The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-21 00:00:00

THE ACTION AGAINST THE
" TIMES" NEWSPAPER.
(From the Times.)
BOGLE U. LAWSON.

If we are desirous that attention should be directed to
the case of" Bogle v. Lawson," which was tried at Croy-
don before Lor:d Chief Justice Tindal on Monday last, it
is not from any disposition to obtrude upon public notice
matters in which we are ourselves personally concerned.
The occasion would call for remark, even if we were not
so immediately interested in it as we are. It is seldom
that proceedings have taken place in a Court of Justice
better calculated to illustrate, on the one hand, the na-
tional benefit of an independent press, and, on the other,
the risks, difficulties. harassing expenses, and formidable
responsibilities which those who conduct the public press
must be prepared to encounter, if they are determined
fearlessly and impartially to discharge their duty.
It is now fifteen months since we received from a cor-
respondent at Brussels, on whom we had reason to place
implicit reliance, copies of a judicial examination which
had then lately taken place in Belgium, and of certain
letters which had been intercepted by the police of that
country. These documents furnished us with the parti-
culars of a iuost singular and extensive conspiracy for
fraudulent purposes, in which various persons of name.
and influence, Englishmen as well as foreigners, ap-
pearod to be implicated. The papers left no doubt upon
our mindS as to the guilty participation in' the scheme of
eleven individuals, two only of whom were then in the
hancl:; of justice.

That our readers may understand fully the importance
to the commercial Nvorld of a complete and searching ex-
posure of this infamous anir, we will here mention a
few of tio2 prominent facts which were proved or ad-
mitted upon the recent trial. Of the conspirators, one
was a French Marquis, most respectably connected by
marriage in this country. Another was a Baron, the
son of a most distinguished General of the empire and
Peer of France. The third was a Count. The fourth
was a Scotch gentleman, most highly connected, who for
many years had represented the
.hounty of Stirling in
Parliament ; and the fifth was his son. The principal
partner of a banking-house in high credit at Florence
was asserted to be a sixth; and besides these there were
numerous other inferior agents and accomplices, both
male and female. Such were the circumstances and po-
sition in society of thq parties, and it must he admitted
that a more formidable banditti, or one against which it
would be more difficult for men of business to be upon
their guard, never was organised.
'The

