of review, is the very height of injustice.

If a writ of error is allowed in any criminal case from the criminal court of Cook County to the appellate court, then the same right should in case of a reversal be allowed the State to the Supreme Court. But we submit that as the only final judgment or conclusion can be reached in the Supreme Court, the case should be taken to the Supreme Court in the very first instance and nowhere else.

Finally, some additional restrictions should be provided in regard to the uses and abuses of the writ of habeas corpus. Writs of habeas corpus were never meant to be used as writs of error-but no sooner does one judge decide a question or sentence a prisoner who has been tried and convicted by a jury, than some other judge of concurrent jurisdiction issues a writ of habeas corpus to review his action, and if he should happen not to agree with the brother, he forthwith declares that "manifest error hath intervened," and releases the prisoner from jail and sets him free.

The most common use to which this writ is now being applied, is to get persons out of the bridewell because the commitment does not recite all the proceedings of the court and the judgment, and to release fraudulent debtors from jail because the attorney of the creditor pays his board bill, or because the the sheriff receives his pay for dieting the refractory prisoner, in advance—and the reason assigned is because the judge is opposed to imprisonment for debt, and everything is to be construed in favorem vitæ. All these reasons may be good, but we never heard of any one being imprisoned for debt in the State of Illinois, and never heard that the doctrine of "in favorem vitæ❞ applied to either torts or frauds. It is the settled law of this country that where a court has jurisdiction of the parties and subject matter, a writ of habeas corpus cannot be made use of to release a person who is wrongfully convicted, and the judgment cannot be questioned collaterally.—(Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193; Ex parte Crouch, 112 U. S. 178; Ex parte Carll, 106 U. S. 521; Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339; State v. Towle, 42 N. H. 540; Ex parte Hartman, 44 Cal. 32.)

AMENDMENTS TO THE CRIMINAL CODE.-We would amend the Criminal Code as follows:

PUNISHMENT BY FINE.-The Statute in regard to fines inflicted by way of punishment as provided in the Criminal Code, should not be avoided by allowing the defendant to schedule out of jail. When a person has been convicted of a misdemeanor there should be no premium offered for his depravity, and he should not be awarded immunity simply because he has not a bank account to draw on, to atone for the wrongs that he may have committed. The criminal code contains several provisions relating to this matter. They are, Sections 448, 452 and 455 of the criminal code, as they appear in Cothran's edition of the statutes.

1. Fines may be fixed by a jury. (See Sec. 445 of the criminal code.)

2. Fines may be imposed by a court.

3. Persons who are convicted and fined in either way may, by virtue of 448, be committed to a workhouse; or by Sec. 452, committed to the jail, there to remain until the fine and costs are fully paid, or he is discharged according to law. By Sec. 168 b. p. 479 of Cothran's statutes, the culprit may work out his fine in the workhouse, or on the streets of public roads, etc., "at the rate of $1.50 per day."

4. But by Sec. 455, it is provided that whenever it shall be made to appear satisfactorily to the court, after all legal means have been exhausted, that any person who is confined in jail for any fine or costs of prosecution, for any criminal offence, has no estate wherewith to pay such fine and costs or costs only, it shall be the duty of the court to discharge him from further imprisonment for such fine and costs, which discharge shall operate as a complete release of such fine and costs, etc.

No such conflicting provisions ought to exist; and it ought to be clearly declared that no person who has been convicted of any misdemeanor or criminal offense and fined, shall be allowed to be discharged under Sec. 455, but shall work out the same at $1.50 a day.

Another thing. In counties where there is a city work

house or city bridewell where work is performed, and the counties, as in Cook County, make arrangements by which persons found guilty of petty larceny and all sorts of misdemeanors are sent there to be kept at so much per capita, can a court order a person who has been fined, to be sent to the bridewell or workhouse or to the county jail? It will require judicial construction to solve the doubt.

These statutes ought to be made perfectly clear, so that there could be no room for doubt. There are several other matters which require attention, but we will refer to only a few.

1. Length of time in which a person charged with crime should be kept in jail before trial.

2. No law against forging decree of divorce.

3. Punishment of the crimes of burglary and robbery.

4. Amend the law as to the proof of former conviction of a person charged with a second offense.

5.

Evidence of de facto corporation in certain cases.

