The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES,—The Grand Jury is, ire theory, the most
wise and necessary institution that any county can
possess. The Grand Jury is supposed to see that
every public matter goes on right. It is to the
county what the housekeeper is in a private este.
blishment, what the secretary is in a public depart-
mew., what a bishop is in his diocess. It is bound to
bring together a complete knowledge of all matters
within its area of jurisdiction, and to see that every-
thing is going on quietly, that every one is doing
his work, that every one, as the Chinese say,
"sweeps the snow from before his own door," and
that nothing happens that ought not to happen.
Thus, if there be a murder committed, or a truck
stenciling before a cileticlisee shop in a narrow street,
or if Bil iiegsgate be growing louder than accustomed,
or the Thames rise above the metal stench mark,or
loitering cabs render the street impassable, or
there be a further invasion of apple stalls, the Grand
Jury is the constitutional remedy. Pickpockets,
' barrel organs, and scarlet fevers; tumbledown
house, income taxes, overdriven horses, and public
indecencies; mob orators, wandering lunatics, and
encroachments on the public parks ; libels, pigsties,
and stage playas; nuisances of all kinds, offences of
every nature, disagreeables of every description—all
ought to b 3 abated by the Grand Jury, e ho, accord-
ing to the system as it existed in the time of King
Alfred, ought to do all that Magistrates and Come
mieeioeers of Polies, and Inspectors of Nuisances
and District Surveyors, Highway officers and Local
Commissioners and Metropolitan Boards of Works
have been found by no means too roach to do in
these latter days. All this, we will try to believe,
the Grand Jury did in good King Alfred's time ;
but if this ever were- so they have long since given
up all idea of any such usefulness. The only whole-
some exercise we have known in modern times of
their ancient jurisdiction is that exhibited the other
day by the Grand Jury of the City of London, who,
awakening to a sense of their old responsibilities,
have come into court and presented themselves as a
nuisance, The Grand Jury of the county of the
City of London—for London is a county as well as
a city—take unnecessary pains to prove that they
have long shown in themselves an egregious in-
stance of the nuisances that ought to be forthwith
abated. In the first place, there is no single duty
which they aro supposed to perform which is not
already assigned to special efficers, who, if they do
their work, leave nothing for a Grand Jury to do,
and, if they do not do their work, leave nothing
undone which a Grand Jury is ever likely to do,
In the second place, there being nothing to do,
people who have a great deal of work on their hands
are taken from their own business in order to do
that " nothing." It is all very well for country
gentlemen, who really do for the most part
thoroughly understand the wants of their neigh-
bourhood, to drive into the assize town and listen to
the Judge's charge, and talk over what they shall
do about roads and bridges and the like at the next
magistrates' meeting. But London Grand Jurors
are altogether different people. They are men with
dingy counting-horses about the Bank, and ledgers
that seem disproportionate to the size of the closet-
like places in which they are used. These Grand
Jurors are mercantile men, who are being pursued
all day long by telegrams from every part of the
earth, whose counting-houses era rented at several
guineas per square foot, and whose time is worth a
guinea a minute. Suerly it is a dreadful cruelty to
bring these restless men unnecessarily away from
their own work and lock them up in a room, to do
nothing with a solemn air of deliberation ? "The
Grand Jury of the December Session, 1864," have,
under these very natural feelings, presented them
selves as a nuisance. They are, they say, an en-
cumbrance rather than a help to the administration
of justice, having no other practical office than that
of allowing prosecutors and defendants to compound
prosecutions ; and inflicting a general discourage
meat upon prosecutors by compelling them to at-
end with their witnesses day after dayin cold stone
lobbies, expressly constructed to exclude the light
and to admit cold draughts of air from every
quarter. We must confess that we think this
Grand Jury have taken a proper view of their
ditties. After a London magistrate has invest'.
grced a charge in open court, a subsequent secret
investigation interposed between the accused and
his next open trial can but enable the defend-
ant, if he be at once rich, guilty, and unscru-
pulous, to buy off the witnesses who appeared be-
fore the magistrate. Again, when a prosecutor has
undertaken, for purposes of public morality, or in
order to raise the value of his own property at the
expense of his neighbours, or in order to make a
parish bill of costs, or for any other motive, good,
bad, or indifferent, to set up one of those slave-hunts
by which the most wretched of all. our population
are hunted to and fro from cover to cover in this
great jungle of houses, the Grand Jury affords the
opportunity for making terms of evictien with the
wretched fugitives. Or, if money i 3 to be extorted
by a false charge against an innocent man, the
Grand Jury, sitting in secret in the centre of their
windy labyrinth, are compelled to listen to the
slnnder, and a charge which would be blown away
by the first breath of public examination receives a
sort of countenance by the Grand Jary finding a
true bill on the evidence of the prosecutor alone.
