A solid, practical, thoroughly honest man, the record of his life is unmarred by a stain, a weakness or an infirmity. In every relation in life, he performed his full duty, and left no record of mistakes, derelictions, or frailties, to compensate for the brilliancy of genius. As the annals of a land of peace are not always the most entertaining, so a life that is poor material for biography is yet the one that may be most useful to the day and generation by which its labors are benefited.

JOHN BRADLEY WINSLOW was born in Nunda, Livingston County, New York, October 4, 1851. He is a descendant of Kenelm Winslow, the second brother of Governor John Winslow of Plymouth Colony, and one of the prominent inhabitants, who came over about 1632.

The father of Judge Winslow removed with the family to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1855, and there the son grew up, receiving his education in the city schools, graduating with the degree of A.B., in 1871, from Racine College. He then studied law in the office of Judge E. O. Hand, and with Fuller & Dyer, prominent lawyers of Racine, and graduated in 1875 from the law department of the University of Wisconsin. He then began practice in Racine, for a time associated with Henry T. Fuller, Esq., afterwards with Charles A. Brownson, Esq., and later with Joseph V. Quarles, one of the most

four years city attorney for Racine. In 1883, he was elected circuit judge of the first circuit comprising the southeastern three counties of the State. Although a Democrat in politics he was requested to be a candidate by a quite general call of the members of the bar, and was elected in a circuit strongly Republican. In 1889, he was re-elected without opposition, and served with the general approval of the bar and the people.

While serving at the circuit, he delivered a course of lectures in the law department of the University, with great acceptability to the students, who caused them to be printed.

In May, 1891, upon the death of Judge David Taylor, he was appointed by Governor Peck as associate justice of the Supreme Court. The following spring he was elected without opposition for the residue of that term, which expired in 1896. In the April election, 1895, he was re-elected. Contrary to usual practice, a Republican candidate was called to run against him; but many of the Republican journals and leading men strongly supported Judge Winslow, in deprecation of partisan division in the judicial elections, and in testimonial of their confidence in him.

The people and the bar have such full confidence in Judge Winslow's integrity and true judicial temper, that his position on the bench is now regarded as permanent; and such high estimate of his ability that they predict for him a long career of usefulness.

dence leads clearly to the conclusion that the prisoner administered, and attempted to administer, arsenic to her husband with intent to murder, yet it does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic."

In the subsequent biography of the presiding judge, the late Sir James Fitz James Stephen, by his brother, Mr. Leslie Stephen, the matter is thus stated (it will be seen that Mr. Leslie Stephen, who no doubt had legal assistance in this part of his narrative, omits all reference to the words which are italicized, and which were, of course, not italicized by the Home Secretary):

"The sentence was afterwards commuted to

penal servitude for life, with Fitz James' approval, and, I believe, at his suggestion, upon the ground, as publicly stated, that although there was no doubt that she administered poison, it was possible that her husband had died from other causes."

And in a new edition of his "General View

of the Criminal Law of England," published some months after the trial, the judge describes the case of Mrs. Maybrick "as the only one out of a large number tried before him in which there was a doubt as to the facts."

Mr. Lincoln, the American ambassador, had an interview with Lord Salisbury on the subject, before the decision was publicly announced, and he reported to his Government as follows:

"His Lordship at once replied that the subject had been anxiously considered, and that he believed he could say that the death-sentence would not be executed, as all the medical evidence attainable left a reasonable doubt as to the death having been caused by the arsenic administered by Mrs. Maybrick."

And in his subsequent answer to an American petition Lord Salisbury said:

"Taking the most lenient view which the facts proved in evidence and known to her Majesty's Secretary of State admit of, the case of this con

vict was that of an adulteress attempting to poison

her husband under the most cruel circumstances while she pretended to be nursing him on his sick-bed."

In the face of these declarations by the judge, the Home Secretary, and the Prime Minister, the idea may be dismissed that the Government was convinced that the prisoner had really murdered her husband, but looked for some excuse to avoid an execution which would have created a popular outcry. I was in England at the time of

this trial, and I was in a situation to come more or less in contact with public opinion there outside of Liverpool, and I then formed the opinion that great doubt existed in the public mind as to the guilt of the accused.

There was also felt in English circles, a strong sense that the trial justice had not dealt at all fairly with the accused in his charge to the jury.

I then formed the opinion, which I still entertain, that, had not the Home Secretary interfered and prevented the public execution of Mrs. Maybrick, the public feeling then ran so high, that a change in the English system would have been insisted upon by the general public clamor, giving the right of appeal in capital cases, as a matter of strict right to all condemned to death. It seems clear that the doubt whether Mr. Maybrick had died of arsenic was really and generally entertained.

What seems to have been wanted was, not an excuse for sparing her life, but an excuse for not setting her at liberty. And a perusal of the medical evidence given at the trial will satisfy any impartial reader that there were very grave reasons for doubting whether Mr. Maybrick died of arsenic; while the difference of opinion on that subject continues to agitate the medical profession up to the present.

It will further, I think, be conceded that no evidence tending to prove that Mr. Maybrick died of arsenic has been procured since the trial, but that, on the contrary, a good deal of evidence has been procured

which increases the doubtfulness of the cause of death.

WHAT THEN IS THE LEGITIMATE RESULT OF A REASONABLE DOUBT AS TO THE CAUSE OF DEATH IN A CASE IN ENGLISH COURTS WHERE THE PRISONER HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF MURDER?

