The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-13 00:00:00

decided in our courts, if the sentence in one case is not to
be looked to in another? If A commit murder, and is exe-
cuted, may not the public assume that if B commit murder,
he will also be executed ? Law is the science of analogies.
If a sentence of a particular kind has been pro-
nounced for a particular offence, we do not see why it
should not be expected that, on a commission of the same
offence, the same punishment should follow. We do not
know what his Lordship means by a kind of foot rule,
except that he thinks judges should have no rule whatever
to govern them. Sir Samuel Romilly mentioned a curious
instance of the disposition of English judges to act capri-
ciously. In a case of horse stealing, the principal was
tried before Lord Loughborough, and sentenced to six
months' imprisonment. An accessory, who had kept out
of the way, on learning this result surrendered, and was
tried by Mr. Justice Butler, and he was sentenced to be
hanged. It was quite clear that these two judges had very
different rules to measure by. We are far from contend-
ing that Lord Chief Justice Denman should be implicitly
bound to tread in the footsteps of Mr. Justice Erskine,
though, if the latter judge merit all the culogiums be-
stowed on him by Lord Denman, we do no see why the
latter should be so eager to anticipate the possibility of dif-
fering from the former."
Trite is the truism that the wisest are liable to occa-
sional error, and if Lord Denman had frankly avowed
that he had been inconsiderate in permitting of a pri-
vate arrangement in the case of Lord Waldegrave, it
would have derogated nothing from his reputation as a
Judge ; but we see him now drawn by the foolish
defence of an error into the denial of the first principle
of justice. If Lord Denman had confessed a lapse in
the incautious sanction of a compromise in a case not
allowing it, we should have had no fear of his repeating
the error ; but when the Chief Justice treats with
supreme contempt the idea of objecting to the grossest
inequality in punishments for the same offences, the
public may become reasonably alarmed for the adminis-
tration of justice.
The Chief Justice, in ridiculing the application of
the foot rule of one kind, implies a preference for the
foot rule of another sort—the foot rule which, in Sel-
den's illustration, is the law of equity—varying as much
as the size of the Judges' feet.
Lord Denman is very lofty in his contempt for news-
paper strictures, which ho assures the Lords he would
not have condescended to notice if some great authority
in the other House had not repeated the same argu-
ments. Who the great authority is no one can tell ;
we know as little of him as Lord Denman knew of
Lord Waldegrave's offence, and we are almost disposed
to think that he is conjured up as a legal fiction for the
acetianz notice of the newspaper censures ; but certain
iit s that, notwithstanding Lord Denman's high and
mighty contempt for the opinions of the press, the at-
tempt to answer them was the laboured object of his
speech from beginning to end.
Expressions of scorn are level to all capacities
but the high, and are the ready weapons of all
causes but the strong. It is easy for Lord Den-
man to speak contemptuously of the press, it is
easy for him to profess a superiority to its cen-
sures ; but he confesses most unequivocally, in ac-
tion, the power which he affects to despise when
he, the Chief Justice, appears dragged to the bar of
public opinion by it to account for his conduct.

Lord Denman is vehemently indignant at the suspi-
cion that he can have had regard to persons in any judi-
cial suggestions. We believe him incapable of allowing
himself to be biassed, consciously, by class sympa-
thies ; but we also believe the class sympathies (and
especially in the case of those newly risen to aristocra-
tic class) to be of wondrous subtlety, and that many and
good men are influenced by them unconsciously. Cer-
tain we are that, if instead of the Queen against the
Earl of Waldegrave, the prosecution had been one of
the Queen against Snooks, the Chief Justice would not
have thought of a private arrangement.
The aspect of the Waldegrave affair was, it is to
be remembered, strongly corroborated by the beha-
viour of Lord Denman on Lord Cardigan's trial. It
was felt that both Noblemen were under great
obligations to the Chief Justice, and the counsel for one
of them, Sir F. Pollock, avowed in Court how much
his client was indebted to his Judge ; as for the other,
Lord Cardigan, it is reported that he testified his sense
of the extraordinary kindness shown him by leaving his
card at Lord Denman's door, and it is also said the
Chief Justice was not greatly pleased with the mark of
acknowledgment.