The Express.
London, England, 1847-03-25 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 25.

THE Morning Chronicle states the education scheme
very fairly, and puts its statement into the mouth of
the Leeds deputation. It admits that in a large num-
ber of parishes, the dissenters are in such a small
minority, that the only schools possible or likely to be
established in these parishes will be National ones,
that is, connected with the Church of England. For
the government to encourage these schools, or their
formation, (for multitudes are yet to form) is, accord-
ing to the Chronicle, unfair to the dissenters, who
have no schools of their own, and who cannot send
their children to the National school.

What is this but the fable of the dog and the
manger? There are hundreds of parishes without
education. The dissenters are in such a minority
these, that they cannot hope to establish schools. For
this reason they demand that there shall be no schools;
since schools, if any, will be more of the tone and
colours of the majority, and the children of the mino-
rity will be tempted to frequent them.
So that, for fear the children of the minority might
be tempted to take a lesson in spelling from a Church
of England preceptor, the children of both majority
er.d =in.wity srr to romaln unAtcatcd. We realty
never heard anything so preposterous, or so narrow.
We should, certainly, prefer a system of education
independent of all ecclesiastical influence in the
school itself. But every one knows that such a wish
is hopeless, and that in our free country the majority
of a population will assume certain advantages. The
government does what all representative govern-
mints must do. They invite the aid of the majority
to carry oat a plan of education. The minority says,
no ; we cannot form schools is these districts, but no
one else shall.

We repeat, therefolte tI i rat quote the Morning

Chronicle to prove, that Mr. 13AINES is the "dog in
the manger." And it is not a little amusing to per-
ceive the efforts he makes to persuade the Wesleyans
to lie down with him on the educational hay, so as to
keep even the children of Church of England poor
from getting a morsel.
Before the Jesuits commenced their campaign
against the national system of education in France,
they were at open war with the parochial clergy, and,
animated by more than the ordinary jealousy which
divides the regulars and seculars in the 'Church of
Rome, they assailed, all the Tramontane priests with
as much fierceness as the Leeds Mercury used to dis-
play against the Wesleyan Methodists. Bat when
it was necessary for the Jesuits to seek allies in
their warfare against education, they placed
ultra-montaniam out of sight, and exhibited
as much zeal to win over the seculars as
the Leeds Mercury now displays to gain the
Rapport of the Wesleyan. In 1839, the Methodists,
for opposing the government scheme of education,were
stigmatized by the Mercury as " cavillers " and
" bigots ;" while Dr. BUNTING was held up to repro-
bation by the derisive title of " Bishop." In 18.17,
the Mercury invites the Wcslcyans to persevere in
the course which it had itself reprobated, and it avers
that the Methodists are ready to join in its own
factious course, though that respectable body has
carefully held aloof from the BAINES' opposition.
The educational committee of the Methodist con-
ference, in the resolutions adopted on Thursday last,
distinctly admits that " there are grounds on
which it would approve a scheme of education
to be supported by national taxation," and it
has voted " that a statement of the objec-
tions to the present measure should he submitted
to the committee at the adjourned meeting." This is
a manly and dignified course, calculated to win
respect, and to secure attention. Objections thus
duly weighed, and calmly considered, will not contain
such monstrous blunders and patent falsehoods as the
list we had recently to expose. Every true friend of
education will receive the objections of the Wesleyan
committee with a sincere anxiety to make such modi-
fications in the plan as will, without impairing its
efficiency, obviate their conscientious scruples. We
give the gentlemen of the committee the fair credit of
believing that they will not be animated by the cap-
tious, cavilling spirit attributed to them by the Leeds
Mercury, and that they will show that the bigotry
with which that journal charged them was an accu-
sation levelled against them by the rancour of sec-
tarianism. Hitherto, their proceedings have ex-
hibited a marked and honourable contrast to
the course adopted by Mr. IlAtries and his assn
ciates ; nor is there any reason to doubt that the
I proceedings of the committee, on Thursday Bth, will
continue to exhibit the dignity and the moderation by
which they have been hitherto distinguished.
We have given no
.indiscriminate support to the
government measure; it falls far short of the prin-
ciples which have been advocated in the Daily News,
for it does not make an examination of competency
compulsory on all teacher., and it does not enforce
inspection on all schools. We lament that the Na-
tional Society and the British and Foreign Society
have a share in the appointment of the gentlemen by
whom their schools are inspected, and the consequent
necessity of having two sets of inspectors ; but we
believe that there existed a very high expediency for
these concessions, and we are not indisposed to make
some sacrifice to gain our great end—the moral eleva-
tion of the community.
The Leeds Mercury menaces Lord MOEPETII, and
the Patriot avers that the Mercury can return the
members for the West Riding; the Patriot had a
similar opinion of its own influence in Southwark,
and hazarded the experiment, with what result need
hardly be recorded. Now we need hardly remind the
Mercury and the Patriot that this system of bullying
the representatives of popular constituencies has been
tried by both these journals in England, and that
the system, as it deserved to do, signally failed.
" Threats and boasts," said an eminent statesman,
" are the ordinary resources of a bully to frighten
away fear, and partisans have recourse to them only
when in their consciences they are convinced of the
weakness, the injustice, and the dishonesty of the cause
which they advocate."

