CELEBRATED TRIALS

OF ALL COUNTRIES,

AND

REMARKABLE CASES OF CRIMINAL
JURISPRUDENCE.

SELECTED BY

A MEMBER OF THE PHILADELPHIA BAR.

"THE Annals of Criminal Jurisprudence exhibit human nature in a variety of positions, at
once the most striking, interesting, and affecting. They present tragedies of real life, often
heightened in their effect by the grossness of the injustice, and the malignity of the prejudices
which accompanied them. At the same time real culprits, as original characters, stand
forward on the canvas of humanity as prominent objects for our special study. I have
often wondered that the English language contains no book like the Causes Celebres of the
French, particularly as the openness of our proceedings renders the records more certain
and accessible, while our public history and domestic conflicts have afforded so many splen-
did examples of the unfortunate and the guilty. Such a collection, drawn from our own
national sources, and varied by references to cases of the continental nations, would exhibit
man as he is in action and principal, and not as he is usually drawn by poets and speculative
philosophers."
BURKE

PHILADELPHIA:

PUBLISHED BY L. A. GODEY, No. 100 WALNUT STREET.

STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON,

........

Gor 6113.1.2

HARVARD COLLEGE

JUL 2 1887

LIBRARY

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835,

By E. L. Carey and A. Hart,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Printed by

T. K. & P. G. COLLINS,

No. 1 Lodge Alley, Philadelphia.

PREFACE.

THE following remarkable and deeply interesting trials have been collected from all the best sources which the public and private libraries of this country afford; the volume embraces many recent cases furnished exclusively by the London Annual Register, and recourse has been had occasionally to manuscripts where printed documents could not be procured.

It is believed that the collection supplies a striking deficiency in the library of the lawyer, physician, and general reader. Much care and caution have been exercised in the compilation, to make it not only an acceptable but a necessary adjunct to the books already accessible, and the reader is confidently referred to the table of contents for the evidence of the variety and value of the materials.

Should this work meet with public approbation, it is the design of the publishers to issue other volumes in succession, for which the most ample matter has been accumulated; to this end many distinguished jurists have voluntarily offered to contribute the most remarkable cases which have come under their observation. The present may therefore be considered an avant courier of much that deeply concerns the American reader. No expense will be spared in completing a design having for its object the preservation of separate trials, which, by being scattered in every possible shape, are too often entirely lost, or of difficult access, though eminently curious and worthy of being preserved from oblivion.

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It would be unnecessary to detain the reader further than to remark, that this collection will not only be useful to the members of the learned professions, the general reader, and to those whose misfortune it may be to fall under criminal prosecution, but in many instances it illustrates history; and to quote an observation of an eminent practitioner at the bar, who says"Since it is observable that the best and bravest of mankind are far from being exempted from liability to criminal prosecutions, and that potent malice or prevailing faction have too often attempted the most consummate merit; that learning which shows how life, honour, and innocence are to be defended, when they shall happen to be injuriously attacked, will not be considered inferior to that which instructs us how to defend our less important rights."