The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-21 00:00:00

THE', SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 21, 1862.

and yet the faults ;of the Court of Rome de
not prevent us from having a great interest in
protecting the person of the Holy Father, and in
assuring his independence—in the same manner
that certain points of difference from the Italian
Government do not hinder us from making the in-
dependence of Italy a point of honour. Catholic
and Liberal, let us repeat it, France knows so
well what she requires in the Italian Peninsula—
she is so nobly disinterested, and BO faithful to all
her great traditions—that she is not to render her-
self uneasy, either at the ingratitude of the one or
at the false interpretation of the other. We, never-
theless, expected more justice from a statesman so
intelligent as Lord Palmerston. This time thZ
noble lord appears to us to have been the victim of
an optical delusion, which has changed the propor-
tions of the different parts,
ne has not the less
expended some v
line language in favour of Italy,
e,-,L-s.
i
and s something. Will his lordship allow'us
a final observation ? If, ins!ead of criticising France,
the powerful Minister wcre to employ the influence
which is attributed to him over a certain Cabinet
to determine that Government to recognise the new
kingdom—it seems to us that he would render a
better service to Italy."

TRIAL 01' SAMUEL ROBINSON, OF
CUPAR, FOR FORGERY.

At the Perth Circuit on Thursday, before Lords
Ardmillan and Neaves, Samuel Robinson, late pro-
prietor and editor of the Fifeshire Journal (whose
capture in London and subsequent attempt at escape
by leaping from an express train recently excited so
much attention), was placed at the bar charged with
the crime of forging and uttering forged promis-
sory notes and letter of authority to a banker. The
case created considerable excitement in the district,
and the court was densely crowded during the pro-
gress of the trial, a number of those present being
gentlemen connected with the various banks in
Scotland. Outside the court room a large crowd of
people lingered daring the entire day, eager to ob-
tain the most recent information disclosed by the
evidence.

The prisoner, who was brought from Perth to
Cupar on Tuesday, took his place in the dock about
11 o'clock. He was dressed in black. and siPPeal
to be lAtle the worse for his IN orthallerton midnight
advesffre, the only externally apparent result of
his daring and dangerous leap being a slight disco-
loration of the right tern pie. He bore in one hand a
written document of up wards of 150 foolscap pages.
This document, which was a prepared defence, was
written very carefully, and on its first page there
were written, in a bold and elegant style, the titles
of the subjects contained in the defence. The pri-
soner had also a notebook and pencil, and carefully
took memoranda of the important parts of the evi-
dence, and frequently added to and deleted from his
prepared defence, according as it was affected by the
evidence. He conducted his own defence, and was
assisted by Messrs. Seott and Brown, advocates;
Mr. A. B. Shand, advocate depute, and Mr. Kinnear
acting as prosecutors. Throughout the whole of the
trial the prisoner displayed the utmost coolness and
apparent confidence in his acquittal, and his cross-
examinations of witnesses were characterised by
considerable ability and shrewdness.
The charges against the prisoner consisted of no
fewer than 21 different cases of forgery in bills,
cheques, promissory notes, &c. The signatures
adopted were for the most part those of men with
whom he had formerly done business, and there ap-
peared in every case to be an intention on the part
of the prisoner to meet the forgeries before they be-
came due. In consequence of the number of counts
in the indictment a great many witnesses were
examined, and these were cross-examined some-
times by the counsel engaged for the defence, and
sometimes by the prisoner himself. At the con-
clusion of the evidence for the prosecution,
Mr. Scott stated that he had no witnesses to call
for the defence.