Mrs. Maybrick was tried on a single count, which charged her with having "at Garston on the 11th of May, 1889, feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought killed and murdered one James Maybrick by the administration to him of poison."

Arsenic being the poison relied on by the Crown, the judge told the jury:

"It is essential to this charge that the man died of arsenic. This question must be to the foundation of a verdict unfavorable to the prisoner that he died of arsenic."

Therefore, if the jury had entertained the same doubt as to death by arsenic which the judge, the Home Secretary, and the Premier entertained, it is clear that they must have found the prisoner not guilty of the only charge with which they had to deal. And on any principle of reason and justice, why should the fact that the jury had arrived at a wrong verdict on the evidence before them have militated against the prisoner? The Home Secretary should have dealt with the prisoner as if the right verdict had been found. This was done in the famous case of Dr. Thomas Smelhurst, which in many of its features closely resembled that of Mrs. Maybrick. The report on which he received a free pardon stated that, though the facts were full of suspicion against Smelhurst, there was not absolute and complete proof of his guilt." And only four years before the Maybrick trial the then Home Secretary, Sir William Vernon Harcourt, granted a free pardon to Mr. John Hay because there was “a doubt as to his identity." Since the Maybrick trial, too, the Home Secretary refused to admit that there was anything more than a reasonable doubt in the case of John Helsall, whom he released. The detention of

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Mrs. Maybrick on the conviction for murder cannot therefore be sustained after the admissions of the judge, the Home Secretary, and the Premier. The only question is whether a life-sentence can be justified on the ground relied on by the then Home Secretary, viz.: That the evidence clearly leads to the conclusion, that she had administered and attempted to administer arsenic to her husband with the intention of murdering him.

DID THE JURY FIND THIS, OR OUGHT THEY TO HAVE FOUND IT?

That the jury did not find it is clear. No doubt in finding that Mrs. Maybrick "feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought" killed her husband by administering poison to him, they found that she "administered poison to him feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought." Probably the reason why they arrived at this finding was that they thought the poison killed him. They did not think that even if he was an habitual arsenic-eater he would take enough to cause death, or else they thought that if he did chance to do so, he would at all events have told the doctors and asked them for an antidote. The part of the verdict which the Home Secretary upheld was therefore in all probability dependent on that which he rejected; and, in fact, if it were conceded that Mr. Maybrick's death was not caused by arsenical poisoning, the evidence of any wrongful administration of arsenic would be very weak. But what the jury found was that the arsenic was administered by the poisoner "feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought." The Home Secretary substituted, for these words, "with intent to murder." But the import of the phrases in English law is altogether different, and the difference materially affects the prisoner's punishment.

It has recently been held in England, that killing a woman by means of an illegal oper

ation is wilful murder. Performing an illegal operation is a felony, and if the woman dies in consequence the operator has killed her feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice. aforethought.

In another well known case, killing a policeman in the discharge of his duty was held to be wilful murder. In both these In both these cases there was no intention on the part of the convict to kill his victim. This distinction, indeed, is not only pointed out, but defended in Sir J. F. Stephen's works on the Criminal Law (see, for instance the article Murder in his "Digest of the Criminal Law." And in the case of Reg. v. Cruise, reported in 8 Carrington and Payne, Mr. Justice Paterson told the jury that a crime. which would be murder if the victim died might not be an attempt to murder if he recovered the distinct intention to kill which was essential to the latter crime, not being essential to the former.

But why did the Home Secretary thus go outside of the verdict of the jury? The answer is plain. In order to obtain an apparent justification for the sentence of penal servitude for life which he meant to impose. Had the prisoner been convicted of feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought administered poison to her husband, with the intention to injure, aggrieve, or annoy him, the maximum sentence would have been three years' penal servitude. Mrs. Maybrick has been in penal servitude for upwards of seven years. If, indeed, the jury had gone on to find that her husband's life had been endangered by the administration, ten years' penal servitude (which in the case of a female convict in England is reducible by one-third for good conduct) would have been possible as the maximum sentence. It might perhaps be argued that the jury, in finding that the man died of the arsenic administered, found that his life had been terminated by the administration. But it seems inconceivable that any reader of the medical evidence could have arrived at the

Murder may not be an attempt to kill at all. The person who performs an illegal operation on a woman does not intend to kill her, but quite the reverse. He wishes for many reasons that the patient will recover, but if she dies the crime is murder, notwithstanding, under English law. And comparing the decision as announced by Mr. Matthews with that which Mr. Leslie Stephen attributes to his late brother in his life, we at once notice that the latter has omitted the words "with intent to murder." The judge knew that the jury had not found anything of the kind, and evidently confined himself to what they did find; but the Home Secretary went beyond what the jury found and added a finding of his own- a finding on which he afforded the prisoner no opportunity of producing either evidence or argument, pronouncing sentence.

edly endangered by the administration of arsenic, though it was doubtful whether death had resulted from it. The doctors who ascribed the symptoms of disease to arsenic also ascribed death to it, and the doctors who said that death had not resulted from arsenic made the very same assertion about the preceding illness. It seems clear that the arsenic (whoever administered it) either killed Mr. Maybrick or did him no perceptible harm. But even if we waive the point, the difference between a life-sentence and one for ten years is immense. And what reason have we to think that, if the jury had convicted Mrs. Maybrick of a criminal administration of arsenic which endangered her husband's life, the presiding judge would have imposed the maximum sentence on a delicately nurtured woman in feeble health and a first offender?

As regards the Home Secretary's charge