The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-29 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, OCl'. 29, 1863.

Among the most urgently required of all legal
reforms in this country is the creation of the office,
and the selection of a fit and proper person to fill
that office, of—A Public Prosecutor. Sooner or later
—probably later, though Heaven grant it may be
sooner, than the majority of us anticipate—England
will, for certain, number that Great Law Officer of
the Crown and of the People among her public
functionaries. In the meantime, until the date of
his summons into official existence—he has his re-
presentative, and no undistinguished representative,
in a volunteer substitute, ever vigilant in the detec-
tion of wrongs, ever prepared to plead for the weak
against the powerful, with a voice we have all of us
long since come to recognise as familiar, a voice
strangely penitrant in its accents, uttering words of a
-eery singular though of a very simple eloquence, and
this, moreover, from the most conspicuous tribune
(in this land sacred to free speech, to free writing,
and to free printing) outside the walls of Parlia-
ment. The Great Tribune or Rostrum we refer to is,
as every man of common sense and observation will
at once have recognised, the Times Newspaper. And
the Volunteer Public Prosecutor who speaks from
that rostrum, who pleads from that tribune, at uncer-
tain intervals, never but when there is some very sad
or most serious occasion for his so doing—who does
not know him ? whether by his nom de plume, or
by his mere initials, chiefly by the latter, simply
as J. otherwise 0., ot •
se JACOB OMNIUM. A SAUL
amongst publicists, towering above them by a head
and shoulders. Never wielding his formidable
scourge save upon the backs of wrong doers pos-
sessing power,
and using that power cruelly. The
very snap of his .rhetorical thong,to speak, we
seem to recognise even at its first ; so
stroke—that very
first stroke, as it were, invariably drawing blood.
BOAN ERGEs, in his way, With
a voice of thunder,
this Volunteer as a Public Prosecutor is the
very
antithesis, the exact antipodes to pougut ea
Iv'y
IV-
VILLE, of terrible memory. Pitiless against any
and
every physical wrongdoer whom he may have
singled
out for Prosecution thus before the Tribunal of
Publics Opinion, his selection of the individual to
be prosecuted has hitherto been what TINVILLE'S
never was—just ! His selection is just, but it is
far more than that, it is generous. It is just as a
means, as the most effectual means, for bringing any
more than usually henions offender to retribution_
and it is generous as the securist and the readiest
means whereby to vindicate the reputation and re-
habilitate, wherever that might yet be possible, the
broken and ruined fortunes of the victims of
the wrong done, namely, by the pillorying thus of
the doer of that wrong in the sight and hearing, to
the scorn and horror, of all thoughtful men.

Although JACOB OMNIUM has chosen now—for
Some reason that we care not at this moment
even to conjecture—to plead for the weak
Il'ghirist the strong, from a less conspicuous and ele-
vated
position tban that from which the public
at large has been for years past in the habit of
lir'tcnin't to his voice, of t'
his incisive logic,
NC.lng the keeness of
f and of following first of all to be
borne away
'h!lrwards upon its rushing current
the sweep or
.:eepersuasive and overwhelming
argutnents—b,
rwments,
whent
he sever, even at his happiest
nation throw the " been addressing the
columns of the :limes, he h:ts never once
yet
more signal advalite„appeared to greater or
e
now, at this present motnut?nf Ul4ll ha appears
„ .._ho'w" ethe writer of the
Iv
11,11bileeilurt-Martial " in
tphnew
pagespaper
ot,
t hoen
nt
eh
we
'\
:her of the
as taken up
CornAill Marja;:ifie fo: December lino
the cudgels this time—for his blowsri:u ow
witha moree-
deadening effect than even from h
weighted and triple-knotted scourge of iron as
the terrible, though gentle-hearted vindicator o;
the memory of poor Sergeant-Mpjor TALLEY, late
of the 6th Dr3g09115---98 the dispassionate
champion of the ignored and seat t::..rod rigats of
raptain Sm44E6, altlo (though aot by dying, by being