1. It is provided by Sec. 438 of the criminal code, Cothran's edition, that "Any person committed for a criminal or supposed criminal matter, and not admitted to bail, and not tried at or before the second term of the court having jurisdiction of the offense, shall be set at liberty by the court unless the delay shall happen on the application of the prisoner. If such court at the second term, shall be satisfied that due exertions have been made to procure the evidence for and on behalf of the people, and there are reasonable grounds to believe that such evidence may be procured at the third term, it shall have power to continue such case till the third term." Now take the case of counties where there is a term of court every month, as in Cook County, and an indictment is found, say, at the November term, during the last week, and the December term commences in a week after the indictment found, and expires without the possibility of its being reached for trial, owing to the immense business on hand. By the strict letter of the statute, there being no exception in it, a defendant can come into court and demand his discharge.

The State may have all its witnesses there, but be unable to

try the case because other cases are being tried;-then if the State can convince the court that "due exertions have been made to procure the evidence, etc; that there are reasonable grounds to believe that such evidence may be procured at the third term, it shall have power to continue such case till the third term;" but if not, what becomes of the case? Suppose, however, that under any construction of the statute that three or four full terms expire, then surely the prisoner is to be discharged. Now, under this statute, as it reads, a prisoner may be kept in jail in any county in the State of Illinois, outside of Cook County, for at least one year and a half, if not two years, without any exertion on the part of anybody, and without the prisoner being allowed to go free; while in Cook County if he is kept in jail three months, he may demand his discharge. The cases of Brooks v. The People, 88 Ill., 329; Gallagher v. The People, 88 Ill., 337, when properly understood, show just the difficulties we have above alluded to, and the statute ought not to exist a day without amendment. There are times in the criminal history of Cook County when the influx of criminals from other States and counties is such, that the business cannot be kept up by any two judges sitting in continuous session, and the time afforded to do the business ought at least to be as great here as in any other county.

When a single murder trial consumes a month, and when a single grand jury brings in 249 indictments in one month, some idea of the magnitude of the business and obstructions which occasionally ensue, can be obtained.

2. There is no law in this State making it a crime to forge a decree of divorce. This ought to be remedied.—(See Brown v. The People, 86 Ill., 239.)

As things are at the present day, a man may be deprived of his wife by any one skilled in stylography, and become an "orphan" before he knows it.

3. There is a disproportion in the punishment in the crimes of burglary and robbery.

Burglary is punished by confinement in the penitentiary, not less than one or more than twenty years, while simple robbery is not less than one or more than fourteen years. It is true

that the statute provides that if the person "is armed with a dangerous weapon with intent, if resisted, to kill or maim such person, or being so armed, he wounds or strikes him, or if he has any confederate present so armed, to aid or abet him, he may be imprisoned for any term of years, or for life." But this does not always appear in cases of highway robbery, and robbery from the person by violence should be as severely punished as stealing from the house or building in the night time.

4. Amend Sec. 110 of the criminal law, so that in all cases of larceny, burglary or any crime committed against a corporation its existence may be proved by general reputation.— (Wharton's Criminal Ev., Sec. 164 a; Wharton's Criminal Pl. & Prac. Sec. 110.)

HABITUAL CRIMINAL ACT.-The 169th Sec. of the criminal code, which provides that in order to convict a person of a second offense, the "former conviction and judgment shall be set forth in apt words in the indictment" should be amended so as to dispense with any such thing whatever. . In no other case that we ever heard of was it necessary to plead the evidence in the case, and it is perfectly useless and a most unnecessary piece of labor.

Every writer upon evidence holds to the doctrine that the same rules of evidence apply in criminal as in civil cases, and Roscoe in his work on "Criminal Evidence" asserts this in the very opening sentence of his treatise. We think that the same provision of the statute in substance which exists in regard to evidence in civil cases-should be made to apply to criminal cases, and the section as adapted to criminal cases should be made to read "that no person shall be disqualified as a witness in any action, suit, criminal proceeding or criminal prosecution whatever, carried on in the name of the people, by reason of his or her interest in the event thereof as a party or otherwise or by reason of his conviction of any crime or misdemeanor; but such interest or conviction may be shown for the purpose of affecting the credibility of such witness or for the purpose of establishing the fact that a party has been convicted of a prior offense when he is being prosecuted for said