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ought to issue. We are, at the same time, sensible of the inconveniences that may result from the exercise of such a jurisdiction. We are quite sensible that it may be felt to be inconsistent with that higher degree of colonial independence, both legislative and judicial, which has happily been carried into effect in modern times. At the same time, it is to be observed that, in establishing local legislation and local judicial authority, the Legislature has not gone so far as expressly to abrogate any jurisdiction which the Courts in Westminster Hall might possess with reference to the issuing of a writ of habeas corpus into any part of Her Majesty's dominions. We find that the existence of that jurisdiction in these Courts has been asserted from the earliest times, and exercised down to the latest. Finding, upon these authorities, that this power has not only been asserted as a matter of doctrine, but carried into effect and execution as a matter of practice, and that the writ of habeas corpus has been issued even into the dominions of the Crown in which there were independent local judicatures and local legislatures, we feel that nothing short of legislative enactment depriving this Court of such a jurisdiction would warrant us in omitting to exercise it when we are called upon to do so for the protection of the personal liberty of the subject. It may be that the Legislature has thought proper in its wisdom to have the same concurrent jurisdiction between these Courts and the colonial Courts as there is between the different Courts of Westminster Hall. We can only act on the authorities that have been brought before us, and we feel that

we should not be doing that which it is our duty to do, under the authority of the precedents to which our attention has been drawn, were we to refuse this writ, therefore the writ must go."

A writ was accordingly issued to certain specified officers in Canada, commanding them to bring up the body of one John Anderson, ad subjiciendum, &c. But here a singular difficulty was anticipated. The shortest route from Toronto at any time, and the only one open in winter, which now prevailed, is through the United States, and it was not to be supposed that the Government of the Union would refrain from seizing the fugitive slave while a mere passenger through their territory. This difficulty was escaped through the glorious uncertainty of the law. The prisoner applied for a writ to the Court of Common Pleas in Canada, and that Court, on inquiry, decided the detention of the prisoner to be illegal, and ordered him to be discharged.

In delivering their judgment, the Justices of the Common Pleas expressly avoided the discussion of the great questions of principle which are involved in the case. Their decision was based upon purely technical grounds. These grounds were the insufficiency of the evidence to establish a case of murder; that enough appeared to show that, according to the laws of the Province, the prisoner had not committed murder; that the warrant of commitment, in stating that the prisoner did " 'wilfully, maliciously, and feloniously stab and kill" did not declare any crime under the Extradition Treatyfor instance, "murder; on the contrary, the words inferentially declared another crime distinctly

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cognizable by our Courts, namely, manslaughter, which was not one of the crimes specified in the treaty. This, they said, was a thoroughly substantial objection; not a mere technicality, but the want of an essential charge, necessarily fatal to the validity of the detention. For these, and for other reasons of a more purely technical character, the Court of Common Pleas considered the prisoner entitled to his discharge.

The proceedings in the case of Anderson produced singularly contradictory results. The people whose demands were refused were well satisfied, the people whose views and feelings were sustained were much displeased. The population of the United States, who had demanded the extradition of the slave, were now engaged in a terrible civil war. The Free States, whose representatives had made the requisition, were busy subjugating the Slave States, and the friends of abolition were, therefore, well pleased that the slave

owners should be disappointed of their prey. On the other hand, the people of Canada, who abhor slavery from their souls, and give a sure refuge to the fugitive, were greatly dissatisfied that an English Court should pretend to jurisdiction within their Province. At this time, however, the armed support of Great Britain was a necessity to the Canadians, who were threatened with an immediate or prospective conquest by their neighbours, and, therefore, their dissatisfaction was not loudly expressed. The position was, however, felt to be anomalous, and to be suggestive of future danger; and Her Majesty's Ministers, therefore, early in the session of 1862, introduced a Bill in the Imperial Legislature, by which the power of the Courts at Westminster to direct writs of habeas corpus into Her Majesty's possessions abroad which possess courts of competent jurisdiction is taken away.

THE YELVERTON CASE.

