The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—As the inquiryby the House of Lords into
the case of Mr. Edmunds approaches its conclusion we
begin to gain a little more insight into the true na-
ture and bearing of the transactions on which the
Committee will have to report. We do not by any
means know all of which we expect to be informed,
but we extracted a day or two ago from a Scotch
contemporary an amount of matter, certified to be
authentic, which must have been read with very
lively interest. We know now a little more of the
real nature of the charges against Mr. Edmunds,
and a great deal more of the grounds on which the
name of Lord Brougham has been mixed up with
these transactions. The general effect is by no
means favourable to Mr. Edmunds or Mr. William
Brougham, and shows that these gentlemen at least
have had a great deal to explain away before they
could expect to convince the committee of their in-
nocence. We cannot doubt, from the respectable
testimony by which they are supported, that these
statements are correct, and we shall proceed to lay
them before our readers, with such comments as are
necessary to explain them, and such additions as our
own information may enable us to make. The case
undoubtedly which is most interesting to the public
is not directly affected by these revelations. The
Lord Chancellor has been examined before the
committee, but we are in no condition to add any-
thing to what is already known concerning his con-
duct, except indeed that the charges against him
may be thought to be strengthened or weakened in
proportion as the personal character of Mr. Edmunds
is raised or lowered by the results of the investiga-
tion. It looks as if a considerable part of the contro-
versy would resolve itself into the question whether
Mr. Edmunds was to be believed in his statement
that the Lord Chancellor had held out to him the
prospect of a pension as an inducement to resign.
'There is also another way in which the investiga-
tion into the character of Mr. Edmunds may bear
on the case of the Lord Chancellor. The Lord
Chancellor -was charged in the House of Lords
with having oppressed an innocent man, and driven
him unjustly from the public service, and this
accusation will gain or lose force according as the
character of Mr. Edmunds rises or falls in the esti-
mation of his judges. The charges against Mr.
Edmunds are many and intricate. The first occa-
sion on which he appears to have incurred censure
does not point to pecuniary corruption. An inquiry
was made by two Queen's Counsel, who were ap-
pointed by the Commissioners of Patents to investi-
gate certain irregularities in the Patent-office. Their
first Report stated that for a long time Mr. Ed-
munds's attendance had been little more than nomi-
nal. In 1863, however, a clerk had been detected in
peculation, and Mr. Edmunds had since attended
more frequently, but only to make matters worse.
He was intemperate in manner, and his conduct to
his subordinates was offensive, harsh, and unneces-
sarily severe. The Reporters would have recom-
mended his dismissal at once had they not hit upon
more serious matters. He and his chief clerk made
between £5OO and £6OO a year by appropriating to
themselves the discount on stamps allowed to sta-
tioners at the Stamp-office. The charge as to the
stamps was not denied, and was declared to be with-
out excuse,dishonest, and disgraceful. Then Mr. Ed-
munds had neglected to pay over money to the
amount of £2,681, which would never have been re-
covered but for this inquiry, and had appropriated
to his own use half of the sum designed to make
good the defalcations of the clerk. For these instances
of misconduct the investigators recommended that
Mr. Edmunds should be dismissed from his office.
His defence was very unsatisfactory. He considered
the appropriation of the discount on stamps as a com-
mon custom;. he had paid the money with the receipt
of which he was charged into an account at Coutt's,
called the Patent-office account; but then he appears
to have drawn money out of that account at pleasure,
so that the public gained nothing by this reservation.
Mr. Edmunds appears also to have neglected to pay
the clerk whom he employed ; the clerk was in the
habit of making false entries in order to pay him-
self, and continued the practice after he had become
Clerk of the Patents, with a salary of £4OO a
year, not without suspicions of connivance on
the part of Mr. Edmunds. These statements are
derived from official documents, the Reports. of
Commissioners, men of character and ability,
employed by the Lord Chancellor. There are
others, but these thus authenticated may well serve
as samples. If but a tithe of what is alleged against
him be true, Mr. Edmunds is not a person on whose
unsupported word we would receive a charge against
any human creature, much less against one of the
principal personages of the State. So far the Lord
Chancellor undoubtedly profits by the discovery of
so many and such gross deeds of misconduct ; but
if the crimination of Mr. Edmunds weakens the
case against him in one respect, it undoubtedly
strengthens it in another. This Mr. Edmunds is
the person to whom, on his own admission, the
Lord Chancellor, with culpable facility, permitted
the Committee of the House of Lords, who had no
official knowledge of his misconduct, to grant a pen-
sion which he in no degree deserved, and his right
to which he had distinctly forfeited. So much stands
admitted by the Lord Chancellor's statement ; but
he denies—and is entitled to full credit for the denial
until the contrary be proved by a witness more
credible than Mr. Edmunds—that the resignation of
that person was occasioned by any inducement he
had held out to him. In the meanwhile we now
learn more of that part of the story with which the
name of Lord Brougham is mixed up. The case has
no connexion, so far as we can see, with the offences
of Mr. Edmunds, except so far as the sort of plunder
to which he alleges himself to have been subjected
may account for his readiness to lay hands in his
turn on public property. The story, to which we
are able to add some circumstances, is briefly as
follows. In 1827 some land belonging to Lord
Brougham was mortgaged to the sisters of Mr. Ed-
munds for £5,000, in order to pay off a previous
mortgage executed by Lord Brougham in 1811. The
money is said not to have been for the benefit of
Lord Brougham, but for his brother James. In
1833 Lord Brougham appointed Mr. Edmunds to
be Clerk of Patents, with a salary of £4OO a year.
