The Sun.
London, England, 1838-02-26 00:00:00

punishment of piracu was one of a number
of Bills for amending and mitigating the cri-
minal law, which received the support of Lord
Brougham last Session. His Lordship went much
further on that occasion than merely giving a cold as-
sent to the amelioration of the law within the compa-
ratively narrow limits to which those Bills confined it.
His mind expanded beyond the boundaries within
which the principle of enlightened justice was cir-
cumscribed by Lord John Russell's legislation. Fol-
lowing in the track of Lord Lyndhurst's more lumi-
nous intellect, his mind, which had previously taken
many uncertain flights, some forward and some back-
ward, over the field of criminal jurisprudencce, arrived
at the same conclusion as that of his learned predeces-
sor on the woolsack---which was that punishment of
death ought to be limited to the one offence of actual
murder. This principle had been submitted to the
ttdhe b
House of Commons, in the shape of an amendment to
Lord John Russell's Bills, by Mr. Evart, and nega-
yGaovmeirsnemraebnite majority
influence wasajorityofon used to defeate!notsvithstan ding
theall
le
motion by whipping in Members, and although
fifteen Government placemen voted against it, so
that, virtually the motion was carried by a ma-
jority of 14. The numerical defeat of the principle
was to that extent at least, a moral triumph. In
spite of this decision in the Commons—in spite of
Lord Lyndhurst's declaration in the Lords—in spite
of his own declaration adopting the principle embodied
in Mr. Ewart's motion, and sanctioned by the great
judicial experience and splendid talents of that Noble '
and Learned ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham has
proposed that the slave-trade should be put down, by
declaring it to be piracy, and that the capital penalty
for that offence should be restored ! . Let it might be
supposed we in any respect mistake or misrepresent
the Noble and Learned Lord on thie point, we here
quote that part of his reply in the House of Lords
which bears on this subject, as it appeared in our
Parliamentary Report. " Let their Lordships look,"
he observed, " at the strange anomaly in respect to
the carrying on the slave-trade. If the offence were
perpetrated, as it often was, in a river or in the chops
of the river, as at the settlement of Fernando-Po, it
was not deemed piracy ; but if a man carried on this
infamous traffic only three miles to the westward, then
it was an act of piracy. Now, the slave-trade must
of necessity be accompanied with personal violence, and
he, for his own part, never had been of opinion that
the capital punishment for the offence should be done
away with, and he should have no objection to restore
that state of the law." With his declaration, that'
capital punishment should be reserved for murder
alone fresh in our recollection, the passage above
quoted would have excited our astonishment if we had
not long ceased to wonder at any inconsistency of
Lord Brougham. If the Wing of his genius be strong
it is at least as erratic as it is vigorous. Round most
of the great public questions of the day it has fluttered
in very eccentric circles, and has perched on very dif-
ferent, nay opposite conclusions, and with equal con-
fidence on all. This is perhaps the consequence of
inverting the pr.oper principle of intellectual discipline
by setting;spurs_to the fancy and reining in the judg-
ment
; but, whatever may be the cause, the effect is a
variety of inconsistencies and contradictions, of which it
may be, at the moment, persons of the excitable and vo-
latile temperament of the Noble and Learned Lord are
unconscious. Lord Brougham describes it as a
strange anomaly, that acts which at sea are considered
as constituting piracy, should not be treated as piracy
when committed upon rivers or at the mouths of rivers.
The fact is, the proper definition of piracy is robbery,
or depredation on the high seas. Our common law
recognises no other sort of piracy. Our statute law
has frequently made innovations on the common law,
and often for the worse. Almost all the statutes of
blood which we have exerted ourselves to hare ex-
punged from the statute-book were innovations upon
the comparatively mild and merciful provisions of our ,
ancient common law. Lord Brougham would have
the definition of piracy made more extensive, and, in
the same degree, more confused than ever it was be-
fore. His remedy for the evil of slave-trading is
compendious enough—it has, however, the objection
of being, like the evil it is intended to suppress, a very
• barbarous expedient. We believe it would, as a
remedy, be a very ineffective one. We reeol-
lect having seen, not long ago, in a Van Die-
, man's Land paper, a report of a trial and conviction
of four men—transported convicts--for piracy, in
having taken possession of a vessel or the hull of a
vessel in Macquarrie harbour, for the purpose of ef-
fecting their escape from the penal settlement. Their
offence seemed to us, although the men received judg-
ment of the capital charge of piracy, to be no piracy at
all, but a mere larceny of the thing stolen. We be-
lieve they have not been executed, for we observed that
the Judge (Pedder) had some doubts, which the law-
officers of the Crown did not seem to entertain. We
trust we shall never see Lord Brougham's law of piracy
have any other existence than in his own imagination.
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the Lase of forgery, that capital punishments, by revolt-
ing the minds of jurors, tended rather to the escape of
the guilty than to the repression of the crime. So it
was with the act which made slave-trading by any
subject ofthesßritie.w.,ap.3, which w
shCrowcn,a capital offence.
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originally had a hand in making slave-trading a capital
felony, and what good did that do ? D • uring all
the
years
in which the offence was capital
many thousand instances
of the crime occurred, as the history of the Mauritius
attests, and no execution for the offence, we believe,
ever took place. The fact is, the very severity of the
punishment defeated its own object, as is always the
case when passion and notreason legislates against crime.
We wish complete success to those who are labour-
ing to effect the suppression of the slave-trade, whe-
ther carried on by our " allies," in almost open viola-
tion of the treaties which we have with them, or
worked clandestinely by British subjects in vessels
fitted out even in the ports of England. We greatly
doubt, however, that so desirable a consummation will
ever be attained under a Government so truckling,
temporising and dishonest at that which at present sits
like an incubus on all the energies of this great
country. But under any circumstances we cannot con-
sent that, for the ostensible object of suppressing the
slave-trade, repudiated barbarism shall be restored to
the statute-book, and our hatred of an inhuman and
disgusting traffic be signalised by inflicting upon our
civilisation the disgrace of an inhuman and disgusting
law..—Morning

