The Express.
London, England, 1858-04-06 00:00:00

?AMMON NEWNAN AND THE POI.II7OAL

PROSECUTIONS.

• The following is an extract from a letter addressed
by Profiveor Presets W. Newman, of L'olverrity College, to
• member of the Truelove Defame Committee:

The topics which I should myself wish to press on the
public are these:
.1. No branch of morals is in • more chaotic state than the
ethics of war. The Quakers deny entirely that any war,
even &heave, is right. Other Christians have most per-
pleas& notions as to what legitimately constitutes a state of
war, and how fur war changes the right and wrong of taking
Item life. Unless absolutely free expression of opinion cm
this subject Is allowed, we ma year (collectively and stably)
Male truth. To howl down by execration, or to prosecute
by law a man who endeavours to clear up these gosilloes,
Will bring no decision, but will propagate doubt.
" 2. Even if • man is legally condemned sea Moe, it is
permitted to every Englishman to argue against the law
which condemned him, and to leek its repeal on the ground
of its being unjust, or its punishments excesaiva In this
way have the Game Laws been reasoned 'phut, and a large
part of our old criminal law. Thus, even if Orsini had made
his attempt against the French Emperor on English soil, it
net only would have been open to his advocate on the trial
to argue that the homicide would have been justifiable (and,
if he could, to convince the jury of it), but after cos-
deemation, it would still have been open to us all to mama
against the law as over-severe, or as fundamentally mk-
t en. If Mr. Adam. may not endeavour to convince us
that Orsini's deed, though punishable and punished at law,
is not morally wrong, I do not see how Englishmen can re-
tain the right of moulting the law at all. Free moral ce hi-
dden le effectually stopped.
3. In the particular case of tyrannicide, the despotism
thus exerted over the press is the more startling: sad un-
endurable, because the sentiment which is now prosecuted
at law is that which for ages predominated among Hebrews,
Greeks, and Romans, the three nations which have been the
chief feeders of our moral and intellectual life. The very
motto of Mr. Adams is taken from the Old Tsetemant. If
we have now outgrown certain sentiments and jiggered!, of
those three nations, and count them to ba errors, it is rather
too much to prosecute, or rather persecute, those who hold
to the opinion that Lynch law against • tramonable
usurper is better than no law at all.
4. That the Roman people are in actual war with France,
so long as French armies are In hostile occupation of Roman
soil, and that such • elate of war juatiflee every Roman In
deadly attacks, open or secret, on the life of hail who steno
pleased and sustains the war, is an opinion which, right
or wrong, it mum be perfectly free to every Englishman to
maintain, unless our press is to be degraded to the level of
the French, and all manly utterances of freedom be for-
idden.

"Will not some Enlace be fotmd at the English bar to
•peak at uam Mr. Truelove's legal defame, and also the
indignation of a free heart sgainst this ignoble attempt to
please one guilty man by the sacrifice of uur English birth-
i;ght