The Press. — London, England, 1858-09-11 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 11, 1858 inn the press and the people, he at last presented his de lighted audience with no less than six of these important entities. There was indeed a slight confusion in the Hon. Member's statement, s eeing that the " three estates of the realm" are not Queen, Lords, and Commons, but the Lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons. But what of that ? The speaker's intentions were equally good, and were listened to with equal enthusiasm. Now, to recur to our original remark, it is precisely upon such occasions as these that the more amiable half of the Englishman is displayed ; and by comparing this with the other half of his character , we g ain a fair insight into that strange mixture of bad logic and sound sense which constitutes British public opinion. The Briton grumbles at everything about him on principle, and loves everything about him by instinct. Ile grumbles at the parson, he grumbles at the mayor, he grumbles at the chairman of quarter sessions; but let him once be fairly asked for his opinion of the systems they represent, and a burst of enthusiasm follows. It is as well, therefore, that every now and then an opportunity should be afforded him of publishing these sentiments to the world, and of correcting the acidity of Parliamentary debates by a little generous sentimental ardour. It is impossible to peruse without emotion the dignified and touching l a nguage in which the Duchess of ORLEANS has couched her last bequest to her children. The solemnity of her exhortations to them is in propor tion to the strength of the faith she possesses in their destiny. In her eyes they are still the future rulers of France ; and, considering the experience of the past, she may be excused for believing that when their country amain shall become desirous of constitutional government, it is to them that she will naturally recur. Different dynasties are frequently associated with some particular idea. In France the Count DE CHAMBORD and the Count DE PARIS are now respectively the representatives of legitimacy and constitutionalism, as the STCARTS and the Giimmis were in England. But in France that has happened which fortunately for us did not take place in this country : not only one, but both kinds of monarchy, have proved unequal to the difficulties of government. And thus not only have the descendants of Louts PHILIPPE their natural rival to contend with in the representative of hereditary right, but also the principles of democracy and imperialism, both developed through the errors of the House of Bourbon. The fatal fact that the wisdom of their grandfather "on which France relied for the consolidation of a Liberal monarchy, turned to foolishness when confronted with a crisis, must always be a powerful impediment to the pretensions of the Orleanist Princes. The present Emperor of the FRENCH is believed to possess liberal inclinations : in addition to these he clearly is master of that vigour and promptitude in which the Citizen King was deficient. May not the constitutional party gradually begin to see in this combination of qualities a better guarantee for the ultimate welfare of France than in the restoration of the monarchy ? A constitutional empire is a phrase that strikes strangely on our ears. But France has to all appearance entered on a course of political experiments ; and why not that as well as others ? Such an idea probably never occurred for one moment to the Duchess of ORLEANS. Imbued as she naturally was with all the Orleanist traditions, and beholding in the Emperor NAPOLEON nothing but the usurper of her children's rights, she would have deserved our admiration less had she appreciated his Government more. Yet the aspirations even of this high minded and truly royal lady must not be permitted to blind us to the actual facts of the case. The promise of the House of Orleans has ever been greater than its performances. Unsteadiness has been its besetting sin. If there is one thing more than another which the present condition of France demands from her rulers, it is unflinching determination of pur pose. Those who knew him used to say that the late Duke of ORLEANS was possessed of this virtue. It may, of course, have descended to his son. But that is at best but a probability. While in the character of her present ruler it is perhaps the most conspicuous feature. In the next place, it is most desirable for the French people that their government, whatever it be, should acquire an clement of permanence. The feverish condition of society can never be assuaged— the severe vigilance of the Imperial regime can never be relaxed—until something of prescriptive sanctity shall have grown up around the Govern ment. We ask our readers how far the periodical revival of the claims of a rival dynasty can he conducive to that desirable result. This perpetual reopening of old sores must for ever prevent the French people from settling down into that frame of mind which alone is capable of constitu tional government. The comparison which has been instituted between the functions of a rival French dynasty and those of our own Parlia mentary Opposition is more fanciful than just. When cur Parliamentary Opposition was the advocate of a counter revolution, it might have borne some resemblance to the situation of the House of Orleans. But at present, although that family may perform the part of the Eastern monarch's slave who reminded his master every morning that he was mortal, yet we must remember that this service is eminently contradictory to our own English maxim that the King never dies ; and strikes at the root of that stability which is one of the first essentials towards the restoration of good order in France. Punctuality, order, courtesy, and capacity are administrative qualities that seldom "in quaternion run," but when they do, they accelerate and harmonize all things. Under the late Government public business was mostly in a passive, impersonal, or reciprocal condition. Nobody attended to it• It got transacted, or occasionally transacted itself. One department was continually waiting for another. Time, as Mr. Toots