MANSFIELD, LORD CHIEF JUSTICE.]

Mansfield was not credited with lively sensibility, but his humanity was
shocked at the thought of killing a man for a trifling theft. Trying a
prisoner at the Old Baily on the charge of stealing in a dwelling-house
to the value of 40_s._--when this was a capital offence--he advised the
jury to find a gold trinket, the subject of the indictment, to be of
less value. The prosecutor exclaimed with indignation, "Under 40_s._, my
lord! Why, the _fashion_ alone cost me more than double the sum."--"God
forbid, gentlemen, we should hang a man for fashion's sake," observed
Lord Mansfield to the jury.

An indictment was tried before him at the Assizes, preferred by parish
officers for keeping an hospital for lying-in women, whereby the parish
was burdened by illegitimate children. He expressed doubts whether this
was an indictable offence, and after hearing arguments in support of it
he thus gave his judgment. "We sit here under a Commission requiring us
to _deliver_ this gaol, and the statute has been cited to make it
unlawful to _deliver_ a woman who is with child. Let the indictment be
quashed."

Having met at supper the famous Dr. Brocklesby, he entered into familiar
conversation with him, and there was an interchange of stories just a
little trenching on the decorous. It so happened that the doctor had to
appear next morning before Lord Mansfield in the witness-box; and on the
strength of the previous evening's doings the witness, on taking up his
position, nodded to the Chief Justice with offensive familiarity as to a
boon companion. His lordship taking no notice of his salutation, but
writing down his evidence, when he came to summing it up to the jury
thus proceeded: "The next witness is one Rocklesby or Brocklesby,
Brocklesby or Rocklesby--I am not sure which--and first he swears he is
a physician."

Lord Chief Baron Parker, in his eighty-seventh year, having observed to
Lord Mansfield who was seventy-eight: "Your lordship and myself are now
at sevens and eights," the younger Chief Justice replied: "Would you
have us to be all our lives at sixes and sevens? But let us talk of
young ladies and not old age."

Trying an action which arose from the collision of two ships at sea, a
sailor who gave an account of the accident said, "At the time I was
standing abaft the binnacle."--"Where is abaft the binnacle?" asked
Lord Mansfield; upon which the witness, who had taken a large share of