HABBERTON, John, American author : b. Brooklyn, N. Y., 24 Feb. 1842. At first a printer he subsequently served in the Federal army, and later undertook editorial work in New York. His best-known book, 'Helen's Babies> (1876), attained great popularity both in America and in Europe. He has published also 'The Barton Experiment' (1877) ; 'Other People's Children) (1877) ; 'The Worst Boy in Town' (1880) ; 'Who was Paul Grayson?' (1881); a humorous of Washington' (1883) ; (One Tramp' (1884) ; 'Brueton's Bayou' (1886) ; Chautauquans' (1891) ; 'A Lonely Lover' (1893) ; 'The Tiger and the Insect' (1902) ; 'The Bowsham Puzzle' ; Luck' ; Guzzy' ; 'Caleb Wright' ; 'When Boys Were and (1909). His only drama, (Deacon Crankett,) was performed more than 500 times. HABEAS CORPUS. The provision of Magna Charter, guaranteeing every freeman from being ((taken or imprisoned . . . but by lifwful judgment of his peers of the law of the is merely declaratory of an immemorial right. From the earliest times it was the privilege of persons accused to go at large pending trial and judgment, on giving surety, and this privilege had been regularized by William the Conqueror, through the institution of whereby groups of 10 men in every shire hundred became hostages for each other's good conduct, and for the appear ance of either to answer any charge that might be laid to him. The vague but great powers anciently enjoyed by sheriffs, and their ill-de fined discretion, enabled these officers to hold persons on suspicion, without commitment and without bail, to remedy which abuses various writs were invented and issued by the chancery office commanding the production of prisoners thus detained. One of these, the writ de homino replegiando, was applied also to cases where persons were not held by any official authority, much as the writ of habeas corpus is nowadays employed in cases where the right of a parent or guardian, or an institution, to the custody of a child or ward is in dispute. But the power of the superior courts to bail in criminal actions, even for high treason, has never been ques tioned; and in these and other cases involving a restraint of liberty the writ of habeas corpus answered all purposes in a simpler and more direct way than any other writ. The Courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer originally had to issue the writ under the fiction that the person requiring it was privileged, or was to be sued in the court from which it was issued; but the Lord Chancellor and the judges of the King's Bench issued the same without circum locution from the beginning of English legal history. The promise made by King John in the Great Charter —"we will sell to no man, we will not deny nor delay to any man, either right or would not have been ex acted, however, without cause; and the most probable reason would have been sales, denials and delays of justice and right, which the sov ereign for himself and his successors agreed should never thereafter occur again. That the promise has always been kept it would be un veracious to assert. To be sure, "the king can
do no wrong? but his judges, ministers and privy councils can.
In earlier practice the writ of habeas corpus had several uses; i.e, to remove a defendant and the record of his case from the jurisdic tion of an inferior to a stwerior court, or to remove a prisoner to be tried from his place of confinement into the jurisdiction where the alleged crime was committed. These and some other variations of the writ have become obso lete; though the writ of habeas corpus ad testi ficandum is still frequently resorted to for the purpose of bringing into court a prisoner in custody whose testimony as a witness is de sired. When the great "writ of right' is spoken of, the office of which is to give security to all persons from unlawful detention and restraint of liberty, the term habeas corpus is used with out adjectival appendices. The writ is issued on the petition of a person in custody, or of one who claims to be the rightful custodian of a person unlawfully held by another. It re quires the officer or other individual, charged with unlawfully detaining a person, to produce —literally to have the body of — that person, be fore thejudge issuing the writ, immediately, so that the ground of detention may be in quired into and the person held in confinement may be released without delay if unlawfully de tained. If the petitioner be in custody of an officer of the law and the latter have a warrant, specifying a lawful reason for the arrest, de tention and commitment of the prisoner, the matter ends there. The merits of the case cannot be inquired into on the return of the writ and the most the judge can do is to bail the petitioner if he considers it a bailable case. It was due to a total disability to understand the difference between law and royal prerogative in a little matter like freedom of locomotion that a distant successor of King John completely lost his head. It is true, that Charles I was ill-advised and badly served by subservient judges. The warden of the Fleet prison had made returns to writs of habeas corpus, stating that the prisoners, in whose behalf they had been obtained, were confined by warrant of the privy council, and committed by special com mand of the king. Though counsel for the prisoners insisted that the council was bound to assign a sufficient cause of commitment, just as any petty magistrate would be, the judges decided that the royal mandate was warrant enough for any arrest and detention. This de cision destroyed every constitutional and statu tory guaranty of liberty from Magna Charts down. It raised an uproar, which ended in rev olution, the trial and decapitation of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell. The king meanwhile had been forced to consent to the Petition of Right, sometimes called the first Habeas Corpus Act; but this was made nugatory to a great extent by the refusal of the judges to issue the writ during vacation, so that between terms of court prisoners committed unlawfully and without bail had no remedy.