The Sun.
London, England, 1852-06-25 00:00:00

THE SUN,

THE CASE OF DR. ACHILLI AND DR.
IVEVVMAN.
7 • - (Frein the Times.)
gia-Chrious to observe upon se neo-, narrow issues the
spirit of party virulence end religious iiiscord can con-
centrate themselves. The animosities of England and
Scotland centred tor a time on the disputed authenticity
of the poems of Ossian, and Whig and Tory never en-
countered each other more fiercely thau on the appa-
rently celiateeal question raised by the frailties of
Queen Caroline.- Thelong animosity which has pre-
vailed between the Churches of England and Rime has
been stimulated 'to the highest point by aggression and
retaliation, by political egitation. and private contro-
versy. In no breast, however, does the flame of reli-
gious hatred burn so fiercely as in that of a convert.
Vjohld you hear ull that can be said against the doc-
trine and discipline of the Church of England?—seek
it from the lips of a renegade priest. Would you hear
the rabid tirades of-Exeter-hall against the Church of
Rome outdone?—attend the preaching-a and read the
publications of some apostate friar. Thus it comes to
pass th2t qaestions of the highest dignity and last im-
portance are brought down to the level of a personal
brawl, aud that the great cause of the freedom of pri-
teatejadgrat-nt and the progress of the human intellect
is, bound' up with this questionable character of an
ohschre ecclesiastic. We cannot accept this issue; we
cannot concede that this great controversy can be in the
slightest degree advanced by attacking or defending the
character of. Dr. Achilli, and we feel that the scandalous
antrindecent matter which both parties, in their zeal to
damage each other, have brought before the public eye,
is likely to do more injury to the cause of morality and
religion than any seeiarian or controversial triumph can
possibly counterbalance. In apportioning the blame of
this public scandal it is impossible to acquit Dr. Newman
of having been the deliberate cause of the revolting con-
Iliet we have just witnessed. In his zeal to destroy the
evidende of Dr. Achilli against the Church, which few
persons have condemned with more severity than himself,
:Dr. Newman did not content himself with general and
sweeping charges, but entered into details of time,
place, and name, which were, in fact, more in the nature
of a challenge than a criticism. The challenge was as
greedily accepted as it was vauntingly offered, and
so, by the mutual consent of the professors of two
rival religiops which agree in teaching that " Blessed
are the pure in heart," we have been involved in one of
the most indecent investigations which ever sullied the
atmosphere of a court of justice. What has either party
gained by dragging these revolting details before the
public eye? The Protestant supporters of Dr. Achilli
have, indeed, succeeded in painting in very forcible co-
lours the known and admitted tendencies of the Church
of Rome; they have shown how awfully the superhuman
pawer which Rome places in the hands of weak and
fallible mertals may tie prostituted and abused. They
have shown that before man shall be permitted to pry
into the heart end probe the conscience of his fellow-
creatures, ho ought to be invested with the perfection
as well as the omniscience of the Deity.
Little has the victim of this frightful power to hope
frei'm the boasted discipline of the Church of Rowe.
The- confessor shrouds the shame of a brother
priest under the injunction of eternal silence. The
religious orders connive at the delinquencies of a
brother whose eloquence can support, and whose
teaching edify, the Church. If scandal becomes trou-
blesome a change of residence removes all difficulties,
and the Church is willing to let the discipline sleep
which cannot be enforced without casting obloquy on the
priestly character, and exposing the hollowness of the
system on which she builds her pretensions and from
which she derivea her riches. The dreaded Inquisition
itself, that name of blood and terror, waxes mild in deal-
ing with merely moral offences, and reserves for heretics
penalties which she is too mercihil to impose on the
erring sons of the Church. These things have undoubtedly
been presented to us by this remarkable trial in a tan,
gible shape; but who is there so little versed in the his
tory of the Runtish Church as to require three days o
indecent details in order to convince him that if weak