From that time forth till 1864 Mr. Edmunds paid
out of that salary £2OO a year to his sisters as inte-
rest due on the mortgage of £5,000, and £lOO to
Mr. William Brougham, who had taken the place
in the transaction of his deceased brother James.
Mr. William Brougham also owed Edmunds £1,200
formerly lent to him, part of which was made up
of the payment of the interest on the mortgage
from 1830 to 1834. In 1864, after Mr. Edmunds
had continued to pay this money for thirty years—
relying, we presume, on the fact that no payment
of interest could be traced except to Mr. Edmunds
himself, and that therefore the mortgage had become
extinguished by lapse of time—all knowledge of the
mortgage was denied. Mr. Edmunds, on the other
hand, claimed back between £9,000 and £lO,OOO,-
which he asserted was paid on behalf of the children
of John Brougham, and which had never found its
way to their hands. Lord Cranworth awarded the
£5,000 secured on the mortgage to Mr. Edmunds'
sisters, and the £1,200 to Mr. Edmunds himself,
but refused to give him back the £9,000 which he
claimed on.the ground that the trust had not been
fulfilled. Comment on these facts is almost super-
fluous. There seems every reason to believe that
by some one the office was sold to Mr. Edmunds
for the annual payments which he made, but it is
only just to say that the transaction is not brought
home to Lord Brougham. The public will wait with
much anxiety the result of these unpleasant dis-

closures, which probably form only a part of what
we have yet to learn, and will, we doubt not, with-
hold a final opinion until it sees the facts found after
the careful sifting of an impartial Committee.
POST.—It must occasionally happen, notwith-
standing the most equable temper on both sides, that
the members of the Judicial Bench and of the Bar
will come into collision, and that the one will
say something or do something without reflection
which will give offence to the other ; on the whole,
however we have reason to congratulate ourselves
on the harmony which subsists between the two
great bodies which are mainly instrumental in the
administration of justice. The Bench and the Bar
are both independent, and they ale equally alive to
the necessity of exhibiting mutual forbearance. The
former is recruited from the latter, and the judge
consequently never forgets that he has been a bar-
rister ; whilst, on the other hand, the barrister sees
upon the bench those who have been formerly his
companions, and with whom he has striven in gene-
rous conflictin the same arena. Under circumstances
such as these it is not surprising, therefore, that the
administration of justice should but seldom be dis-
turbed by unseemly squabbles between men who,
however different in
ayank, are equally gentlemen,
equally independent, and who are, or who have
been, members of the same liberal profession. The
Bench necessarily takes precedence of the Bar, it is
invested with a superior authority, and it may justly
claim from the latter a greater show of outward
respect than it is called upon to render in return.
But, on the other hand, it possesses comparatively
little power of enforcing that respect if it is denied.
To evince disrespect to a judge is termed contempt
of Court, and the law invests a judge with almost
arbitrary powers of punishing the delinquent who,
in his person, insults the majesty of justice. But
the very arbitrariness of the powers thus conferred
in itself conduces to their non-enforcement. A man
who has been trained to the study of the law, and
who has, by the talents and the ability manifested
in the discharge of his professional duties, raised
himself to the judicial bench, naturally shrinks
from consulting himself in his own cause, and it is
only in very extreme cases that judges venture to
exercise the powers granted to them in their own
defence. Notwithstanding, therefore, the authority
which they wield, the judges are, for all practical
purposes, compelled to rely on the courtesy and the
good feeling of the Bar to treat them with that
respect which is due to their high office. Nor is this
reliance misplaced. Our system of administering
the law may not be absolutely perfect, but we may
truthfully say that in no country in the world is
justice meted out with greater decorum. The perfect
independence which, as we have already remarked,
is enjoyed both by the Bench and the Bar makes
both equally interested in preserving and respecting
mutual rights. But occasionally it will happen that
the fallibility of human nature will disclose itself,
and that judgment will be overruled by the impulse
of the moment. An accident has, we regret to say,
just taken place at the Manchester assizes, which
proves that men moving in the highest sphere of
the Legal profession are not exempt from failings
which it might have been supposed a long experience
would have entirely cured. On Wednesday last
Mr. Justice Mellor was engaged in trying a cause
at Manchester, when, the defendant's case having
been opened, the plaintiff's counsel, Mr. Edward
James, asked the judge if he intended to proceed
any further with the hearing of the cause on that
day. It was then ten minutes to six o'clock. Mr.
