The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1825-10-15 00:00:00

CON NELL r. COBB ft TT.

Mr. O'Connell has at length redeemed his pledge of
replying to the atusive articles which Cnbbett has lately
published against him. This letter appears in the Dalin
Moraing Reg isl, r of Wednesday, and is of great length,
and, as might be expected, tedious enough to all but the
I tries immediately concerned. The following extract
will show the style of the composition, and the nature of
the warfare waged between the belligerents:—
" In my last letter I called Cobbett, shown talent at writing a
comedy has, you perceive, been forestalled, a comical en4creant.
I now withdraw the appellation.
" In lieu of the name I thus roract, I will of my bounty bestow
on him another denomination, which, although conferred by me
-as a matter of courtesy, he has most richly earned. 1 will call him.
In future, 'a vile vagabond.' A viLE VAGABOND he most cer.
tainly is.
Ile has outlived his intellect. There is a drivelling folly and
a childish absurdity in several of his late compositions, which mark
the gradual but rapid decay of his understanding. It cannot be
mild of him that • his wine of life is on the lees,' because wine is
too generous a liquor to enter into the comparison ; but • his gin of
existence is on the dregs.'
" It is really melancholy to behold the rapidity of the decay of
this man's intetect. IVithin twelve months now passed It scarcely
smacked of decline, and yet already the flavour of rottenness is
upon it ; and that talent which used to affright even those whom it
disgusted, now affrights nu more, while it disgusts equally friends
and foes.
•• I hope lam writing at or of Cobbett far the last time. I have
to deplore two things. First, that 1 should waste so much time
upon him ; and, secondly, that I ever formed any acquaintance
with hint.
" 1 candidly confess that I take shame to myself for having ever
known William Cobbett pen •nally. I acknowledge that I merit
Islaucly a greater infliction than hie ribaldry, for having known
him at all.
" 1 should have reeolletted that where there was not Integrity
in private dealing, there cannot be solid virtue in public I le. 1
should not have shot my eyes to the glaring fact that this man
praised Sir Francis Burdett to the skies, while he was borrowing
his money and turned upon I • with fiendish malignity, when
he could oo longer make him his pecuniary dupe, and hail neither
she means nor eie incltnation to repay. I should have fled sect a
loon as I would a pestilence; neither should I have left it to the
combination of some resentment with more contempt to open my
eyes to the real character of a man whose native form of mind raised
him to an elevation from which nothing but the inherent depravity
of his soul could have hurled him.
" I own I could much wish to palliate what I cannot excuse—my
acquaintance with him."

It has been determined to have a public dinner, at Shef-
field, on or before the 4th of November next, as a tribute
to Mr. Montgomery, the poet, who halately resigned the
editorship of the Shrbiirld Iris. Lord Milton has promised
to preside on the occasion.
ST)IOD or LI Si Ea.—We understand that in a new code
of discipline, Ittely adopted by the General Synod of Ul-
ster, it is appointed, that students, previously to their
going to College, and previous to their entering a Theo-
logical Class, be examined by one or other of four Com-
mittees, formed in the following manner :—One Commit-
tee by the Presbyteties of Templepatrick, Belfast, Bangor,
and Demon, ; to meet at Belfast, and be denominated the
Belfast Examination Cornmitte-. A second by the Pres-
byteries of Dublin, Monaghan, Armagh, Tyrone, and
Clogher ; to meet at Aughnacloy, and be denominated the
Auglenaeloy Examination Committee. A thin' by the
l'resbyteries of Letterkenny, Strabane, and Decry ; to
meet at Strabane or Derry, anti be denominated the
Strabane or Ourry Committee. A fourth by the Presby-
teries of Route and Ballymoney ; to meet at Ballymo-
ney, and be denominated the Ballymoney Examination
Committee. There Committees meet every year in October,
and report to the Synod the names of such young men as
they lave examined and rppri-weti.---Briftht Ormolu-le.

THE BRITISH PRESS.

TO THE EDITOR OF TUR BRITISH PRESS.
_ . _

Sta,—lt seems, from whet transpired at Manchester,
betweett the celebrated Oldham Coroner and the gentleman
who attended on the part of the Afavehater Guardian,
that the question as to the right of the sullied to be pre-
sent, and also of reporting the proceedings at Coroners'
inquests, will shortly be set at rest by the opinion of the
Judges, that gentleman having expressed his determina-
tion of proceeding and settling this long-disputed, though
never yet litigated point.
In advocating the right of the admission of the public,
and their reprcaentitives, the gentlemen connected with
the public pfeis, I feel bound to admit that there are seve-
ral opinions in cidentally expressed in different cases,
which in some degree militate against, and appear to shake
my argument; but it should be remembered that this sub-
ject was not on those occasions the matter of investigation,
' and I feel satisfied that, upon a full analysis of the
raw, this right win be found in favour of the public,
although in one or tiro cases it may have been doulned,
and even denied ; for in the case of the King v. Fleet,
I Earn. and Ald. 374, the Court of King. Bench granted
a criminal information against the Editor of the Brighton
Jourgal for publishing a report of the cridence giveh
before a Coroner's Jury : but that was accompanied with
comments which might be fairly considered to inflame the
public mind. In that ease Mr. Justice Bayley said,
" nothing can be more important to irdividuale, than that
their trials should take place without any prejudice in the
minds of those who are ultimately to decide the facts in
evidence. There are in this case two different publica-
tions, in the first of which the conduct of the unfortunate
parties is represented in a statement of facts accompanied
by comments that may influence the public mind. In die
second, an account is given of what took place before the
Coroner. That is a matter of great criminality ; for the
inquest before a Coroner hnds to a pccotul inquiry, in which
the conduct of the second is to be considered by persons
who ought to have formed no previous judgment of their
case. It is a statement of evidence taken wholly ex-parte,
and where there is no opportunity for cross-examination.
A jury who are afterwards to Nit upon the trial ought not
to have ex-parte accounts laid before them. They ought
to decide solely upon the evidence which they hear on the
trial. It is, therefore, highly criminal to publish, before
such trial, an account of what has passed on the inquest
before the Coroner." _ _

