WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION Your Plea is good; but still I say, beware! Laws are explained by Man--so have a care. POPE: "First Satire of Second Book of Horace." An interesting volume might be written about historical litigants and their deeds of heroism. There was the dour Coggs who let in his friend Bernard over the brandy cask, there was the astute Scott who never paid Manby, the draper, for his wife's dresses, there was Wigglesworth who built himself an everlasting name in the Hibaldstow trespass case, and the hero of our own time, Dickson, who actually bested a railway company in the matter of Dutch Oven, the tail-less hound--these and many others are names enshrined in our dusty tomes of law, but if you would read them for mere delight, has not Sir Frederick Pollock done our leading cases into the most melodious verse. If I were a bencher I would like to promote a pageant of these grand old litigants in honour of their service to the English law. I think my favourite among them all is little Priestley, the butcher's boy. You will find his simple story in the third volume of "Meeson and Welsby." How many know that it was at the Lincoln Summer Assizes of 1836 that the brave butcher's boy began it, and started a train of legal thought reaching out to the workmen's compensation system of to-day? It was Priestley's duty to deliver meat, and one day Fowler, his master, sent him out with such an over-load of beef and mutton that the cart broke down and poor Priestley broke his thigh. Priestley brought an action against his master, and the jury gave him a verdict for one hundred pounds, but on appeal the judges would not have it, and so poor Priestley never got it. A servant, they said, is not bound to risk his safety in the service of his master; he may decline any service where he apprehends injury to himself.