The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-21 00:00:00

can pretend that any effect akin to this is produced by the
perusal of a criminal or sensation novel.
An:old historian, describing the career of a nation now
extinct, observes quaintly that it was invigorated by cold,
and enervated by warm baths. He meant to utter an im-
portant truth, which his language, however, scarcely em-
bodies ; he meant to say that, in the vigorous period of a
nation's progress, it loves what strengthens it, and that
afterwards, when it has become effeminate, it delights in
what augments its effeminacy. It is the same with litera-
ture; books do not create the virtue or the vice by which
society is braced or relaxed at different periods of its pro-
gress; they are merely an indication of the principles by
which internally the mass of the population are actuated in
different stages of civilisation. The criminal novelist pro-
vides the mental fare which the taste of his times can alone
digest. He does not create the appetite for the highly-
flavoured viands to which his art gives birth, he only ac-
commodates his cookery to the palates of his guests. In
doiig this, he knows it is needless to attempt the c;rcum-
scription of his sallies within the limits of probability or
even of possibility. No matter what nature determines,
provided the criminal novelist decides otherwise. He has
taken accurately the dimensions of hie readers, who, as ex-
peritnce has taught him, seek for nothing beyond the stir-
ring of their blood, by incessantly awakening their curiosity,
by suggesting certain associations, by inflaming the fancy,
by stimulating prohibited desires, by steeping the imagina-
tion in the temporary Lethe of voluptuousness.

MR• JUSTICE MEE.

(From the Saturday Review.)

