"DAMAGES AS COMPENSATION.
IT is a ground of serious satisfaction that judges and juries are steadily acquiring the habik of a more equitable and common- sense view of " damages " than they have done in times past. Damages are properly assigned not only as punishment but as com- pensation; and the improvement is in the sounder and more liberal view now taken of compensation. We have already pointed to pecuniary " compensation" given for breach of promise of marriage. The case of Bussell versus Dennis is an instance. Miss Bus:ell was sought in marriage by Mr. Dennis, a solicitor of Barnstaple, well to do, and a few years under thirty ; the young lady being in her twenty-first year. He was told that she had no fortune ; but he pressed his suit. Subsequently he drew back ; and al- leged as his reasons, that the young lady had been pre- viously engaged, that her father had been in difficulties, and that one of her brothers had enlisted as a soldier—in short, that Mr. Bussell pere was poor and Bussell ills had done a wild act; for it did not appear that the father had ever compromised his honour, or even appearances, or that the young man had ever for- gotten that he was a gentleman ; and as for Miss Bussell's prior engagement, it is denied point blank. Even if it were true, what mean or unworthy ideas can presume an objection from such a fact ? Men who have these peculiar and fastidious but not chival- rous notions, should advertise their state before they entangle women in a connexion with their name. A man has no right to take the place of suitor to a young lady without the honest intention to fulfil the betrothment "for better for worse," except on grave and substantial grounds. So thought the Jury, and they obliged Mr. Dennis to pay 800/. damages ; not at all too much for his means. Another case recorded this week is of a different kind. Elliff, a farmer, finds a labouring man trespassing and poaching on his grounds ; and "to mark" the man, he deliberately discharged at him the two barrels of a fowling-piece, inflicting a great number of wounds, and laying the man up. Gee brings an action in the County Court to recover damages for the injury; and the Judge awards 38/. Gee was doing wrong, and might have been punished; but Elliff was guilty both of illegality and cruelty in " marking " the trespasser; and he will have to pay what is probably equiva- lent to a year's wages for the man—a year for him to get well or turn round in ; a very proper compensation.
Compensation is not only just to the injured party; it also has its moral effect, by teaching the rash or meanly-disposed, that jus- tice will be done whether they will or not ; and when injury has been done, compensation inflicts a self-adjusting chastisement, which is severe upon the hardened, but softened to the penitent by the opportunity of making atonement. The abuse of compensa- tion is, to let it degenerate into a money-licence for the rich to do wrong ; but the judicious spirit which we observe growing is a sufficient counteractive to that tendency.
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