The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-12-05 00:00:00

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, that the Government it was who
[y supplied Stephens with the means of
escape by giving up to him the money found
in his home. This is perhaps carrying stu- ,
miaes respecting the possibility of connivance
in Stephens' evasion of justice as far as
prudence would warrant in a public journal;
and we would by no means like to see the
oracles of public opinion adopting the gross
and vulgar notion that unless the escape of
this man had been meant to be winked at, he
could never have walked through six double-
locked iron doors and have left two heavy
lunatic dining, tables unstained with mud or
mark behind him, as dumb waiters rather
than witnesses of his exit. The question is,
was it quite convenient that Stephens should
have been brought to justice P .Luby has got
twenty years penal servitude to begin with,
and even he has uttered at the bar a mock
warning a 14 Robert Emmet of Ireland's
future emancipation. Very well; what would
Stephens not have said on his trial, breathing
as he did at his very commitment, defiance of
British law and punishment ? Ilia rebellion
was,indeed,too preposterous to infer. a capital
sentence; but however that might have been,
' he would probably have made up his mind
for nothing else and nothing less, and hence
have uttered his parting benediction if not
exactly in Ercles' vein, at least out-Heroding
Herod. We cannot divest ourselves, however, of
the idea that Stephens, when he bid defiance to
British law and. British punishment, knew
full well he should take leg bail from both.
Luby's conviction is reckoned by the leading
journal a decided triumph; but it was no
such thing. No man could have been con-
victed on clearer evidence, and yet the
accessories of the trial were such only as may
have last been seen in Warsaw on a similar
occasion. Mr. Butt, the prisoner's counsel,
than whom a more constitutional speaker
does not breathe, alluded emphatically to the
troops 'massed around the Court House.
The special commission itself Was a mark of
undue distinction to these wretched con-
spirators, reminding us of historical days in
Dorchester, when Jeffreys held his bloody
assize in the '• West Countrie," and eighty
prisoners were left over for execution in this
town alone. It is true that treason or rebel-
lion compromised men'slivea much rather than
their liberties in those times. But taking the
whole contemptible features of the Fenian
conspiracy into consideration, we somehow
feel that too much has been made of it; they
have had too much ittteetion ; too much law;
too much justice; and in keeping with all
this are by consequence now receiving
too much sentence. This seems too, all the
greater pity, because of the agitation which is
rising throughout the country in refeteriee
to the black insurrection in Jamaica. Scarcely
had we drawn breath after uttering our con-
gratulations on the prompt and vigorous sup-
pression of these unprovoked atrocities;
when lo! the Radicals of Manchester, Bir-
Mingham, and Norwich are busily assembling
themselves together to question the propriety
of putting down an open insurrection by the
strong arm, and administerin,g to men taken
in the fact the settled discipline of military
law. We are eo lovers of tyranny, whether
"tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain "—but
we confess we know not how to reconcile it
to our allegiance to join in sympathy with
assassins banded for the overthrow of the
Government under which we live; and we
sincerely hope that these meetings of Jamaica
sympathisers may not be a cowardly and
covert form of Penianism in disguise.
IL—Mn. BRIGHT has spoken. Blackburn has
rejected Mr. Pilkington, who, although we
have never heard much of him as a politician,
is considered by his awn school to have as
good a right to Blackburn as Adam had to
Paradise, for it appears that Blackburn was
created for the former gentleman by the Re-
form Bill, and, until now, he has represented
it ever since. Adam fell, and so did Pilking-
ton ; the one was expelled from Paradise, the
other from Blackburn. What a subject for
the Great Tribune of the people! Accordingly,
we very much question if ever before the
Tories of Blackburn have had such an
opportunity of listening to a rhetorical ac-
'count of themselves; their ignorance, their
selfishness and injustice; or perhaps of hearing
anything about Tories at all, or "seeing thelits
selves as other see them," sitice up till now it
has been all the other way at Blackburn, and
Balsam has been called in to bless and not to
curse. Anathema maranatha has at length,
however, been pronounced, and it is curious,
to mark the conjuncture at which this hag.
occurred—precisely when a re-construction of
the ministry of which John Bright hithselt
composes no part, elthibitit, nevertheless,
radical developtieents and proclivities that
tell, perchance, that his day is not far distant.
The curious point is that it is not to the
Radicals that Blackburn ought to have evinced'
its gratitude, but to the reforming Whigs-a-
a fossil generation apparently well nigh,
extinct. Blackburn ha e Certainly COM.
mitted the enoemite or returning two
tories to Parliament for the first time
since it was a borough; such things will
happen; but it appears to us that the way to
set them right again would not be to abuse 1
the Tories, but to reform the Reform Bill t and
to do this by letting reformers niind their
own business, a.nd leaving the 'reties to mind
theirs. That ii at all events the way we
should act, and if, as we are told, the liberal
party, flushed with success, are now proposing
a rapid series of reforms, there will certainly
be enough to do to keep pace with the details
of political improvement about to be dv.
veloped, without going back upon forty years
of obstructions, which after all are but
grievances of the past.
that the case of John Cross,
" the Dorsetshire Labourer," is ended, we I
must be allowed to disclaim having for one 1
moment entertained the conception of ccisb.
, ing reflections on the county Magistracy.
The reporter engaged on the case has himself
pointedly referred to the extreme urbanity
and considerate conduct of the Wimborne
Bench; and in the only observations made
by our editors upon the subject they ask,
"What could the Magistrates do but c'on-
, vict ?"—the man having been taken Jiatraate
delicto. To say now what we did not care to
venture upon saying whilst there Was any
chance of checking the tide of public
sympathy,is moreover perfectly competent to
US; and we therefore add as public journalists.
our extreme regret that the painful necessity
should ever have occurred of discussing such
a case in the newspaiers. In one sense we
cannot but look upon this event as capable of
being construed into a premium upon crime'
and although the case of Cross may be
exceptional, we certainly, concur with our
illustrious county lawyer, Lord Eldon, when
he awarded sentence, "not for stealing sheen,
Ant that sheep might not be stolen," All
we meant to suggest was some re-organisation
of the mode of administering criminal justice
which mould not derogate at all from the
Magisterial jurisdiction, but only relieve it of
the irksomeness and odium that might attach
to the repression of bad characters in their
- districts. In Scotland—to which were-
as offering an de of such an
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Peace "

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