Now it will appear from a careful I of this case, as
reported, that the primary cause whit induced their Lord-
ships to grant a criminal information was the publication
of the comments, and the other Judges, in delivering their
judgment, chiefly relied on that fact : the above, it will there-
fore be seen, is only the °biter dichm: of a puisne Judge,
the question as to the right of admission of the public
not being in controversy ; and all persons in the habit of
attending the Courts know, that their Lordships frequently
subvert the very eases which they asserted when they have
not been the immediate subject matter of investigation ;
for, in the case of Cox e. Coleridge, 1 Barn and Cres. 37,
which was a question as to the right of a person, under ex-
amination on a charge of felony before a Magistrate, being
' allowed an attorney on his behalf to conduct his defence,
Mr. Justice Bayley, in reference to an observation which
fell from him in another case, saki, " 'Whenever that care
shall arik, I wish not to be considered as bound by the
()titer dirthns which I am reported to have used in the case
cited (Rex. e. the Justices of Stafifondlire, I Chit. v 18.) I
am open to hear that point argued whenever it becomes tie-
cessary." So that nothing is more dangerous than to con-
sider the Court as being fettered by an opinion expressed
by one of its members, when that very fart is not Inc sub-
ject of solemn inquiry.
The first material fact in order to ascertain this im-
portant right is, to inquire whether the Court of a Coroner
is an open Court : this appears to be laid down in 4 Inst.
271, where it is said the Court of a Coroner is a Court of
Record ; and in the case of the Kin., r. the inhabitants of
Eriswell, 3d Termßeports, 722, Lord Kenyon, the then
Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, in delivering
his judgment, said, " The examination before the Coroner
is an inquest of office ; it is a transaction of notoriety, to
which every person has a right of access ;" and Mr. Jus-
tice Blackstone, speaking of certain Inquests not being
traversAle, says, " It is because of the notoriety of the
Coroner's Inquest, super anon cemporisZat which the inha-
bitants of all neighbouring villa are bound to attend,"
2 Black. Report?, 981 ; and it is stated in Hawkins's
Picas of the Crown, title Coroner, cap. 9, that "if the
Coroner omits to take an Inquisition upon an untimely
death, it may be done by Justices of Gaol Delivery, Oycr
and Terminer, or of the Peace ; but it. must be done
openly ; and if it he done secretly, it may be quashed."
The public, therefore, have free admission into it, and a
right to attend to what takes place, and promulgate it to
the world, as they have to the superior Courts at West-
minster.

......
It may be said that a Coroner's Inquisition is similar to
the proceedings before a Grand Jury, but it is apparent
from the case I have quoted, that an inquisition before a
Coroner is a public Court. A Grand Jury is op:it to no
person except the jurors and wituesses under examination,
and is in every respect distinguishable from a Court of a
Coroner, for there the party accused is not under any cir-
cumstances allowed to be present ; but in Barelee's case,
2 Sid. 101, it was decided that in the cafe of an inquisition
before a Coroner, a party has a right to attend by Counsel,
and yet no particular person is under examination.
One argument against this privilege is, that the publica-
tion of the evidence prejudices a prisoner in the minds of
the Jury ; but this does not appear to me to be tangible,
for, by the very oath which is administered to a Juror
upon the trial, he is sworn to:give " a true verdict accord-
ing to the evidence ;" rind it is not as though he did not
hear the evidence, for it is openly detailed in Coutt, and
no man would allow his mind to be biassed by a atate-
tuent which he had only read, and which the Judges in
almost all cases caution them against. .
Police Magistrates, when they arrogate to themselves
the right of excluding the represeettatives of the public
from their offices (which, to dirk credit be it said, few do)
argue that their's is only a private room, and, conse-
quently, that it lain their power to admit or exclude whom
they please ; but the Court of a Coroner is, as I have
shown, an open Court, and ought not, therefore, to admit
of this specious and delusive argument, bus is open to the
public, as, I doubt not, will soon be determined by judicial
decision.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
Oct. 13, len

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

INTELLIGF:NCE EXTRA.
DONCASTER AIEETING,

TtEIIDAY.

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