Mr. Shand then addressed the jury for the prose-
cution. He directed their attention to the various
bills. The signatures of these were certainly not
the signatures of any of the gentlemen. They had
seen them, one after another, deny that the signa-
tures were theirs, and their statements were cor-
roborated by others who knew their signatures.
Therefore, in the case of every one of them, it was
evident that they were forged. The prisoner might
have addueed a person to say that he signed these
bills, but it was remarkable, in the consideration
of this case, that there was not a single witness to
contradict the statements made by the witnesses
for the Crown, and consequently the jury must be
satisfied that the bills were forgeries. Everyone
must sympathise with a person in the position of
the prisoner, occupying a position of considerable
weight and influence; yet the jury had a duty to
discharge, and he felt that in discharging it they
could not do otherwise than return a verdict of
guilty.
At the conclusion of Mr. Shand's address the pri-
soner and his counsel retired to the gaol to hold a
consultation. On their returning,
Mr. Brown said he had been trying to induce the
prisoner to allow Mr. Scott, but he had declined to
do so, as he wished to defend himself.
The prismaer then rose with his written defence
in his hand, and proceeded to address the jury amid
perfect silence. In the course of his remarks he
said—The ancients of a famous court had a rule
that in cases heard before them, they were con-
ducted in darkness lest the appearance of the ad-
vocates should influence the decision, and eloquence
was forbidden lest it should bias the judgment. If
ever there was such a case in this country this was
one. They had on the one side her Majesty's Ad-
vocate Depute, stating his case with all the power
that his ability enabled him to do. On the other,
they had a poor indisposed criminal, broken down
to a feebleness by a calamity, with the labour of a
life lost, and a character yet unsullied, sullied to
very repulsiveness. But he had a better chance of
an independent verdict than had the Athenians
by the darkness of night. He had the intelligence,
the sense, and the independence of a British jury,
and he felt, standing there, with all the unfitness
of the task imposed upon him, that if he was able
to lay before the jury an outline of the case, ho
would ask them, before he left the court, with great
confidence, to say that her Majesty's Advocate had
entirely failed to produce sufficient proof to show
why he (the prisoner) should be punished, and
that he had entirely failed to make out
the charges which he had so wantonly made and
so cruelly paraded before the public. The question
might be asked, why did he conduct his own de- 1
fence ; why did he take a course so hazardous in
a good cause when there were so many ornaments
of the bar who would have been too willing to have
lent their services ? His answer to that was that
her Majesty's advocate had, by the exercise of a bar-
barous power—he did not ask his pardon or modify
the word—by the exercise of a barbarous power put
into his hands when the thumb-screws were in
vogue, prevented him from having the possibility of
doing so. Since the first day that he heard of that
charge he had had no opportunity of getting evi-
dence or making preparation for standing before
the Court that day. After being in prison fora while
he was allowed to see an agent, and had the good
fortune to have the services of one who, if anything
could have made up for restrictions put upon him
by the prosecutor, his ability and zeal would have
done so. But he was satisfied that in the time al-
lowed, and with him shut up in a prison, it would,
be physically and morally impossible to get up evi-
dence sufficient not only to repel the prosecutor's
charges, but to establish the facts which would be
required on ilia part in vindioatiort of his conduct.
He therefore resolved to stand there simply on the
defensive, knowing that the charges against him
were false. He would not go back to prison to pre-
pare a defence, for it would be to go back to death
—the madman's doom ' • and as he did not wish to
suffer the extreme penalty of the law, he preferred
to take the least of two evils—make the best de-
fence he could, and dare the prosecutor to his worst.
The prosecutor, knowing he had bound him hand
and foot, and prevented resistance, they had only to
look to the indictment before them how he had
pelted him (prisoner) with foul epithets of rotten
eggs. He, a British subject, chained like a dog to
carts and carriages, the ponderous irons filling the
Passers-by with compassion and disgust, the police-
man himself ashamed of his work—was conveyed
to Cupar, ushered into a Star Chamber, where the
magistrate's office was prostituted to obtain from
the accused a declaration which might convict
himself. He was sent to prison, deprived of
everything he had save the clothes he had on, with
their pockets empty, shut up in a cell scarcely
sufficient to hold him, obliged to be his own cham-
bermaid and washerwoman, and let out as if from
the cage of a menagerie for three-quarters of an
hour a day. Another prisoner was enclosed with
him as a precaution for preventing his knocking
out his brains, or hanging himself in his hammock.
He submitted, if his allegations were true, that he
ought not to be convicted of the crime he was
charged with. He now almost regretted that he
had not committed his observations in defence to a
gentleman more fitted to conduct his case; for to
come before their lordships, whose lives had been
spent in the practice and audience of formal argu-
ment, seemed a daring undertaking,„'and one which
might lead them to suspect that he was trifling with
important question so far as his own ease was
aconcerned.most important
After entreating from their lordships and
thej
continued--If
patient and candid hearing, the pri-
sonerinued_if
I be sent back to prison, I feel
it would be to death, or to :, worse doom, and should
satisfying you that I
I not succeed this day in

