JUDGE CHAPMAN'S LECTURE.

Bruce Herald, Volume VI, Issue 400, 3 January 1872, Page 5

JUDGE CHAPMAN'S LECTURE.

A lecture in aid of the Athensnm building fund was delivered, in the Volunteer Hall, on Thursday evening;, by his Honor Mr Justice Chapman, the title of bis subject being, "Legal Myths." The President of the Athenseuin, the Rev. R. L. Stanford, occupied the chair. The wet evening, and the fact of many having gone to attend the stock show at Taieri, as well as the numerous other engagements incident to holiday timp, all contributed to render the attendance a small one The Tiie Chairman having expressed his regret ar. the small attendance briefly introduced the lecturer. His Honor commenced by remarking* that the title he had chosen was perhaps not the happiest in the world, as it did not exactly explain the object of the lecture, and possibly might have led some to imagine tU-at he was going to give them some learned and technical address. The title he had chosen more for the purpose of exciting curiosity, and he hoped that the substance would be found both interesting and humo-ous. The subject he intended to deal with w>i3 not exactly myths, but wrong ideas on matters of law which were pretalent in England, and possibly also in' the colonies Many of the^e mistaken ideas bad no doui>t been dissipated of late years, but still he believed that many misconceptions still existel regarding matters of law, just as they existed regarding: many o'her things. These misconceptions often arose from the misapplication of facts, and it was surprising what a large amount of error wa9 often disseminated by the wrong application of a word or fact. Speaking generally, he remarked. on the tendency of the human mind to invent stories to account for the names of towns or places, and it was the result of those inventions he termed myths. To illustrate what he me&nr, he would refer to Rome, and remarked that, according to tradition thut city was named after one Romulus. History, however, failed to prove tLat such a man as Romulus ever lived, or that the tradiiions regarding him had any foundation in facr, and he expressed his belief that if evnr such a mm did exist it was quite as likely that Romulus took his name from Rome as that Home took its name from Romulus. 1 his his audience might take as an explanation of what he meant by a myth. He might give many illustrations of how traih may be turned into error from the simple misconception of words or facts. In the city of York, in England, with which he was well acquainted,. there was a street called Coney street, and he believed that biu tew were aware why it »vas so called. Coney is the name given to. a rabbit, and hence it might be supposed that at one time the site of this street was a great rabbit warren, but such a supposition would be enirely, foreign to the true origin of the name. Coney, in this case, was simply corruption qfjhe old S-ixpri word forcing, and thus originally meant King street. He then remarked that he had lived many years in Canada, and had often travelled up and down the river St. Lawrence. In some places it was as much as 90 miles in width, arid ar one place, where it was about 30 miles in width, there was a Cape Demon or Devil's Point. How did it get its name ? Tradition has it that a young pilot was engaged to be married to a young female who lived oh the opposite bank qf the river, and that he. had heartlessly de.serted her, the consequence being that she died of a broken heart. That on one occasion he was afloat, on the look-out tor ships arriving, when a sevwe storm came on, and was forced Co run under the lea of this cape, and that, never having been heard, of afterwards, it was believed that the devil ran away with him. He, the. lecturer, however, had fallpn in with an old. French. chart, where he found that this neighborhood had been at one time thickly wooded, with the exception of the tops of two bald bills, which were marked as, f * Cap de monies pele" meaning in English, the "Bald-headed mountains." " Cap de monies," no doubt degenerated into Cape Demon, and instead of the pilot having been run away with by the devil, his cratt had teen lost in the storm, and he drowned. He next referred to Portsmouth,

| and inpntionM that in a Sixon chronicle the following passage occurs : — " Here Port landed wjMt his sons,*' and some attributed the origin of the name to this fact, but thi9 was not the case, as it was at one time called " Pdrtus maxivius.'' The name cjueen was applied to Her Majesty, the reigning monarch, or to the wife of a reigning monarch, but the word simply meant a woman, and spelt in a different way— quean—was still used. The Isle of Wight, it has been said, was so called be cause it was said to have been conquered by one Whitgar, but it simply meant the "Land of the Queen*." The lecturer went on to say that, when in Victoria, owing* to his long residence in New Zealand, he took a great interest in the war that broke out at Taranaki in 1860, and remembered a curious incident connected with it illustrative of the point he was dealing with. A correspondent of the 'Argus' wrote that he had arrived at Man-a-war Bay, and that it wfls so called because it was a convenient place for men-of-war to supply themselves with water. JNow, this was a myth, for the correspondent had mistakeu the name. Properly it was the Maori name, " Mariawa B i v," or the bay of t he, mhnsrrove trees which there abounded. His Honor then proceeded to consider legal raytli's. The first was the common belief which at one time prevailed that a dead body could be arrested an"d detained for debt, and which had no foundation whatever in law^ Cases might have occurred where 'arrests, or attemps at arrests, of dead bodies had been made, in order to extort money from the relatives uf the deceased, and no doubt these had proved successful. It had been reported that Sheri dan's body bad been so arrested, but there was no evidence to prove the truth of this. On the contrary, his (the lecturer:-) forefathers and the Sheridan family had nlways been on terms of intimacy, and be was aware that Mr Sheridan's descendants had ] made every possible investigation into the matter, and they had every reason to disbelieve the report. That Sheridan died in debt was a fact, for he never was out of debt, and hearing of his de:tth, the creditors would no doubt call at his house to see how their claims were to be satisfied ; but that they ever attempted to arrest the body there exists not a shadow of evidence. His Honor referred to a case which came before the court in 1804 to consider wha, was a valid consideration. Lord El fenborough, where a mother had proiiised to pay her son's debts under the threat of the arrest of his body, decided that there was no valid consideration, and to decide other vise would be revolting to humanity and reason. It was not, however, until 18A2, when he was on circuit, that the question was decided. On that occasion a gaoler was indicted 'for detaining a dead body, and then the popular belief was di-pelled As to the origin of the error, his Honor explained the phraseology of a writ of capius, by which the Sheriff is commanded "to take the body of," &c. The Sheriff's return says that he "hath taken the body of," &c. ; Bnd the warrant to the gtoler is "to receive and safely keep the body of," tfec. He referred to several other writs in which the same terms were used, and which) no doubt, accounted for the erroneous belief that a dead body could be arrested and detained for debt. His Honor next referred to the Habeas Corpus Act, and explained its nature and operations. [We are obliged to hold over the remainder of the report till next, week.]