SCOTLAND.
Mr. Alexander Humphreys, who calls himself Earl of Stirling, was tried last -week in the High Court of Justiciary, on the charge of forging documents to support his claim to time Earldom. The Jury una- nimously found that the excerpt from a pretended charter of nocodamus to the first Earl of Stirling, which the prisoner had produced in two separate actions as evidences of his claim to certain lands in Scotland, was a forged document and, by a majority, that it was not proven that the prisoner had forged it, or uttered it knowing it to be forged. With respect to a charge of forging certain documents on the back of an an- cient map of Canada, to support his claim to extensive grants of land in North America, the same verdict was returned. The Jury found that other papers, in which defects in the prisoner's genealogy were supplied, were not forgeries. The prisoner's friend, Colonel D'Aguilar, was with him in the dock during the trial. When the verdict was given, the prisoner fell upon the railings, uttered deep groans, and appeared dreadfully convulsed. Colonel D'Aguilar and the officers assisted him out of Court. He re- turned after an interval, and the Judge ordered the verdict of ac- quittal to be recorded. The Caledonian Mercury says, in reference to this trial— "'The general feeling was one of great sympathy in the fate of the accused. The circumstance of Colonel D'Aguilar, a gallant officer holding a dis- tinguished situating on the Staff of Ireland, having throughout the trial—day after day—taken his place in the dock with the friend of his boyhood, has also caused a common expression of respect and admiration towards this gentleman, both as a British soldier and as a man."
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