Appointments to the Bench of late years have
been so uniformly good that the selection of the
right man to fill a vacant judgeship is not often sup-
posed to call for any special commendation. We
take it for granted that the great prizes of
the Bar will be given to those who have fairly won
them by their character and success as advocates,
and it is very rarely that the expectation is disap-
pointed. The appointment passes as a matter of
course, as something almost inevitable, and no one
imagines that there is any occasion to congratulate
the Government on the conscientious performance
of a duty which it would be disgraceful to neglect.
But the selection of Sergeant Shee to fill the post
left vacant by the sudden death of Justice Wight-
man is something more than the choice of the advo-
cate who, by common consent, had the first claim
to the promotion. A judicial appointment
which has won the cordial appoval of the
profession stands in need of no apology
or commendation ; but the first occasion on
which a Roman Catholic lawyer has been ad-
mitted, in England, to the position which the Ca-
tholic Emancipation Act opened to the members of
his Church is too important as a precedent, and too
significant as a triumph of the principle of tolera-
tion, to be passed over in silence. If experience had
not taught us how much bigotry can remain in the
hearts of those who are readiest with the cant of
civil and religious liberty, it might well have
seemed impossible that the special form of Chris.
tianity held by an honourable and distinguished
advocate should be supposed to detract from his
fitness for the judicial Bench. Argument in
support of such an objection there could be
none, for even Exeter Halt would not venture
to insinuate against Mr. Justice Shea the kind
of suggestion which it thought becoming in
the case of the unfortunate Mr. Turnbull. But
argument is not necessary to sustain bigotry,
and there are no donut some who would have
rejoiced the more at the continued exclusion of
Mr. Sergeant Shee from the Bench because it
would have been impossible to attribute it to any
other motive than religious prejudice. It is only
by slow degrees and painful effort that a nation
ever really acquires the spirit of toleration ; but a
step once gained in England is gained for ever, and
Lord Westbury's disregard of the fanatical objec-
tions to the appointment of a Roman Catholic judge
will give fresh force to a lesson which, with all our
boasting, Englishmen are slow to learn.
It is no doubt a natural instinct of the human
mind to deprive those who differ from us in religion
of pecuniary emolument and professional distinc-
tion, and, as a means of enforcing uniformity of
sentiment, the method, if only carried out far
enough, is extremely efficacious. If those who ob-
jected (and it appears there were some such) to the
recent appointment had professed to be moved by a
sincere desire to convert the learned sergeant to ti.e
Church of England—or, failing that, to make his
position as a member of his own Church as 11111C0121-
fertable as possible—there would have been a logt-
cal, it no other, argument in favour of their prin-
ciple of persecution. But the awkward position of
our English bigots is that they profess not to be-
lieve in persecution, and, at any rate, do not venture
on the bold pretensions which (granting their own
assumption of infallibility) were really unanswer-
able when put forth by the persecutors of the middle
ages. The modern fry of petty persecutors dare
not take the only ground on which their practice
can be justified. They would exclude an adherent
of a different faith from the Bench, not with any
hope of correcting or even punishing his theological
errors, but on the pretence, which they do not them-
selves believe, that'a Rom:Ai:Catholic judge cannot
be trusted to do justice in a Protestant country.
Such a theory is not only peculiarly inapplicable
in the case to which it has been sought to apply it,
but it is contradicted by all experience, and openly
flouted by our own practice in Ireland and else-
where. It is quite clear that, whatever mischief a
judge who reverences the Pope may be supposed
capable of doing in England, where the Roman
Catholics are few in number, and as a
rule, high in station and loyal and tem-
perate in the political feelings, would be infi-
nitely aggravated in a country where the influence
of theßowan Catholic priesthood is exercised chiefly
over the lower clesses, and hr.s certainly, in times
within our memory, been associated with move-
ments not conspicuous either for loyalty or legality.
And yet in Ireland, where Ribbon Societies have to
be put down, and the VACS of justice to be held
equally between Orange and Papal ruffians, it is
the practice to rely upon the uprightness and pro-
fessional honour of a itoman Catholic Bench, and it
is not pretended that the trust is ever betrayed. The
hottest zealot of Exeter Hall would scarcely have
fancied that he saw in the career of Sergeant Shee
any trace of fanatical blindness to the demands of
justice in a case where the interests of a co-reli-
gionist might be concerned ; but the objection, if it
nad taken a formal shape, would no doubt have
been that it was bad to make a precedent which,
though safe foe once, might be fraught with infinite
danger on future occasions. The assumption of the
influence of religious bias over the minds of laymen
is made much more freely than experience warrants,
and if there is any class of men to whom it is more
than usually absurd to attribute a weakness of this
kind, it is the class of successful lawyers from among
whom the Bench is recruited. The whole training
and habits of thought of a practising barrister are
one course of correction for tendencies of this de-
scription. A lawyer is as much open to intellectual
bias as any man in the world, but he scarcely knows
how to import into his forensic or judicial duties the
p .rticular feelings and opinions which he may en-
tertain on politics or religion. The old lawyer who,
when asked whether he was a Whig or a Tory,
replied that he was a special pleader, is often referred
to in a sense by no means complimentary to the
sincerity of the profession ; but there is another
sense in which it is perfectly true that a judge, how-
ever warm may be his political feelings or
his religious faith, is of no politics and no reli-
gion when he sits upon the Bench. Very few
men have ever acquired a position at the Bar
which entitled them to aspire to judicial office
without having learned to lay aside their own per-
sonal feelings entirely when once they were engaged
in forensic business, and only the narrowest of all
bigotry would say that this gift of impartiality is
enjoyed exclusively by the members of the Estab-
lished Church. The truth is that the murmurs—if
murmurs there were—at one of the best appoint-
ments that could have been made, were but the echo
of the old intolerance which lurks in some coiner
of the hearts of most of us. There will be a long
battle yet before this or any other country will be
fairly quit of the devil of persecution, and no blow
struck in the cause of toleration ought to pass with-
out recognition. In this cenee the appointment of
Mr. Justice Shee deserves an acknowledgment be-
yond what is ordinarily accorded to the selection of
the fittest man for a post of high honour and re-
sponsibility.

(Front he Spectator.)
Lord Palmerston has filled up the vacancy on the
Bench caused by the decease of Mr. Justice Wight-
t
man by the appointment of Sergeant She-,
au ac
of justice the more acceptable because it ca.rries the
loyn, g period has. been
principle of religious toleration for °IWO into sub-
btantial practice. The law throw all pFsts, except
the woolsack, open to Catholics thirty-syx years a3o,
but no Catholic in alt that
but would
.not allow the
raised to the English bench. lho secret feeling in
the middle class tits been that of Cromwell, who
and Majesty's imme-
diate tolerated all opinions,
mass," and statesmen who. know that Judges of ever -
conceivable creed have still done honest justice have
no better man
bent to the ignorant clamour. It is time that a rule
which proscribes one-fit(h of her
system. Mr. Sergeant Shoe
with whom
csanataie cillsa
have
eere selected swept
n
sdti,,anteLord Palmer.
to commence a fairer
is a
thorough
lawyer, and
andwill,
we believe, by his
is not an Ultramontane
do much to remove 37 conduct on the bench,
do popular prejudice.

-____

(From (/w Lo;;doit Review.)
The recent appointment to the vacant judgeship
has received the warm approval of the Blr. By
his geniu and chlracter Mr. Justice Sheo has 10:1;
tnoVrTed the priz?. To have refused it him any