SIR GEORGE GREY, the other night, informed the
house, in answer to Mr. BRIGHT, that "he had re-
ceived no intimation from any of the judges as to the
indisposition of juries to find persons guilty in cases
where capital punishment would follow." The ques-
tion was elicited by the late cony iction for robbery, at
York, of the three men who were last year acquitted
of the murder which followed on the same robbery,
and for which they were last week sentenced to the
heaviest punishment in the power of the judge to
inflict. The case has excited no lLttle Aare
of notice and of comment. No wonder. 'lie
murder was a double murder, perpetrated under
circumstances which invested it with even a
romantic horror. There were all the melodramatic

accessories : a moonless sky to hide the deed ; a gusty
night to carry the shrieks to startled listeners; and a
rapid, swollen river to bear away the victims. The
clinching evidence was that of an eye-witness, almost
an accessory, and a woman. Her tale was singularly cor-
roborated ; but the chain of confirmatory facts was, on
the trial for the murder last year, incomplete in some
little links. These gaps Mr. Justice CRESSWELL pointed
oat in his summing up. The jury found a verdict of
" Not guilty,"to theastonishment aI ik eof judge, bar, and
public. At last, a curious explanation of this verdict
oozed out. There was amongst the twelve a juror
who had a scruple against the penalty of hanging.
He held out; and, right or wrong, had bowed the
eleven wills to his own—aided, no doubt, by the
petty doubts which even the judge had noticed.
True, he was bound only to find a verdict, not to pass
a sentence. His function ended with the "guilty"
or " not guilty" of the foreman. In stretching past
this to the awfulness of the black cap, and the vulgar
horror of the scaffold, he was, in obedience to a theory,
violating a duty, and one which he had sworn to fulfil.
The men were acquitted. In the interval between this
result and the spring assizes, the missing links in the
chain of evidence were found. They were arraigned
for the robbery, which accompanied their first murder,
and found guilty on presumptive proof, as close and
unimpeachable as presumption can be.
The credit ofjaries is shaken by such a circumstance.
The twelve men in a box are one of the few relics of the
wisdom of our ancestors, which modern theory has
hardly ventured to nibble at. Obvious as the objet ions
to it are ; easy as it is to press into argument its igno-
rance, its pliability, its obtuseness, its hap-hazard;
there has been a tacit sense of advantages counter-
balancing these defects. And this sense is a sub-
stantial one. There is less liability to error in
twelve somewhat obtuse minds than in one, however
acute. Besides, facts reach those minds after much
previous straining and considerable purificatory pro-
ceas. First comes the conflict of exporte statements
and opposing evidence, conducted by dexterous coun-
sel Then the laaid summing up of the impartial
judge, who, in addition, points out the matters which
are to serve as tests and landmarks to the jury, and
the limits within which their judgment is to be exer-
cised. Notwithstanding the formidable array of
motions on the new trial papers, we maintain that,
substantially, juries get at the truth in their verdicts,
better than any existing tribunal intended for the
same work. The onus of the new trial lies oftener on
the judge than on the jury.
We can see nothing in a case so exceptional as this
of the Barnard Castle murder, on which to ground an
argument for readjusting our jury system. Juries, like
all other human institations, require care and lair play, '
in order to their good working. We published a letter
the other day, and publish another to-day, on the
nullity of Essex juries, owing to the neglectful and
disgraceful manner in which they are selected. lf,
as in those cases, we take the ignorant, une-
ducated, and incompetent, to sit as jurors, we
degrade the institution. Again, if we admit
over-sensibility and oddity of opinion, which objects
to the penalty of death on abstract grounds,
and allow men, whose minds are so affected, to sit as
jurors, we also help to nullify the institution. Let but
electors take similar objections to representative
Fzvernin,-st, and the Wog is at an er.i. To pr,scrn
juries against such betrayal, those who serve on them
should be asked whether their sensibility permitted
them to execute their oath in giving their judgment.
If their minds do not permit this, let them be excused
and fined. Such over-sensibility is a luxury for
which men ought to be made to pay. Better mulct
the individual than destroy one of our oldest and
noblest institutions. If the penalty of death be unad-
vieable, let as abrogate it. Hut let not the perverse
reason of a few originals saeceed in destroylnila
institution, for which we can only substitute