ness ha,s compelled abstinence from her favourite sin of
cruelty; the Church of Rome still permits to her minis-
ters scarcely less licence than of old in the indulgence
of unbridled last? It was scarcely worth while to pro-
voke such a discussion for the sake of enlightening
wtestablished.inform
those whose knowledge of history was too narrow
soill
It
vu
igur generallytriumph,
by andstimu-
lating so
Dr. imaginations
awonft
at
antagonist.
dd lue wtuin taev popularcoarse
or
fe
indignationwhatever
l btiet uidt es
T,
ethf
rose dertreairw;
regard to him, leaves this part of the question wholly
untouched. But, while they have been thus successful
in damaging by these most exceptionable means• the ob-
ject of their cherished aversion, have the ultra-Pro-
testant supporters of Dr. Achilli done nothing to lower
their own charaFter for fairness and impartiality, to im •
pugs their own Judgment, and to bringc'ontempt on their
own proceedings in - the never•ending controversy with
the Church of Rome? How comes it that a man sus-
pected in the relations of private life, subjected to penal-
ties which would have been but a feeble retribution for
alleged vices and crimes, has only to escape from
the prisons of the Inquisition, and to inveigh with
sufficient bitterness and pungency against the head
of a church in which he was educated, in order to con-
ciliate for himself at once the friendship, the respect, and
the affection of the Protestant party in religious and
moral England? flow comes it that to denounce the,
Pope and the Inquisition supersedes the necessity of
inquiry, of caution, and of probation? A man has no-
thing to do but to desert the belief in which he has been
brought up, which experience informs us is seldom per-
manently exchanged far any other, in order to become
a hero among persons who find in the revelations of
the renegade Papist a stimulus to their curiosity which
no other species of theological incentive can supply.
Let his past lite have been as suspicious as it may, the
single merit of conversion supersedes the necessity of
inquiry. Such a man is selected, above all others, to
preside over the education of the young and pure,
and to teach a religion, his belief of which
is taken on trust. Titus it comes through the
singular want of judgment and less singular, but more
deplorable, itching for novelty of our pre-eminently,
Protestant leaders, that the defence of the doctrines of
the Reformation has been for a moment identified with
the career of a private person who has, at any rate, the
nsisfortane to be the object of very numerous accusa-
tions. These things the supporters of Dr. Achilli have
brought upon themselves, and, if they have wounded the
Church of Rome, the sword has passed through their
own sides. There is but one party who can gain by
such a course, those whom Dr. Achilli calls the " nega-
tive" party, to whom Protestant and Catholic are both
alike, to whom religion is mere priestcraft, its ministers
hypocrites, and its ceremonies mummeries. Such per-
s°",see these things and smile, for they know from this
unchristian conflict both parties must arise weakened
and discredited, and that the only gainer from such a
struggle will be' not the Protestant prosecutor nor the
Roman Catholic accuser. but the infidel who sneers and
the blasphemer who scoffs at them both.

(From the Daily Ames)
The Achilli case is over. The huge scandal that has
crowded tie newspapers, and has been the topic of so
many discussions
--
is—so far as the Queen's Bench and
its reports are ceabornedconcluded. Never since this
journal was
established have the details of such a trial
totted record in its columns, and—acting upon the rule
kid down for the exclusion of such details as that of the
Newman libel—never would such a case have been re-
ported by us, had it not presented an aspect very differ-
ent from those which characterise trials revealing mere
gross but ordinary criminality. In the present case,
however, no rule of exclusion could be permitted to
operate—since it was impossible to separate the charges
against Dr. Achilli from the animus of those who pro-
moted them. The case has been, in truth, a priestly
quarrel, fought out in a legal court, with debauchery
for the charge, and oath against oath in the investiga-
tion. It has not been the mere case of a criminal upon
trial. The women who came forward at the instance of
Dr. Newman, as witnesses to declare that the ex-
Dominican priest had polluted them, were not in court
to ask justice against the alleged debauchee. It was
not an investigation of the damage done to the
Cephalonian by criminal conversation with his wife; nor
was it an inquiry into the fitness or unfitness of Dr.
Achilli as a member of the Church under the shadow of
which he is accused of committing so many sins. The
case had a wider scope altogether, and involved a variety
of interests that rendered it imperative upon every
journalist to give each fact brought forward in evidence,
and every argument both for and against the accused.
In short, the case was one between two rival Churches
—the Church of St. Peter and the Church that had its
foundation, at the Reformation. It was a strife between
the priesthood of Rome and the Evangelical Alliance—
between a seceder from Popery and the most active
agents of the Pope. The Papist slandered the Protes-
taut, and this disgusting trial has been the result. As
the trial has proceeded, the interest in the public mind
nas grown from day to day, until it has spread—with the
reports of the investigation —to every oorner of
the land. When the case was first opened, the
statements of the witnesses were so decided,
so circumstantial, and so numerous, that the
feeling ran strongly against Achilli—any second thought
upon the subject being one of astonishment at the amount
of systematic perjury committed, if the various allega-
tions against him were untrue. When the case of
Achilli was opened, upon the cross-examination of the
several witnesses, and subsequently by the examination
of the ex-Dominican himself; that astonishment was not
diminished, however much the balance of belief might
have inclined in his favour. Indeed, long before the seve-
ral advocates had fulfilled their duty, it was perfectly
clear that, on ore side or the other, there was an amoui.t