ought not to be punished as the prosecutor ,
asked, it will be for a few months, or weeks perhaps
—I will have a gaol-delivery, let Mb hope to where
"the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary
are at rest." Referring to his .capture in London,
and removal to Cupar, the prisoner said—On com-
ing on the Sunday night from London in custody
of Mr. Bell, he informed me that I had been declared
bankrupt. Maddened to desperation, and seeing
nothing but ruin before me, I rushed to throw my-
self out of the window, and, thanks to Mr. Bell, who
then carght me in the act, and to the miraculous
interposition of Divine Providence, I was saved
from deith, and I stand here to-day to vindicate my
name from the contumely with which it has been
loaded, and the false charges which have been
bf:Etorul ge
shsi
daegf
ea
ni ndsetr mo
fe .
right,
gßhut
cyesterdayo
man
asnt o od
“mtahse.
ter," theeartiest upholder of all that was wise, and
right, and of good report upon men, the unsparing
critic of all that was wrong and impolitic yet not
the less do I stand to-day—so true it is that
" conscience makes cowards of us all"—zoWering
to look at my fellow-men ; and, if I may say it With-
out profinity, " stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.' The prisoner then proceeded to state
that he had been in possession of a newspaper pro-
perty worth between £4,000 and £5,000, from which
he received an annual income averaging £478, and
argued that he was enabled, by that position, with-
out being compelled to resort to forgery, to have the
confidence of the banks with which his business was
transacted. He then went on to denounce the system
of accommodation bills, maintaining that, notwith-
standing the other signatures on the bills, he was
solely responsible for them; and that, as nothing
beyond the mere names of the parties were attached
to these bills, without any address, the jury could
not hold that they were the signatures of any par-
ticular person.
The prisoner spoke upwards of three hours, con-
cluding with a passionate appeal to the jury for the
favourable consideration of his case, hinting that
were this not accorded the result would be fatal
to him.

Lord Neaves then summed up, and in laying down
the law affecting the case, he gave a most decided
opinion against the principle laid down by the pri-
soner in his address—that he was entitled to sign
these bills because he acted, or pretended to have
acted in good faith, to sign the names of other
persons to such documents as he had spoken of, and
he commented on the consequences that would result
were such practices to be carried on unchecked by
law. His lordship further reminded the jury that
here they had a duty to perform, from which they
were not to be deterred by any pity for the prisoner,
whose misery might be deserving of sincere sym-
pathy, but all the prisoners before the circuit might
be so, although they had not the power to express
their misery as this man had done. He warned them
that they owed a duty to society, which no such
considerations of sympathy should prevent them
from performing.

citation of the deceased Messrs. Halling, Pearce, I
and Stone had consented to advance him a loan of
£4OO to recommence business, and a letter was
found in the pocket-book of the deceased from Mr.
Chapple, attorney, of Great Carter-lane, Doctors'
Commons, to the following effect ;L--" There has
been some little delay about the £4OO, but I have
no doubt that it will be obtained within a fortnight."
Mr. Henry Tolkien, pianoforte maker, of King
William-street, London-bridge, deposed—He is
brother-in-law to the deceased, whose shop had
recently been closed, and who bad been deceived at
the last moment by a person who had engaged to
enter into partnership with him. This and other
business matters had recently much affected his
mind.
Several letters found in the pocket-book of the
deceased were then read by the coroner, one being
addressed to Messrs, Hailing, Pearce, and Stone,
thanking them for their noble conduct, but conclud-
ing with the statement, " My brain wastes so that
I shall be in an asylum, or with my God, to-
morrow."
The coroner having recapitulated and remarked
-In the evidence, the jury returned a verdict of
temporary insanity.