would say, was "of no consequence" ; it had always been so ; delay was universal 877 and traditional; and in the belief of some functionaries, the whole world, AS in the liindoo scheme, seemed to be resting coldly and placidly on the back of an official tortoise. Since the advent of the present Govern ment, a sensible, warm motion has pervaded the cold mass ; every one seems to be conscious of the rate of time and the incapacity of business suddenly to tranact itself; method and order have been everywhere introduced, and the " manners," which WILLIAM of WYKEIIAM avers generally " maketh man," have been held not incompatible with his par ticular position as the head or the limb of Government. To Lord STANLEY we believe that the introduction of this business-like vigour and alacrity into Government offices is mainly due. The brief report of the meetings of the new Indian Council sensibly exhibits it. Everybody arrives rather before than after the time ; and the President takes his place half an hour before anybody else. Then there is a disposition rather to act than to talk, and to divide the work so that it may be done in the best, readiest, and most methodical manner. We print in another column a petition relating to the dwellings of the poor, to which we invite the attention of our readers. Curiously enough, although its subject-matter was detailed at length by Lord 13aouGnAm in the House of Lords, and, as fully as the forms of the House allowed, by Mr. SLANEY in the Commons, no mention was made in the reports of the Parliamentary proceedings in the newspapers that any such petition was presented ; nor in the official report of the proceedings, signed by Mr. Speaker, in which the presentation of such petitions is almost invariably recorded, does any notice of it appear. It is a delicate matter to question the decisions of our criminal tribunals, and happily the trial by jury, justly esteemed one of the great bulwarks of that liberty which is at once the pride and boast of English men, works so admirably that there is little necessity of appealing from the verdict of the few to the bar of public opinion. That jurymen enter on their duties with a full sense of their deep responsibility, and an earnest desire to do justice between the Crown and the subject in criminal cases, and between the litigating parties to civil suits, we conscientiously believe. If error mark their decisions, it is the error of judgment, and jurors are not more exempt from such mistakes than other men. The case of KNIGHT, the cabman, is one in point. This man was indicted on Tuesday at the Middlesex Sessions, for an assault, with a criminal intent, on MARY CATHERINE BARRY, and with stealing from her person a purse containing 1/. 19s. 6d. in money, and certain articles of apparel. Stripped of legal verbiage, the charge against the prisoner may be divided under two heads, felony and simple larceny. The facts on which the indictment was laid were shortly these :—The prosecutrix, a servant at Ashley's-hotel, went in July last to see a lady at Islington, and on her return rather late at night she hired a cab, of which the prisoner was driver, to convey her home. On the way KNIGHT induced her to take a glass of ale. Whether it was drugged or not there was no evidence to prove ; but from the moment she swallowed it she lost all consciousness, and recovered her senses on the following morning to find herself in one of those dens of infamy in which this metropolis abounds. It was established beyond all doubt that the prisoner had engaged the room, and had brought the prosecutrix there, "so drunk that she could " not stand, her head leaning on his shoulder." KNIGHT rummaged her pockets, and relieved them of their contents, undertaking to be answerable for them. This act of thoughtful foresight, considering the character of the lodging which he had provided, was performed in the presence of a young man named SMITH, who was a servant in the house. Nay, more, KNIGHT impressed on the attendant the high respectability of his young friend, and hinted at the advantages which would probably accrue to those who treated her well. SMITH'S reply was characteristic— " Well, if she is a respectable woman—and she looks one—this is not the proper place to bring her to." This is the case, fully corroborated by other evidence, which established the charge of robbery. having proceeded so far, KNIGHT requested to be left alone with his victim ; but in this he was foiled by the refusal of SMITH, who, though en gaged in a vile service, was not utterly . lost to all sense of right. What was the motive which influenced the prisoner to prefer this request ? He had already secured all that was valuable on the girl's person—his evil mission was accomplished—and a criminal intent of a fouler crime could alone have prevented his making off with his ill-gotten booty. The de fence was that SMITH and not KNIGHT was the perpetrator of the robbery and the person who should have stood in the dock in the place of the ill used individual who had heaped all this trouble on his head by an act of charity in procuring a night's lodging for a female, drunk or drugged as the case may be, but decidedly, in police phraseology, " incapable." This defence totally and deservedly failed. The Judge summed up, and the Jury deliberated. The result was the acquittal of the prisoner for the felony and his conviction for the larcency. In other words, they believed that JOHN KNIGHT might commit the peccadilloes of a Fagan, but would shrink from the crimes of a Tarquin. It was, howevei, somewhat unfortunate, as regards the correctness of this estimate of Mr. KNIGHT'S character, that he ' was proved to have been the keeper of two infamous houses betbre he took to the more laborious duty of cab-driving, which, by the way, is often ren t dered ancillary to his earlier and perhaps more congenial occupation. The verdict, the propriety of which we cannot endorse, though we do not question the intention of the Jury, has consigned the prisoner to imprison ' ment for ten months—during which he may ruminate over the disasters which attend the "unprotected female "—instead of to that peual servitude which he 89 richly deserved, ~..A