of perjury positively terrible to contemplate. And when
the balance 'of evidence turned against the Romanists,
an additional and overshadowing horror arose at the
idedof what ramifications the perjury seemed to pass
through—of, what men in high places in the Church of
Rome might be implicated in the crime—and with what
deliberate pertinacity the whole web of untruth had
Been whven, until it seemed strong enough to entangle
and defile, if_ not destroy, any reputation, however
pure, against which it might b 3 turned. Many points
of the trial and of the evidence provoke especial criti-
cism. Sir A. Cockburn warned the jury to be on their
guard against the unconscious bias of any Protestant
prejudices. This was' an allowable enough oratorical
flourish—a hint that Dr. Newman and his witnesses
might not meet with absolute fair play at the hands of
professors 'of an alien creed. But, on the other hand,
it might be urged that the Italian witnesses really were
liable to suspicion on account of the manner in which
they had been ferretted out and brought together. Dr.
Newman sent over emissaries to Italy, who applied to
dignitaries of the Romish Church and inquisitors to aid
them in collecting' witnesses to defend their champion,
Dr. Neiman, and ditqkhle their antagonist, Dr. Achilli
—by blaclenit,g his character. This aid was willingly
lent. • Many Italians were naturally disposed to htip
their priests against one whom they deemed an apos-
tit(/' la additton, to refuse to beer evidence aguiust

