The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-12 00:00:00

ILLNESS OF THE QUEEN OF SPAIN.

Despatcher, just arrived, mention that the French
government has received a di. spatch from Madrid,
soling that the Q leen Isabella has had another
seizure. She has had long-continu. d fainting fits,
and much uneasiness was excited on the subject.

SPECIAL COMMISSION.

COUNTY OF LIMERICK.

(I,ItOX OUR OWN

.~

LIMERICK, Morn)Ay.
The judges oat this morning, soon after ten o'clock. The
long panel was called over, on tins, and, with two or three
inceptions, all the persons called answered to their names.
On the name of Mr. Lloyd, of Tower-hill, being called,
Mr. George Gobbing (a juror) observed : Mr. Lloyd ought
to be tined. Every morning since the opening of the com-
mission Mr. Lloyd has been called, but never answered.
This is not fair to me and others. . . _

Mr. Fleetwood (clerk of the arraigns): Mr. Lloyd has
been lined, and will be every time he disobeys the summons
of the court.

Mr. faubluns : And so be ought. (Laughter.) In ouch •
case I would not spare my brother.
This incident may be taken as an exemplification of the
anxiety felt by persons generally to discharge their duties.
That the zeal of Mr. Gubbms is participated in by his fallow-
jurors is prorsd by the full and prompt attendance of the
panel.

SENTENCES ON PRISONERS CONVICTED DUR-
ING THE COMMISSION.-IMPORIANT ADDRESS
OF THE LORD CHIEF JUStICE.

The prisoners ,;;;scittiiurinitiecornolis.ion, and not
before sentenced, were brought up to receive sentence.
The Lord Chief Justice addressed them as follows Pri-
soners, you all (with the exception of one who pleaded
guilty) have been tried and convicted of various offences—
offences partaking of the character of these outrages which
have been so prevalent in this country—which have dis-
graced its character and destroyed its peace. You have been
found guilty upon evidence which, any person who heard
must be convinced, left the
about
no alternative bat to find
you guilty. You are now about to receive your mumps.,
and tt is nO part of my duty to rebuke or to insult you. God
knows there is enough before me to disarm any feeling of
resentment, and to cause to be extended to you pity and
' compassion if mercy to others did not forbid that extension.
The time has gone by at which admonition or advice would
have been of use. Your career of guilt has been run—that
career has terminated ; and now arrives another state of
things—to hear the sentence of the law and the punishment
inflicted upon you. Trine sentences in the cases of
every one of you, with some slight difference,
will have the effect of causing your immediate
removal from this country—separation from friends
and kindred. In some instances that separation will be
eternal—for the whose period of your natural Ern, at least
for periods which exceed the ordinary duration of your ages,
The ties which have connected you with your families—the
ties which have connected you with your parents—brothers,
sisters, are all suddenly and for ever to be snapped asunder,
not by the laws of nature or by the act of God, hut by your
own evil deeds. Friends and kindred will hereafter live,
but not for you. You will live, but not for them. I might
he spared, and would certainly spare myself, the labour and
pain of these observations, if I looked simply to your
condition and your fate. You have forfeited your
liberty—you have forfeited the most inestimable trea-
sure with which God has blessed man—you have
forfeited the labour of your hands, and you will hereafter,
during the long periods of your sentences, be in substance
but serfs and slaves. But it is for the sake of °theta that I

