the deacon would have in Chancellor
Whiting's suit in the Lowber claim, not only came into court under a
fraudulent disguise, argued the case under false pretences, but actually
took the words from the judge's own mouth, and decided her case on her
own responsibility. I venture to say that such unparalleled impudence
was never witnessed out of the court of a justice of the peace, and that
even Judge ---- (unless the editor of the ---- had interfered) would have
marched this false pretender out of court, or have deposited her in the
Tombs on an attachment of contempt.

But these preliminary points appear of small moment when we come to
consider the plea, if it be worthy of that name, which the counsel for
the defendant opposed to the suit of the plaintiff. The bond is
admitted, the penalty is confessed, the pound of flesh is forfeited, the
bosom of Antonio is bared to the knife--when this brief but brief-less
barrister, this skylarking young judge of Belmont steps jauntily
forward, with a most preposterous quibble on her lips, and manages by an
adroit subtlety to defeat the judgment to which the plaintiff is legally
entitled. She awards the flesh, fibres, nerves, adipose matter, in
controversy, to Shylock; but declares his life and fortune confiscate if
he sheds a drop of blood, or takes more or less than the exact pound.

Now if there be one principle of law better settled than another (and
probably it was as clearly set forth in the Revised Statutes of Venice
as is set forth in our own common law), it is that a party entitled to
the possession of a commodity, whether grain, guano, dead or live men's
flesh, bones and sinews, is entitled, also, to pursue the usual
necessary and appropriate means of obtaining the possession of the same.
I appeal to Colonel W---- if this be not good law, and asking whether,
if he be entitled to a dinner, he has not a right to seize upon it,
whenever or however he can find it; whether, if a man owes him a bottle
of champagne, he has not the right to break the neck of the bottle if a
corkscrew is not convenient? So, to use a drier example, the sale of
standing timber entitles the purchaser to enter the land upon which it
is situated, and to cut down and carry off his own property. On the same
principle, if A sells B a house and lot, entirely surrounded by other
land owned by A, B has clearly a right of way to his own wife and
fireside over A's land. (2 Blackstone 1149.) A hundred examples mi