Achilli might, at this moment, expose any Italian
to a charge of favoeriog 'duo Lettlr, it was naturally
enough stated by Mealiest. Giustini or Vallenti that when
first ilitsrregatect by her curate as to whether she could
tell anything agaiest Dr. Achilli, she inquired whether
it would be " for her own good?" end was assured it
was "tor the honour of the holy Church," " for the
honour of God." Undue influence it is clear could be
brought to bear on the Italian witnesses; undue influence, j
it Vallenti can be believed, was brought to bear on at
least
.one of them. These proceedings cannot exactly be
called unprecedented in an English court of justice. The
charges brought against Dr. Achilli, and the means re-
sorted to for obtaining witnesses in support of them, re-
mind one of the trial of Queen Caroline, and the green-
bag commission of Milan. The charges were spread over
twenty-six years of Dr. Achilles life; he was called upon
to rebut charges of iecontinence with persons not named,
in places and at times not specified. It was a terrible ordeal
to undergo which no man unsupported by conscious inno-
cence, and even io that ease no man not possessed of more
than average couraee, could have braved. The parallel
with the case to which we have compered Dr. Achilles
is the stronger frees the entire breaking down of the
evidence so unscrupulously
brought together. We hare
no space to examine the whole of that evidence in detail,
bat, telting it in groups or classes, its weakness, its ir-
relevance, can easily be indicated. There was a Cadaoic
priest adduced to prove the general bad character of
Achilli, and some documentary evidence was offered in
support of his testimony: there were witnesses brought
forward to prove specific
the lonian Islands; there Were witnesses produced to
prove offences in England. sow
offences in Italy,
~ ith regard to the first,
the priest stated that at the time to which he referred he
Malta, and
was a boy of from ten to thirteen years of age. Among
all the priests and monks of Viterbo, was there none
who was then of mature years to spzak from actual obser-
vation to what the younker spoke of from hearsay?
He declared that Achilli had a bad character
at Viterbo, but admitted that he did not know why.
Of the ex parte memorandum of a policeman offered
as a substitute for records i
a.leged to have been de-
stroyed in the revolution, it is unnecessary to speak, for
it was not received. But Mr. Harting, a solicitor, pro-
ducsd " an official copy of the judgment of that court
(the Inquisition) on Dr. Achilli." This " judgment,"
when examined, turns out to be merely the declaration
of a notary that he had examined the " acts" in the case
of Achilli, and that it appears from them that he bad
confessed him;elf guilty of incontinence with various
women; and that for these es
°eences and "others re-
corded in the acts," he had submitted himself to the
censure and punishment of the court, and bad been sus-
pended from the exercise of all Priestly functions. The
so-called " judgment" is, in fact, at hest, a garbled ex-
tract from the writings in the cue of Achim preserved
in the archives of the Inquisition, When it is remem-
bered that in the proceedings of that court the prisoner
is not confronted with the witnesses aeainst him,—is
examined in private,—is tortured with interrogations
and his answers recorded by the Inquisitors in
their own words,—even a fun and certified copy
of the whole written
proce°dings and the judg-
ment pronounced would be very equivocal testimony;
but extracts of isolated sentences apart from the
context, that might have thrown a different light on
them, interspersed with the remarks of the extractor, are
utterly worthless. They may be Perverted by the mis-
takes of the excerptor, even on the that he
assumption
made them in perfect good faith.
As for the females
who swore to Achilli a misconduct with them, Mme.
Vallenti, for a woman in her rank of life, snowed a
most suspicious familiarity with the etiquette of the con-
fessional. To one confessor she merely said she bad
sinned with an ecclesiastic, witlaput mentioning his name,
because that is not customary; to
another she named
Achilli lest be should suspect other and innocent persons.
The instruction of a more instructed, war ,
y and expe-
rienced mind is here palpable. The other female, and
her mother, swore that the father and mother had
accosted Achilli while making one of
a procession, which
they would not have been allowed to d The daughter,
by way of making her story more patheei,e,
said her tether
l
had died of grief on account of her seductionbut of
this the mother knew nothing! The,o
witnesses—, one of
whom was exhorted to give her evidence " for the ho-
nour of the Church," " for the honour of God," have
been living for weeks together, talking over the evidence
they were to give. Bat this is as nothing compared
with the utter failure of the charge too_
- -specting a tailor's
wife at Corfu. The tailor himself was brought to this
country, but made a precipitate retre4t, and refused to
return, when be knew that the Inspector-General of
Police in the lonian Islands was here. In lieu of him
was produced one witness, who swore that he had seen
from a distance a person of Achilles stature leave the
woman's door at night, and another of bad character
who swore that be had seen the husband seize Achilli,
though he confessed he had never seen Achilli before or
since, and consequently could not know him. It is
strong corroboration of Achilles truthfulness that he
frankly admitted the incident, the proof of which had
so signally failed, and produced the woman to allow of her
being cross-questioned. Of Mr. Reynolds, whospoke to an
alleged offence at Zante, it is enough to say that he is
hostile to Dr. Achilli, who rebuked him for intern-
perancee—that he admits he has varied in the reasons he
has at different times assigned for suspecting Achilli—
that in the witness-box be betrayed his state of mind
by assuming what he was afterwards obliged to admit
he did not know—and that there are contradictions
between his own evidence and that of his servant. As
to the witnesses brought forward to prove criminality
in England, their characters, as described by themselves,
would be enough to deprive them of credit. And all
of them admitted that they had been silent in cir-
cumstances when it is scarcely credible they could
have abstained from making the charges now pre-
ferred—and all of them speak under the influence of
anger. These and all other points of the case were
doubtless fully considered by the jury who—after the
three days' investigation had closed—deliberated amongst
themselves for between two and three hours before
giving their verdict in favour of Dr. Acbilli. And what
does that verdict do? It shows to the fullest extent
that Father Newman did indeed slide from the altitude
of Christian faith to the depths of unworthy slander.
It shows that his zeal for his new faith tempted him to
leave logic, and argument, and learning—the proper
weapons for his use—to take up a series of unworthy
and slanderous allegations ready at hand in the pages of
a Romish review, in which they had been placed by an
anonymous but scarcely
eunknown writer. But the ver-
dict does more. It confirms the dark suspicions that
began to accumulate when the Italian women came,
one after another, into
the witness-box to swear
away the reputation of Acbilli. Indeed, imagi-
nation is positively fatigued in the attempt
to follow out those ramifications of criminality
suggested by the idea that the whole case against Achilli
must be one vast conspiracy_defeated in an English
court of justice, but having its organization over half
Italy. Wholesale perjury has, it is clear, been corn-
mated. What share a —4h
‘. the original author of the
slanders in the concoction of this case for their defence;
what share had Father Newman in the procuring of
thesewitnesses, whose evidence has been upset; whatshare
had the Romish priestly
organization in Italy in the build-
ing up of the caos thrown into the dust by the verdict
of last night? All these as,
uestions thousands will
now ask, and there is little doubt but the general answer
wi vol e
d. oM ne lieanwhilettle favourable to any of the reputations
inve
we may fairly pride ourselves
upon the full investigation that the case has met in our
open court—so unlike the
se r
sition before which Dr. A _ et tribunal of the Inqui-
, ...
t '''unlill had formerly o stand.

