The Sun.
London, England, 1839-08-12 00:00:00

CASE OF BOLAM.

In passing sentence upon Bolam for manslaughter
Mr. Baron Maule remarked to the prisoner—" You
have been fortunate in the Jury by which you have
been tried." This, however, was but a part of his
good fortune, for he was fortunate also in having been
tried by the same Judge who directed the acquittal of
Sir John.Millbank. Indeed, when we read Mr. Baron
Maule's Charge to the Jury, it seemed to us that the
Learned Judge had forgotten that prisoners have
now the benefit of an advocate's ingenuity and zeal
in their defence, and that the Judge bad no longer
to imagine that he had to perfo-m the part of counsel
for the prisoner. On comparing the speech of Mr.
Dundas, Bolam's advocate, with the charge of Mr.
Baron Maule, the latter appears like a stronger speech
on the same side.

The fireman, Appleton, stated in evidence—

" I went round to the front of the Arcade. The
engine was pla)ing in at the windows in Manor-
street. In the Arcade, I saw a man named Wardle,
who is since dead. He had the branch pipe belong-
to the Newcastle Office fire-engine. He was di-

recting the pipes towards the safes is the
waiting-room. I requested him to play on the door
leading into the front room From the waiting-room. I
went up to the door, and pushed it open a little way,
and it forced itself back. It • repelled back.' I tried
it three times, and it came back the same way. After a
little, I put my foot against it to force it open. One
of the panels came down on my shoulder and the door
opened easily."
Upon this the Judge obsers:es—
" According to Appleton s account, the partition
door was difficult to open. It is difficult to say what
inference is sought to be drawn from that fact, and
probably the fact itself may be imputed rather to the
imagination of Appleton, and the tendency of the mind,
already referred to, to supply some little circumstance
to make it suit a particular rind."
The inference to be drawn from the fact is obvious
enough to every mind but the Judge's. The inference
is, that Bolarn (for it could have been no other person)
was behind the door resisting the entrance of Apple-
ton, to gain a moment's time for the preparation of ap-
pearance.

As to Mr. Baron Maule's remark, that Appleton's
feeling the door forced back against him might have
been imagination, the sama easy and arbitrary supposi-
tion may apply to all evidences of the senses whatever.
While evidence against the prisoner is disposed of in
this off-hand way, mark the large and strained allow-
ances for Bolam's contradictions
•' It would seem that the murdered man, after having
received some of the wounds which caused his death,
bad endeavoured to get out of the door, and that the
poker was the instrument by which the murder was
committed. The prisoner states lie opened the door
with his own key and let himself in, and probably, if
MiLies key was then en the inside, he could not have
done so—but this he may have said under a mis-recol-
ection, confounding his actual conduct that evening

with what was his usual practice when Millie was not
there."
The probability was, in Mr. Baron Maule's opinion,
that Bolam could not have opened the drve...--;:s:n
his key, if Millie's key was then in -.....;;(je. Why, how
could he possibly have Gone so? What question of
probabilitY e1_5.7.1.:1 there be upon such a point ? While
on" tey is in a lock another cannot be turned in the
wards, and the conjecture is most unreasonable that
Bolam could have forgotten the difficulty of opening
the door, and confounded an extraordinary circumstance,
in so cventful a night, with the usual course of things.
Finally, Mr. Baron Manic
" Left it to the jury to say whether they were satis-
fied that Millie came by his death through the means
stated in the indictment, and whether those injuries had
been inflicted by the hand of the prisoner. If they
were not, or if looking at the whole matter they thought
the facts proved were not sufficient to convince them
one way or the other, they would acquit him. If they
thought that the act was done by the prisoner, but done
in the cause of a sudden unpremeditated quarrel in
which blows had been given on both sides, and that in
the course of a scuffle so arising the deadly weapon had
been used, it would be open to them to find a verdict of
manslaughter."
Here was the suggestion of the verdict which the
Jury found—a verdict unsupported by a particle of
evidence—upon which afterwards Mr. Baron Manic
ob ;erved—