So far as we know, it is only gamblers, and extor-
tionere, and rival proprietors of infamous houses
who, in the present day, habitually prefer a bill
to the Grand Jury without going before a magise
trate ; but there may, of course, be exceptions, of
which both we and the grand Jury who made this
presentment are ignorant. Why does this mis-
chievous absurdity still exist ? Shall we answer
the question frankly ? It exists by reason of the
ignorance and the cowardice and the indolence of
successive Law Of cern of the Crown for many
years mow past. These are hard words, and we use
them entirely nzitiori sensu, and by no means as
imputations upon any indiVidual. An overworked
lawyer has a presentment of this kind placed before
him, and is asked by his chief whether a short bill
would not do away with this London Grand Jury,
and be very salutary and safe as well as popular.
The lawyer has no a moment to think-or to read,
and his momentary impression is that a Grand
Jury is a eery old tree, and you can't tell whither
the roots go, or what you may pull up with it. Here
is his ignorance. Then he imagines that if he were
to abolish this Grand Jury it might suddenly be dis-
covered that for want of some half-forgotten lune«
tion which a Grand Jury only could perform, all the
sentences might turn out to be void, or all the pri-
sons have to be opened. Here is his cowardice,
very excusable under the circumstances. The proper
course would be, no doubt, to read up the .vhole
matter, and when he felt himself standing on firm
knowledge then to act without fear. Tnis, however,
he will not do, for ho cannot afford time to do it ;
and this is his indolence—indolence ad hoc. All
this is very natural and very pardonable in an At-
torney or Solicitor General or a Lord Chancellor,
who has a hundred times as many things to do as
he ever has time to do properly, but still it ought
to be done.

POST.--It has been observed for some time past
by those who have the privilege to approach the
Queen that her INljesty is happily regaining some
of her former elasticity of spirit, and that, however
much her great sorrow is always present to her,
nevertheless the Queen is now more able to attend,
not only to those absolute duties which bhe has
always sacredly fulElled, but also to the general
courtesies and social surroundings of her royal life.
These facts have given rise to sincere congratula-
tion in the official and courtly world, and to the
happiest auguries for the future. This has become
gradually and generally known. If a contemporary
who loves to prophecy with foreknowledge was
ignorant of it, his article of yesterday was rule and
overbearing. If, however, he wrote in possession
of the truth that her IVlLjesty is now more disposed
to take part in the outward shows and displays of

rely d
royalty,
nothin can more shock then:his leader was very
oounj tasteustifi dabalen,for
sua
sense of propriety than to make the Sovereign,
efforts to set aside her own trouble and to satisfy
and please her people appear to proceed only fl.(1„
the dictation of a bold and irreverent Pes'.
The nation will learn with more than ate,
meat that the anniversary of the death of the
Prince Consort has been made the oVesien -we
urging her Majesty to "think of her subjects' clto
and the duties of her high station, and not to MI,.
pone them longer to the indulgence of an tinav bar
lug grief." The Queen is entreated to renaen'th'e
teat it is not a matter of indifference whether
Sovereign should be seen and take part ie 12,,11d to
affairs, and that no reigning House can eel' the
coefirm in their views those who suggest Old its,
Throne is only an ent'quarian relic and Rojrfitly
itself a ceremony. It is admitted that, ``bapP to
for the interests of royalty," the English peoPle
not of this opinion ; but the balance of the °°llBll
tution depends, it is said, cr., the Sovereign buipt
able on certain occasions to rise superior to Parthie
suggestions and stand as the representative ot,r'his
nation and the guardian of the executive.
subject has been adverted to before in the carp.
quarter, and there can be no doubt that her Xt.
eesty's seclusion has been universally deplored.
