of
the city of London, for pretended or trivial neglects of duty, long
after the time of the alleged offences; subservient judges imposed
enormous fines, and the king imprisoned during his own life some of the
contumacious offenders. Alderman Hawes is said to have died heartbroken
by the terror and anguish of these proceedings. [6] They imprisoned and
fined juries who hesitated to lend their aid when it was deemed
convenient to seek it. To these, Lord Bacon tells us, were added "other
courses fitter to be buried than repeated."[7] Emboldened by long
success, they at last disdained to observe "_the half face of
justice_,"[8] but summoning the wealthy and timid before them in private
houses, "shuffled up" a summary examination without a jury, and levied
such exactions as were measured only by the fears and fortunes of their
victims.--_Mackintosh's England_, Vol. 2.

[4] Bacon, iii. 409.

[5] Ibid. iii. 380.

[6] See examples in Bacon, iii.

[7] Bacon, iii. 382.

[8] E: Ibid. 381.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.

THE COURSE OF THE NIGER.

The discovery of the termination of the course of the Niger, will be of
the greatest importance to geography, to our political power, and to
civilization.

With regard to geography, perhaps the contradiction which was afforded
by the various sources whence we derived our knowledge of the character
of the interior of Africa, and of the course of, next to the Nile, the
most renowned, and, as was considered from the same accounts, the
greatest river of that country, have in late times given unlimited zest
in the pursuit of further information, and has not in the least
detracted from the pleasure with which we find that we are indebted to
our countrymen for the solution of this all-absorbing problem. It
appears, that among the ancients many facts connected with the geography
of the interior of Africa were well known, which have still been an
object of discussion among the moderns; and of these, we may enumerate
the occurrence of a large lake or marsh (for it is either, at different
seasons of the year), whose real existence, beyond the speculations of
geographers, was very unsatisfactorily established, until the journey of
Denham and Clapperton; and the fact of the occurrence of a great river
in the west, emptying itself into the ocean, though many were of opinion
that it lost itself in an inland marsh, or in the dese