protract my address to you. The object of our law in inflict-
ing punishment is not to gratify the passion of revenge.
Revenge is foreign to the spirit of that law. The object of
punishhaent is the salutary, the important, principle of pre-
venting crime—of saving those who might otherwise be
criminals—of saying them from themselves and their own
evil passions and propensities—end of saying others from ag
gresaion by inspiring them with a salutary terror, which may
arrest their progress in crime, and protect the sound and
well-ordered portion of society. It is therefore that
at this moment you have comparatively little interest
in what I am about to say. But what lam about to say
is all important to others. And who are these others ?
Your associates in crime—your companions in guilt—the
desperate band of robbers and assassins who have pillaged
the country and rendered life and property insecure. They
it is that are now to be warned by your example : and if not
reclaimed from their evil ways, they at all events may, by
I the signal punishment which awaits you, learn what their
punishment will be if they do not stop short in their crimes,
turn away from the paths of riot and disorder and bloodshed
to the paths of peace and order. There may be many
such here, and to them it is highly important to lay
deep in their minds the few ohservations which I avail
myself of this opportunity of making, for their sakes and
for the sake of the community, which I hope will be protected
by the examples now about to be made. I hope that these
examples will operate as a discouragement to them. And
here I would ask, if any partners of your crime—if any asso-
ciates of your guilt— if any persons guilty of similar prac-
tices be within hearing of my voice, is your position one which
they or any of them envy—are you at this moment in such
a condition as that they would exchange their places with
yours ? Will they not reflect that what is your fate to-day
may be theirs to-morrow ? Will they not reflect that the
ignominy ar.d the exposure—the loss of liberty, of country,
and of kindred, that are now about to be inflicted on
you, must inevitably be the lot of that man who is
net warned by your example and arrested in his course
of guilt ? Is not your position calculated to mike an
impression upon the heart of every. man? What a spectacle
to witness in a civilized and Christian courtry ! I believe
there are at this moment not less than 15 human beings
before me, all of whom, in mercy to the peacable and well
disposed, it is necessary to remove from their friends and
native land; and will your companions in guilt go on and
face that danger? Will they blindly, to their own ruin,
rush into crime again Again brave the authority of the
law, and again incur its terrors and its punishment ? Oh ' if
you had voices and could use them! it ia not from my lips
the language of admonition should come, but you should
warn, from the place in which you stend, every human being
misled by your example, or who may have participated
in your crimes, by your example to beware of your fate, and
that, if they continue in their crimes, your fate must be
theirs. But with what hopes are these evil designs enter-
tained and these evil practices continued? Does this com-
mission prove that the law has lost its vigour—that the
minister. and officers of justice, false to their trust, wink at
the escape of criminals, and decline to perform their duty ?
Every event that has wined since the commission opened
forbids the expectation of impunity. The jurors have done
their duty, ably, firmly, and constitutionally. A more con-
scientious discharge of such duty I never witnessed in the
course of my life ; and is it from laws so administered and
laws so executed that these dastardly banditti hope to
escape ? Is it against such authority they hope to battle ? But
has nothing occurred within a short period to diminish their
hopes of success, and deprive them of the power of doing
mischief. [His lordship here referred to the clause of the
recent coercion act, rendering the possession of firearms
even in dwelling houses, without a licence, a high mis-
demeanour, and giving power to the police to search all
suspected houses.] From my own experience, I can gay
that, as arms cannot be safely kept in houses—for the police
will know what houses to search, and will have the power of
searching them, and as arms concealed outside houses will
from damp he rendered unserviceable, the best hops, may be
indulged in. But has nothing else occurred to diminish
their hopes of success, by diminishing the power
of this banditti? Has net the case of William Frewen,
condemned to transportation for life, occurred, and has
it not been heard of? The power of these illegal confedera-
cies is founded upon terror. Under the influence of that
terror the farmers of the country have repeatedly—very
often, I trust, involuntarily—received and harboured crimi-
na' such as you. Perhaps they did it in ignorance of the
law—whether that be so or not, the law on the subject is no
longer doubtful. Its power has been asserted and proved by
the conviction of William Frewen; and every man who
harbours a murderer or a felon does an at a peril of which
if not heretofore aware, he is now well warned. In future
he cannot pretend ignorance of the law ' • where, then,
without fire arms—without protection—where will the
disturbers of the peace find repose ? Let me here advert
to what has occurred in two or three instances during the
present commission, because they show the condition—the
miserable condition of privation and suffering which is the
inevitable result of persisting in these crime.. We have heard
instances—and I now mention them for public information—
of caiminahi conscious of their guilt skulking from the offi-
cers of)ustice, abandoning their own dwellings, and scarcely
venturing, in the severest weather, to ewer under the roof
which ought to give them shelter, or to worm themselves at
the hearth from which their crimes have excluded them.
I cannot conceive a more miserable state of things ; but
it is a retributive consequence of the violation of the
law of God and man. Practically, the robbers and assas-
sins in this country are reduced to destitution and misery
by the consciousness of their own criminality. But
let me address another, and perhaps a concluding, word
of advice to those who, ike you, have formed members of
these atrocious confederacies, and whom I would rescue if I
could. I, in this county, and in other counties in Ireland,
have witnessed the progress of these confederacies, and I
know that, as soon as the law has grappled with them suc-
cessfully, distrust of the conspirators becomes universal—
confidence is undermined, and treachery begins. Nothing is
so true as that no real confidence can, from the nature of
things, subsist between companions in crime. Sooner or
Inter—that is, as soon as self preservation or fear shall have
alarmed the confederates, some one will, without hesi-
tation, instantly avail himself of his means of know-
ledge to betray the confidence reposed in him, and
he the instrument of bringing his own companions to
justice. This has happened this will happen I
speak with that confidence—with that settled irreversible
principle which the laws of nature enables me to entertain,
repeating amongstow
name
guiltye of
informern thereis cano
uhs nIo k cnoonw-
in what detestation it is held. But who makes the informer?
The person who trusts him. What gives him power over
life and liberty? The confidence reposed in him. Who
is betrayed and destroyed by that confidence ? The men
who confided in guilty associates. Therefore criminals, in
reposing confidence in each othei, af—f•rn each other with the
means of mutual destruction ; and, whatever the horror with
which the name is regarded, it should be recollected that
his power of doing mischief—if you will call it so—arises
from the absurd folly of trusting to a man who is
from the very stature of things only safe in that trust as long
as it serves his own interest. Let that self-interest, that
self-preservation, come in contact with his vow, his promise,
and the oath or engagement of such a person will perish
with
coned rspy as flax is consumed by fire. Now I
have what I had to say on the position in which