Alexandria Gazette

CAPRICES OF THE LAW—perhaps we should rather say of the law's ministers. But whether the law or the law's awarders are to blame, the judgments do certainly contrast very oddly sometimes. We have an instance in two cases disposed of at the Montreal Special Sessions on Monday. Two prisoners were tried— one for a brutal assault on a woman and a child, throwing the latter down stairs, grasping the mother by the throat and trying to throw her down also: the other for offering some razors for sale on board a steamboat without having a pedlar's license.

Now, one would suppose that there could be no hesitation in fitting the degrees of punishment to these two offences: that an act of brutality by which one life was endangered and another threatened was out of sight more heinous than a mere attempt to gain an honest living without obeying a local ordinance. But the magistrates fined the unlicensed pedlar ten pounds, the ruffian one shilling.—N. Y. Com. Adv.