parties, having settled their plan of' operations,
resolved to attack the commercial world in the tenderest
poi et. Every one knows what wonderful facilities
ei
Ir.ve been given of late years to travellers upon the
Ceatieent, through the medium of circular letters of
credit from the principal bankers of London. Such is
the reputation of British commerce in every part of
the world, so universally known and appreciated are
the stability and punctuality in business of the
great London houses, that a letter of .credit
from Messrs. Coutts and Co., or Messrs. Glyn
and Co.: is as 'readily recognized and as unhesitatingly
honoured in Alexandria or Smyrna, as if it were pre-
sented in Lombard-street or the Strand. But the very
circumstances which make this letter-of-credit system so
great an accommodation to the traveller, make it also
peculiarly open to the machinations of fraud, it being al-
most impossible that every one of the thirty or forty firms,
in different. cities to whom every circular letter of credit
is addressed (and to the great majority of whom no one
letter is likely to be presented), should in every case be
advised of the fact that such a letter has been issued by
the London house. Money, .therefore, is unavoidably
advanced upon these letters, in the ordinary course of
business, without advice ; and for this reason the Marquis
de Bourbel and his companions determined to carry on
their fraud by means of forged letters of credit. We
need hardly remark, that in proportion as the present
facilities of, travelling are valuable to the public, and in
proportion also to the difficulty of guarding against this
description of fraud, it was important that a conspiracy
which threatened, if carried much furthee, to discredit
circular letters altogether;should be unsparingly exposed.
The conspirators having selected Messrs. Glyn, Hali-
fax;, Mills, and Co., as the firm whose name they should
Use (no British banking firm having a more extensive
mercantile connection), succeeded in possessing them,-
selves of one of their genuine- letters of credit, and in
producing so perfect an imitation, both of the body of the
letter and of the signature, that one of the partners of
that house, when placed in the witness-box on Monday
iast, was at first unable to distinguish between the forgery
and a genuine letter. With this instrument, multiplied
by numerous copies, they carried on their schemes of de-
predation with surprising rapidity, and had they not been
wholly deficient in caution, might have escaped detectioti
for a much longer period than they did. The deposi-
tions put in at the trial proved that, within the space of
a few days, they succeeded in obtaining, upon these
forged letters of credit, upwards of 10,000/.
It cannot be necessary for us to go into any further
details to show that, as journalists enjoying an extensive
circulation in this great commercial country, we should
have been greatly wanting to our duty if we had ne-
glected to give publicity to the facts relative to so unpre-
cidented a conspiracy, as soon as they came to us in an
authentic form ; and more especially to the names of
the guilty parties. Least of all should we have been
yeititied in suppressing the name of a person situated like
Bugle (the plaintiff in the late action), at the he.ad of a
banking establishment of credit and connection in the
mercantile world, after satisfying ourselves of his guilt
upon evidence sufficient to produce moral conviction in
any unprejudiced mind. We
.did so satisfy ourselves,
and we published his name accordingly—whether upon
ittsuilieitent grounds we leave to-be inferred from the ver-
dict of the jury, which has estimated Mr. Bogle's cha-
racter at the value of one farthing.
We feel that, under these circumstances, we may fairly
take to ourselves the praise of having done some service
to the public by the disclosures which involved us in the
recent vexatious and costly proceedings. If so, we are
entitled to ask, if it is not unjust and unreasonable that
a journalist, who does no more than his duty in a case of
this sort, should be put to the alternative of eithei de-
ceiving the public and promoting the designs of thieves
by recanting -statements in which all the mercantile
world is interested, which he has published upon clear
evidence, and which he knows to be true, or else of being
forced, at his own expence, to trace out and collect the
legal proofs of a mass of transactions distributed all over
the continent of Europe, in the face of unparalleled diffi-
culties of every kind ? For more than a year have we
been engaged in making preparations for this trial ; and
law has done its worst to bully us into submission. Let
our solicitor tell his own tale :—" Mr. Dobie was exa-
mined by Sir W. Follett: Is the acting attorney for the
defendant in this case. He went abroad on the 10th of Au-
gust, 1840,`,.f0r, the purpose of collecting evidence.
Viiited for that purpose, Paris, Brussels, Ostend, Genoa,
Turin, Bologna:Florence, Parma, Cologne, Liege, Ghent,
Antwerp, and Coblcntz. He visited all the principal
towns on the Continent, where forgeries had been com-
mitted and bankers had been robbed. He made fre-
quent attempts to procure the original letters. Applied
several times to the Garde des Sceaux, but did not at
first obtain any answer from him. The Procureur du
IN said it was impossible to have the use of the origina'
letters."

The greatest hardship of alLeonsists in this, that after all
the trouble and expense to which we have been put, and
after obtaining what every man, woman, and child,
knows to be virtually a verdict in our favour, we are
still debarred, in the present state of the English law,
froin that common measure of justice which gives a de-
fendant, harassed by groundless litigation, a claim upon
his adversary for his costs of suit. We do not complain
of the nominal verdict for the plaintiff ; it was the neces-
sary rest& of the rule of law which compelled the jury
(as instructed by the Learned Judge) to exclude from
their consideration those letters of the conspirators,
Bourbel and Graham, in which Bogle's name was men-
tioned, and upon which our own conviction of Bogle's
gnilt.was originally ;rounded. We do not allege that
there was direct evidence sufficiently- clear to have con-
victed Bogie, had he been then placed on his trial for a
criminal offence ; but we do that, in a case where
the Jury decide that the plaintiff's character had sus_
tained no injury, the defendant is morally and equitably
entitled to his costs, whatever may be the formal ver-
dict ; and if the Legislature does not wish to throw im-
pediments in the way of the discharge of the most useful
functions of the Dress, we are entitled to demand, and
expect -protection for the future against such unreason-
able lia.nilities as those to which the recent action has
shown us to be exposed.