is true that it was hoped and desired that the datilie
of mourning, which have deprived the people tieredw
royal presence, would ere now have been consib,
as past; but at the same time her MajestYe d
jects can never forget that the Queen has sus%lee
no common bereavement, and the laneuage to rot
we are adverting is assuredly wholly averse Irte°t-
the sentiments of loyalty and devotion they' sble
vently entertain. Even if it was thought defer°
nt
to give expression to the sense of disapPol°Ailletee
that is experienced—which, bearing in m`n;-,,esly
touching and impressive answer that was gra°—
returned to a similar appeal, seems leteeeciii3egers
doubtful—it might surely have been done etl Bed
wise, without exaggerations which sae pate to
without arguments which are supererogatory', hick,
say offensive. Above all, the time is, we must ee
most ill chosen, Her Majesty has just vieit"4sed
royal mausolt um,and when the people were preP: tee
to sympathise with the emotion they can apPrtel,6lbes
for it may be seen every day in our cemeteries,' 01:,
severe remonstrance is poured into the natirt,ts
ear. We feel, therefore, that we should n°' eat
fulfilling our own obligations if we did not PF°•te..
against such en interpretation of public opl°l°4
Them is something unspeakably abrupt °bit,
startling in the statesnene that "it is ieurs.,e9,•ltes
for a recluse to occupy the British throne wh'ice
out a gradual weakening of that authority 11"; a'
the Sovereign has been accustomed to 065ereis
but it is Sappily not necessary to discuss the It
ter upon en entirely irrelevant essumpti°,n' tiov,
may be affirmed, without the least bee'erfie'ieg
that during the past three years, though euL7,;-ties
acutely, her Majesty hifi never neglected the ''''„rse
of sovereignty, nor ceased to hold that intere°l*the
with the ablest and most respected persons 1° ad,
land which is rightly said to be essential to tbi,exibet
ministration of constitutional government. 0-
the effort has cost the Queen may be better coe
ceived than expressed ; but her Majesty ba9sebo
spared herself, and we are satisfied that it thl -tee
ject could be referred to in the House of L0r,",,61 tee
noble leader of the Opposition would vie Wit'Digo.
Ministers of the Crown in vindicating the Socer; t'es
It is greatly to be regretted that the sorrow elated
royal mourner has:noeyet been sufficientlyallev;,- of
to admit of the performance of many social 5°
pad
courtesy and condescension, and it must be oWted
that, worthily as her Majesty has been represee.re,
by the Prince and Princess of Wales, there edyreelors
vileges which cannot be conferred by any riele°e-
nrers°
of the royal authority; but to infer that ttlekc
gatives of the Crown have been thereby wea',"eitie
or that republican theories are consequentll"
lisp
ing strength, is libelling the loyalty of the x-'l3:tter
nation. Moro opportunely, and in quite Bns-been
tone, the people of this country would Nape med,
pleased to see their wishes expressed and eltedi'e-iga
They cannot but desire that their beloved Weary. be
should come again amongst them, and they,r-ieena
permitted to think that the exertion wow. -, ore,
tually conduce to the Queen's personal we'eee.
which must always be their first considev°oo,
But this tone of upbraiding they will, we are °coy
disclaim altogether, as entirely failing to cf 130014
any proper description of their feelings, eq ft; tl3°
pletely misapprehending the view they take "nt be
Queen's retirement. British loyalty o°lla-welt
affected by the circumstances which are most
As hi
upon. A Knight of the Garter may be mad
proclamation, and a levee may be held by dap the
without in the remotest degree dinsinishiog -ore
faith of the nation in its form of government'. soil
are not so given to change. Ours is not -eel',
in which ideas of innovation take root co re°-fee
The fundamental principles of the censtitutionsor
not to be shaken like a reed before the wind. r f
are we likely to be fascinated by any visions °`ieif
publican situplicity. In seclusion or in scc; tb°
Queen Victoria will reign in the hearts of her -tie •
jects ; and, while they would humbly and resPe-te
fully beg of her Majesty to endeavour to ovetct°t;ll
a great grief, they would urge their prayer ell"r"tes
and in season, at the same time heartily and eg:tiee
fully acknowledging that all the essential If
of the Crown have been faithfully and religw-fi
fulfilled.