THE Irish Court of Common Pleas and a special jury have been occupied for ten days in the trial of a cause, in which the parties, the circumstances, and the plot combine to produce a romance equal to the feverish complications of a French novel. The interest with which every point in the development of the story was watched by the people of Dublin has never been exceeded even in that city of judicial sensations. The Yelverton trial was the absorbing topic of conversation in every rank; the newspapers devoted their whole broadsides to the daily

proceedings-some even sacrificed their editorial vanity to the ephemeral deity, and omitted their leading articles in honour of her; whilst others (inappreciable devotion in a provincial journal!) even omitted their advertisements that their goddess might not be de frauded of her claims to sympathy by a full narrative of her wrong. At length, when the protracted proceedings had exhausted their powers of self-restraint, and before the trial was concluded, the Irish editors assumed the verdict, and burst forth with fervid comments on the misfortunes and sufferings

of the victim, and the baseness of the man she claimed for her husband Nor, in fact, was this vivid interest confined to the Irish metropolis or to Ireland. The fluctuations of the case were watched in England with similar interest. The strange revelations of life incident to the Crimean campaign -the beauty, talent, and ill-regulated passions of the victim-the conventional moral maxims of the seducer, and the phantasmagoric manner in which foreign convents, Sisters of Charity, Greek priests, priestless Scotch marriages, and Roman Catholic priests, came and went, forcibly arrested attention. Nor did the fact that, since these events, the defendant had become heir presumptive to a barony, and had, notwithstanding the consciousness of his position towards his former victim, married a Scotch lady, the relict of a man universally esteemed, and but recently deceased, leaving a considerable fortune to his widow, at all detract from the interest inherent in the main story.

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In the case of Thelwall v. Yelverton, the plaintiff sued the defendant for the price of necessaries and clothing supplied, as also for the hire of horses and carriages, and for money advanced by the plaintiff for the use of the defendant's wife the question involved in the issues to the jury being the validity of the marriage between the defendant the Hon. Major Yelverton, of the Royal Artillery, second son of Lord Avonmore, and Miss Teresa Longworth. A brief summary at best is all we can hope to give of the proceedings and of the chief points of the evidence, in order to afford at one view the outlines and incidents of a romance in real life, which will take rank VOL. CIII.

among the most interesting of our causes célèbres. The trial commenced on Thursday, the 21st of February, before Chief Justice Monahan, and continued until 7 o'clock in the evening of Monday, the 4th of March. The pleadings set forth that the claim was for 2597. 17s. 3d. for necessaries, &c., supplied to the defendant's wife and her servant: to which the defendant pleaded that such necessaries had not been supplied to his wife - the real question in issue being, whether the lady to whom the articles had been supplied had contracted a valid marriage with the defendant, and was, consequently, his wife. The former proposition was affirmed by the plaintiff, acting on behalf of the alleged wife, and denied by the defendant.

Mr. Serjeant Sullivan stated the case for the plaintiff, narrating the facts, which can be more vividly presented by an abstract of the evidence. The lady whose conjugal claims upon the defendant were the foundation of the action, was the first witness called.

Mrs. Yelverton is of middle height, slight in figure, with an extremely intelligent countenance

light and vivacious when animated, but almost sad in repose, and without being positively handsome, her appearance is at once prepossessing and ladylike. Apparently not more than 28 years of age, her thoughtful, resigned, and almost melancholy features would induce a belief that she had lived a much longer life.

On entering the box she exhibited that composed and collected appearance which she preserved throughout the whole of the trial, giving her evidence with a distinctness, an apparent absence M M

of reservation, a dignity and candour, which seemed at once to secure for her the hearty sympathy of the crowded Court.

She was sworn as "Theresa Yelverton." The opposite counsel having on one occasion called her Miss Longworth, she promptly remarked, "I am not Miss Longworth ;" and the Judge ruled that she should be addressed by the name she had given to the Court.

She stated that she was born at Chetwood in Lancashire. Her father was a silk merchant in Manchester, and was descended from an ancient family. Her mother died while she was very young, and she was sent to France to be educated in a convent. Though her parents were Protes. tants, she was there brought up as a Roman Catholic. Her father she described as an atheist, who treated her with severity, and made her home disagreeable. She, however, nursed him in his last illness, and she wished to make the amende honorable to his memory by stating that many good men held similar opinions. After returning from the French convent, she spent two years in Italy, where she completed her education. She had two sisters who were educated in the same convent. One of these was married to a French gentleman named Le Favre, at Boulogne. Miss Longworth paid this lady a visit in 1852, and it was on her return to England in the steamboat that she first met the defendant. Her statement as to the commencement of the acquaintance was to the following effect: She was accompanied to the steamer by her sister and her sister's husband. Major Yelverton, as a fellow-passenger, was polite and attentive; the weather was