Justice Mellor replied that as the assizes would ter-
minate on the following day, and as several causes
remained undisposed of, he would conclude the
case then before him the same evening. Mr. James,
who, by the way, holds the local rank of Attorney-
General, thereupon pressed upon his lordship that
he had been engaged the entire day, and therefore
prayed for an adjournment. The judge answered
that he had the same grounds for complaining of
fatigue as the learned counsel, but that, under the
circumstances he could not, consistently with his
duty, rise at that (for circuit) comparatively early
hour. Mr. James thereupon, after remarking that
his junior, Mr. Thomas Jones, was absent, rose and
left the court. By the departure of the Attorney-
General his client, the plaintiff, was necessarily left
unrepresented by counsel, and as soon as the de-
fen'lant's counsel had called his first witness no one
was present to cross-examine on the part of the
plaintiff. At this point Mr. Justice Mellor commented
strongly on the conduct of Mr. James in leaving
the court, and endeavouring, by so doing, to coerce
him into adjourning, and put it to the jury whether
they desired to proceed. The jury having expressed
their willingness to try out the cause, the judge per-
mitted the plaintiff's attorney to cross-examine the
defendant's witnesses, and .the trial proceeded. At
20 minutes to 7 o'clock Mr. Jones, the plaintiff's
junior counsel, came into court, and applied to the
judge for an adjournment, on the ground that,
having been absent during the preceding stages of
the trial, he was unable to cross-examine the defen-
dant's witnesses as effectively as he would otherwise
have been. To this application the judge refused to
accede, having already declined to entertain it when
made by Mr. James, and again took occasion to refer
to the want of courtesy which the latter gentleman
had manifested in leaving the court because he had
refused to adjourn. Mr. Jones then evinced his
readiness to remain in court whilst the trial lasted,
out of respect to his lordship, though he professed
himself, for the reasons he had assigned, unable to
conduct his client's case. Ultimately, however, the
notes of the evidence having been read by the learned
judge, Mr. Jones was enabled to discharge his duty
to his client with his customary ability, and the trial
was brought to a close the same evening. Now, we
think no diversity of opinion can exist respecting the
merits of this unfortunate incident. It is scarcely
necessary to remind the public that on circuit judges
are constantly obliged to sit until a late hour, in
order, within the limited tine allotted to them in
each assize town, to dispose of the muses which are
set down for trial. They take their seats on the bench
at 9 o'clock in the morning, and are frequently
compelled, though at a cost of great personal fatigue,
to sit until nightfall. The application of Mr. Attor-
ney-General James for an adjournment before six
o'clock in a part-heard case, on the last day but one
of the assizes, with several causes still remaining for
trial, was therefore pringi facie unreasonable. But,
having made it, he was clearly bound to abide by
the decision of the judge, who on public, grounds
thought it expedient to refuse it. Mr. James pleaded
personal exhaustion, but it could not have been
greater than that of the judge to whom he appealed.
Assuming, however, that it was so, and that Mr.
James found himself absolutely compelled to retire
from the court (of which, however, to borrow a
lawyer's phrase, there is no evidence), no justifica-
ti▪
on can be offered for the manner in which he did
so. He did not offer a single word of apology to the
judge for taking a step which, on its face, was grossly
di▪
srespectful, nor did he make the slightest attempt
to protect the interests of his client by obtaining the
attendance of his junior before leaving the court.
Such being the case, we are driven to the unavoid-
able conclusion that the fatigues of a long day's
work deprived Mr. James of his habitual judgment
and command of temper. Nothing, however, we
may add, could be more satisfactory than the expla-
nation which Mr. James made in court on the fol-
lowing morning, and the only regret we can feel is
that it was not made on the preceding evening. He
was, as he stated, overcome by physical exhaustion,
and compelled to withdraw. Mr. James cannot,
however, be held excused for not having at the time
made the judge aware that his withdrawal was not,
as it had every appearance of being, an act of disre-
spect. The judges may be entrusted with the sole
authority to determine the fitting time of adjourn-
ment, and any indirect attempt to deprive them of
a right so important, regard being had to the inte-
rests of the public, must justly excite the strongest
reprehension.

"And then he drew a dial frem his poke,
And looking on it with lack lustre eye,
Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock :
Thus we may see,' quoth he, ' how the world wags."
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THE LIVERPOOL ASSlZES.—Yesterday afternoon,
Mr. Sergeant. Atkinson opened the commission at
Liverpool, afterwards attending prayer at St. Peter's
Church. He was received by the High Sheriff (W. Preston,
Esq., of Rock House, near Liverpool), the Deputy Sheriff,
chaplain, and Deputy Town Clerk. The commission was
adjourned to this (Friday) morning, when Mr. Justice
Mellor and Mr. Justice Shee will both try criminal cases.
The calendar contains tho names of 76 prisoners—one
charged with murder on the high seas, nine with man-
slaughter, 16 burglary, 11 robbery, two bigamy, seven
wounding, four passing base coin, three larceny, four per-
jury, one breach of Bankruptcy Act, one embezzlement,
one forgery, one concealment of birth, and one rape.
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