SHIPPJN6iNTELLIGENCE
(LLOYDS.
EAST INDIA SHIPPING.
Arrivals.—Her Majesty's ship Samarang, Scott, from
China, at Portsmouth—sailed 29th March, Mauritius
23d May, St. Helena 2cl July, Ascension 7th July ; In-
dian, Carr, from Van Diemen's Land, arrived off Fal-
mouth—sailed from Launceston 22d April; Olive Branch,
Lindsay, from Bombay, at Liverpool—sailed 15th April.
Arrivals 'at St. Helena.—The Balquerie, Techoires,
Juno 27, from Calcutta, and sailed to Bordeaux ; Skog-
man, Calberg, 28th, from Batavia, and sailed, 29th, to
Gottenhurg ; Mercator, Kortland, 28th, from Batavia,
and sailed, 30th, to Rotterdam ; Maria, Remkes, from
Batavia, and sailed, on the 30th, to Amsterdam ; Martin
Luther, Swan, from Singapore, and sailed, 30th, to
London ; Pandora, Cothay, from Ceylon, and sailed 29th
to Liverpool ; Damariscotta, Clarke, from Calcutta, and
sailed 29th to Boston ; Zwaartwick, Hjarne, 28th, from
Batavia, and sailed, July 1, to Cowes ; Parrock Hall, Par-
sons, 29th, from China, sailed Ist July to London ; Iris,
Linton, from Ceylon, sailed 30th to London ; Konig der
Nederlanden, Vou, May 30, from Batavia to Amsterdam;
Houghton le Skeme, Proud, 30th, from Singapore, and
sailed 2d July to London ; Onyx, Brown, July 1, from
Ceylon, and sailed 2d to London ; Charlotte, Creighton,
1.146na Mauritius, and sailed, 2d, to Liverpool ;
Mark Palmer, Palmer, 2d, from Mauritius, and sailed
2d, for London ; Walvisch, Schut, 2d, from Padang to
Amsterdam ; Olivier Van Noordt, Schat, sailed -2d,
front Batavia to Amsterdam ; Johanna Maria Lupcke,
9(1, from Batavia to Rotterdam.

Departures from St. Helena.—lmaum of Muscat, June
20,•t0 London ; Rainbow, July 1, to Algoa Bay ; Ma-
jestic to sail 2d July for London.
Arrivals at Santa Cruz, Teneriffe.—Alligator, Cook,
Junei97, from London, and sailed 27, to Penang and
Singapore ; Cairo, Wardle, July 10, from London, and
sailed 14, to New South Wales ; Sarah Ann, Dunnett,
17, from,London, and sailed 18, to New South Wales.
_Arrivals at Mauritius.—Mary Mallaby, Fisher, May
3, from Moulmein ; Canopus, Hetherington, May 7, from
gingapore ; Jo'nanna,'Paddle, 7th, from Tamatave ; Zareb,
Barois, 9th, from Colombo ; Porcupine, Maim, 11th,
from Tamatave ; Ruby, Farquharson, from Colombo ;
Joshua Carrell, Porter, from Point de Galle ; Emma
Watts, llth, from Algoa Bay ; Manus, 18th, from Nantes.
A arrivals at Launceston.—The Adelaide, Dryden,
l 5, from London ;William Hughes, 12th, from
Port Philip. De re.—The Arab, Westmoreland,
14th, ndon
for Lo.
A b-

arrow
t the Eton and
cricket match last
week a Mr. G. Bayley score 152 rams off his own bat