slavery party side with Mr. Sumner. Meetings are everywhere held to express the public indignation at an outrage unheard of even in the slave states and their borderneighbours, because the extraordinary circumstances of the place and time of the assault, the assailant being armed and his victim defenceless,-had probably never before occurred to complicate the case; and thus, what on ordinary occasions would have been a duel with rifles, or perhaps a violent personal attack in the street or other public place, had now assumed the more hateful form of a deliberate assassination, and by a legislator upon his fellow member. In the new states, where civilization had made little progress, outrages have been witnessed, such as assaults, and threats of murder, even used by, or to, the personage presiding over their assemblies. Such at least have been the reports frequently circulated in Europe, and generally credited, though with some suspicion of the circumstances being exaggerated. But the outrage now exhibited to the wonder of the civilized world was committed at the capital of the Federal Union, and within the walls of the Congress, by a member of that great central Legislature, in the presence of his fellows,—and committed by those representing the state longest established, and making the greatest pretensions to civility and refinement, to purity of blood, high lineage, and aristocratic descent. There could, therefore, be no doubt of the universal feeling of horror which this outrage would excite, wherever the people were not |