The motion of Lord Maidstone to-night will be a
resolution of severe censure upon Mr. O'Connell. It
is considered doubtful whether Ministers will venture
to oppose the motion, as, in case they should do so,
there is great probability of their being left in a mino-
rity. It is said that several Whigs who give their
general support to the Administration have determined,
out of regard to their own characters, to stay away.
With respect to Lord John Russell's silly threat of re-
taliation, the rumour at the Clubs last night was, that
some of his Lordship's Colleagues have insisted upon
his Lordship's backing out, as he best may, but at any
rate that he must back out. The rumour has a pro-
voking air of probability about it.—Morning Post.

It is stated that the Earl of Essex ie about to marry
Miss Stephens, the vocalist.—Essex Herald. Can this be
true ? Lord Essex is about 81 years of age.
A Noble Earl, who has long passed his grand cli-
macteric, will, it is rumoured, shortly be united to a distin-
guished vocalist, sometime retired from the stage, residing in
the ♦icinity of Connaught-terrace. The venerable Peer,
whose Countess, from whom he had been long separated, is
lately deceased, awaited but the freedom of widowhood to offer
Miss his hand.
THE REGENT'S PARK.—One of the three Persian
Princes who ♦isited London about two years since, was one
day riding with Mr. Baillie Frazer through the Regent's Park,
when he was so struck with its beauty, and the gay crowds
around him, that he exclaimed, " Ah, well / what a sad pity it
is, after all, that men must diet" " Ay, so it is, Prince," re-
plied Mr. Fraser; "but you remember there is a heaven—a
paradise to come." " Ay," said he, " there is, and that is the
consolation, there is another world. But wallah these places
go far to make a man forget it."
In this month the mole begins to excavate his sub-
terraneous galleries in pursuit of worms, which are so in-
stinctively afraid of their enemy, the mole, that the least
motion of the earth causes them to drag their slow length
above ground.