" The jury, in taking that view of the case, have
come, I think, to a most mitigated and mild conclusion,
on the conviction that they must have entertained that
you had caused the death of Joseph Millie. They
must have thought that you did this act under some
sudden excitement in the course of some sudden quar-
rel which had arisen betweon you. You say you are
innocent. I cannot act on that declaration, hut upon
the verdict of the jury, from which I cannot say I dis-
sent. They have fonnd you guilty. of manslaughter,
and if that alternative bad not been presented to them
their verdict probably would have been wilful murder.
You have been fortunate in the jury by which you have
been tried, who, convinced that you were concerned in
this man's death, have been able to take this view of
your conduct."

The Judge, while he approves of this verdict, thus
admits that it is not the verdict which might have been
given according to the evidence. Had there not been
the alternative of manslaughter, he says the Jury
would probably have found wilful murder. They
had thus, in the Judge's opinion, sufficient evi.
dente for a verdict of wilful murder—or the evi-
dence was stronger for a verdict of murder than for a
verdict of acquittal ; but, haring the choice of another
verdict, involving a lighter degree of punishment, the
Jury preferred it as a compromise. The verdict is not,.
then, founded on any belief of the special circumstances
which would justify it, but is taken as a mean between
the fear of subjecting an innocent man to the punish-
ment of death and the fear of letting an assassin escape.
In such a mean truth and justice have obviously no
place. The prisoner was entitled to an acquittal if the
evidence failed, or truth and justice required his con-
viction if the evidence were sufficient. The mitigated
conclusion upon which Mr. Baron Maule complimented
the Jury is not within their province. Their business is
with facts. The powers of mitigation and mercy are
vested in another quarter.
The practice upon which we are commenting, of find-
ing a milder verdict in cases of doubt as to guilt, owes
its origin to the severities of the law, and the current
stories of Juries which have acquitted prisoners of sheep-
stealing, but declared them guilty of robbing hen-roosts.
and other such pleasantries, are the exaggerated illus-
trations of the error.

It is to be observed that Mr. Baron Maule's charge
was a charge for an acquittal, discrediting all the cir-
cumstantial evidence tending to the conclusion that
Bolam killed Millie. How then, consistently with this
charge, does he approve of the verdict of manslaughter,
and sentence the prisoner to the full punishment ?
The effect of the charge was this, there is no good
evidence to go upon against the prisoner, but if you will
?onvict him without sufficient evidence, convict him of
manslaughter withont any evidence whatever, rather
than of murder upon slight evidence.
_ _

But, after this charge and the precedent of this ye:-
dct, the question is, what is murder ?
If a man be crafty enough not to discover the malice
which he has conceived against another, it appears that
he may kill without incurring the penalty of murder.
To kill impromptu, it seems, is not murder in the
eye of the law—at least not in that eye of the law which
is set in the head of Mr. Baron Maule. Yet upon this
point there is some doubt. Merchant, for example, was
hung for the murder of the girl Paynton, though they
had been apparently as good friends as Bolam and
Millie up to a p,eriod but an hour before the.murder.
Greenacre was on amicable terms with his victim up
to a short time before the crime, and he in vain pleaded
the sudden quarrel and the unlucky blow.
Why, then, is so much to be supposed in one case
and not in others ?
The lesson to be drawn from Mr. Baron Maule's
charge, by persons disposed to be assassins, is, that
when they conceive deadly malice against any one, all
that they have to do to avoid hanging is not to dis-
cover their and to keep up appearances of
friendship till the opportunity occurs of taking the life
—upon which event, unaccountable because of such
show of amity, all appearances will be most favourably
construed, and, in the worst turn of things, manslaugh-
ter the sentence, and transportation the penalty.
In the case of Bolam the fact has not been at all ad-
verted to, that, if he was guilty of manslaughter, he was
guilty of the arson also.—Examiner.