fine, and many of the passengers remained on deck all night. Major Yelverton and the young lady conversed a good deal. They sat opposite one another, and he placed his plaid so as to protect both their knees. When they arrived in London he called a cab, and parted from her at the railway station, having obtained her address, which was at the residence of the Marchioness de la Belleisle, where her sister, Mrs. Bellamy, was also staying. Major Yelverton paid her a visit there on the next day. She saw nothing more of him for years. Some time after this Miss Longworth went to Italy. While there she learned that Major Yelverton was at Malta, and she sent a letter under cover to him, with a request that he would forward it to her cousin, who was in the East. This led to a correspondence which was spread over years, and became warmer as it proceeded. When the Russian war broke out, Miss Longworth went to Constantinople with the French Sisters of Charity. She wore their dress, but did not take any vows. While attending the sick and wounded at the Galata Hospital she received a visit from Major Yelverton. He there made her an offer of marriage, and asked her to leave the hospital, lest she might take fever or some other disease. This was two years after the correspondence began. She declined to leave the hospital till the war was over. Soon after she went on a visit to General and Lady Straubenzee at Balaklava, where she stayed six weeks. There Major Yelverton was a frequent visitor, and was received as a suitor, as her fiancée, with the knowledge and sanction of the General and his lady,

under whose protection she was. He then, for the first time, mentioued his pecuniary difficulties, and said he could marry no one but a lady who could pay his debts, but £3000 would do. She replied that her fortune was not under her control, and she had but a life-interest in it. He came again" because he could not stay away," and proposed a secret marriage in the Greek Chapel at Balaklava, to which she objected. She returned to England in 1857. After that she went to Edinburgh. Major Yelverton was then stationed in Scotland. In Edinburgh she resided with Miss McFarlane, daughter of the author of that name, a convert to the Church of Rome, and now a Sister of Charity in London. In Edinburgh Major Yelverton proposed a Scotch marriage, and performed the ceremony by reading with Miss Longworth the Marriage Service of the Church of England from Miss McFarlane's "Book of Common Prayer," which was lying upon the table. She was not satisfied with this ceremony, believing that marriage is a sacrament, and that it would be a sin to live with her husband unless the union were blessed by a priest. Therefore she steadily refused cohabitation. In order to satisfy her scruples, Major Yelverton consented to a secret marriage by a Roman Catholic clergyman. She had been staying in 1857 with her sister, Mrs. Bellamy, in South Wales, but for the purpose of this marriage crossed over from Milford Haven to Waterford, where she met Major Yelverton by appointment. There, and at Thomastown, at Dublin, and at Newry, whither they went in search of a priest, they stopped at the same hotels, but did not cohabit.

At length they found at Rostrevor, near Newry, the Rev. Mr. Mooney, a priest, willing to perform the ceremony, and Mr. Mooney obtained a dispensation from the Bishop to enable them to marry privately. Major Yelverton had bought the wedding-ring at Dublin, which was used at the ceremony. The priest met them at the chapel on the 15th August, 1857. She and Major Yelverton knelt together at the altar at which the priest was standing, and they repeated after him the marriage service in due form, and omitting nothing important. When the ceremony was over, Major Yelverton gave the priest two £5 notes, one for the dispensation and one for his own fee. After that day she and her husband lived like married people, which they had never done before. Major Yelverton had stated to the priest that he was a Catholic, and therefore free to marry a Catholic. After the marriage they went to the Giant's Causeway; they then returned to Belfast; at this place they parted, he going to his family, she to Edinburgh. In about a fortnight he joined her there, and they went on a tour in the Highlands. In Edinburgh they were known as man and wife. As such they were received by Mr. and Mrs. Thelwall and others. In the visitor's book at Dover Castle, her husband inscribed their names as "Mr. and Mrs. Yelverton." Subsequently to this they travelled on the Continent, and in applying for the necessary passport at the Foreign Office, Major Yelverton described the lady as "Theresa Yelverton." At Dunkirk he introduced her to a gentleman as his wife, and they were known as man and wife at the table d'hôte

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