_.........—.
NAVAL IN rr .
c,-,, ,LLIGENCE.
PORTSMOUTH, JUNE 444---The Edinburgb, 56, screw
gunnery ship, Captain Howlett (acting), having had a
returned to S . b d this morn•
pit ea
ing, and into harbour to cora 1
Piete her outfit this evening.
On her cruise she proceeded as far as the Land's•end,
good trial cruise at sea,
goicg down under sail, and returning under steam. She
has in this proved herself a good
seaboat, both under
steam and sail, and is reported
desired in a ship of her character. In beating down
Channel she is reported to have
seagoing
worked well and steered
easy; and when under steam, to us all that could be
have averaged a speed
of between eight and nine knots er hour. When out
her crew were well exercised at thee great gun drill, firing
at an unmoored target, sailins.
gtlnnery ship is reported of
most satisfactorily.
The Grampus, 50, advanced
heex
Lp experiment rviemj ey nntai,l
al li g
frigate, has been taken
to her moorings to day. .. z'ound it, 86c. Altogether
to-day, with stores for
Rear-Admiral Corry's squadron,
, at Queenstown.
The Boat Brigade
of
the
' Qrtstnouth Dockyard Bat-
talion has been exercised last
thisT
night and the previous
night outside the harbour's mouth in firing blank cart-
ridge from their bow 2 ns
—ti --' utider the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Davis (master attendant of the Royal
Clarence Victualling Establishmee,,
v and they acquitted
•
themselves of their several duties with much satisfaction
to their officers. Last night Captain W. A. A. Hemil-
ton, second secretary
.to the Ad
--aairaltv, accompanied
Colonel Davis in his gig to see the evolutions of the bri-
gaPLde, Y
MOUTH, with which he expressed himself
much pleased.
' rHURSDAY:—The Black Eagle Admi-
t' • --acht with Sir Baldwin Walker,
ralty b earn I '
of the Navy, Mr. Stafford, Secretary to the Admiralty,
and Mr. Grant, arrived from Portsmoh on Tuesday.
The crew of her Majesty's steamut -vessel BuzzArd.
Commander Debbie, were paid advance on Tuesday, and
she sailed yesterday for the West India
and North Ame-
rican station. _

The friga24,
Trincomalee, 1,,,,, commissioned yes-
terday by Captain Wallace Houston) with a complement
of 210 men.
The ---
,alee,
;ndlilgarnht:nr sHaialrsdwicke,to-day, with 16 caulkers, to
work on the Windsor Castle, at P3mbroke.
The 'tortoise
East
from Bombay, w"
off the port last evening, bound toh ,
p v.aintlel.
The Sprightly, s.team-tender, arrived here to-daY
from Portsmouth, with supernumeraries. She sighted
the Hieflyer, Dauntless, A!rogunt, and Encounter,
steainiug westward, thirty miles euAt of Start Point.
They are ordered to call at this port on their way down
Channel. -

---
A mooting of influential electors of Marylebone
took place on Wednesday evening, at the Marylebone Court-
house, Mr. A. Daniell in the chair, when a committee Was
appointed to carry out the necessary arrangements for se-
curing the re-election of Sir Benjamin Hall, Bart., and Lord
Dudley Stuart, and it was unanimously deter
mined to return
the Hon. Baronet and the Noble Lord free of expense. The
Chairman stated that such a proceeding had been adopted in
the case of Sir Francis Burdett in 1807, and it was a reflec-
tion on the constituencies that such a principle had been
allowed to lie dormant for forty years.

A DELICATE SURPRISE.—A lady whose notions of
propriety would not permit her to visit the theatre to sea
Lola Montes on the stage, determined, nevertheless, to gratify
her curiosity. The danseuse lodged at the hotel where the
lady boarded, and when Lola returned from the theatre, the
peeped in through
latter walked softly to the door and the
crack. There, to be sure, was the lioness, seated at the
table to a cozy supper, her companion being the peeping
lady's °Wu husband.•-. Boston Gazette.