The Express.
London, England, 1864-03-29 00:00:00

THE EXP.

been committed at all. In a case turning
so obviously on this simple question, there
is scarcely room for the refinement, not otherwise
unknown to English jurisprudence, that a man
may be civilly liable though not criminally guilty,
and we can only look at the result as offering a
very marked example of the objections to assign-
ing questions precisely identical to the judgment
of wholly different tribunals, resulting, not, as at
the worst it would be among us, in the opinion of
twelve men against twelve, but in the opinion of
one overruling that of twelve on a pure question
of fact. But the management of the trial, both
by public prosecutor and presiding judge, was no
less alien to our ideas. It is impossible to conceive
a counsel holding a brief for the prosecution at the
Central Criminal Court, or the Lord Advocate of
Scotland, who fulfils in that country the duty of
the French Public Prosecutor, opening a case in
this fashion :
The accused whom you see before you, gentlemen of the
jury, is rich—he is very rich. Of all that people have been
able to say of him that is, perhaps, the only fact that is
true. Bed if he is rich, he is very haughty ; and, more thin
that, very brutal, very violent, and very hardhearted to
his inferiors. I do not mean to say that he may not have
gained some friends. A man worth a million—and the ac•
eased must have at least a million, as he has no children—
always has friends. But there is one thing undeniable,
which will be proved on the trial—namely, his harshness to-
wards his inferiors. Indeed, there is something incredible
in his violence of temper.

And it is happily no leas impossible to conceive
an English judge in these days using spin the
language of threat, insinuation, and denunciation,
such as JEFFREYS delighted in, and which was, to
an extent unusual even in Imperial France, in-
dulged in by the presiding Judge at Aix. To tell
the prisoner that " he must have strong nerves to
" have been able to go to sleep after a man was
" found assassinated in his cellar," that he nad
best tell the truth and confess " that he only
" meant to inflict one of the corrections which he
" was in the habit of administering to his set-
" cants, but having miscalculated the blow, and
" fearful of the consequences to himself, he
" threw himself on the victim in order to finish
" him," is certainly a singular strain of observaL:on
from the Bench. The judicial altercations with
the counsel we may pass over, they are less
unfrequent in our experience ; but it is at least
more usual for us to find the judge interposing to
check the unwarrantable license of the bar, than
the advocate struggling to obtain a fair hearing
for the witnesses to character whom the judge seeks
to silence.

Yet, while we may fairly and not without some
just self-gratulation observe that such things are
managed differently in England, we must in jus-
tice also remember that our neighbours themselvt,
are shocked ►t the indecent length to which, in
the present instance, the system of judicial ques-
tioning has been pushed. Nor is it immaterial to
reflect that the straightforward evidence of the
accused, under such circumstances, may have very
materially aided the jury in ooming to the con-
clusion that he was innocent. We learn at least
that before the trial public opinion ran violently
against him, and it is reasonable to suppose that
its conversion, to such an extent as to receive the
verdict of the jury with irrepressible plaudits, may
have been wrought quite as much by the plain
tale of innocence as by the evidence of the Parisian
sa rants.