The Sun.
London, England, 1840-01-03 00:00:00

more ask statesmen of all parties—we ask the
middle classes, who have more at stake than the I
statesmen to whom they trust—how, by means of
such a law, the people are to be governed ? The
treason law, which, by the carelessness of one
lawyer or the acuteness or skill of another, can
be made to strike or made to spare, which falls not
on the guilty, but on the defenceless, will never suffice
to retain in obedience the half maddened population

of the empire.
It strikes us also as curious that the Judges who
preside at such a trial, should not be prepared to say

whether the law is so or not. The people are

hanged if they violate the law, and Sir NICHOLAS
TINDAL, as Chief Justice, declares openly in Court
that he does not know what it is, and that a point
by which a man's life or death is to be decided, is
not yet settled. His words, as repotted are, "No
direct decision has taken place" on the mooted
question. The law, therefore, is not known to the
CHIEF JUSTICE, because as he says, it has not
yet been declared or made.
Now out of this arises a still more important
point. The question having been once raised the
Judges will be called on to decide it, provided Mr.
FROST be found guilty, and only then. If he be

acquitted, there will be no person to bring the
mooted question before the Judges, and it will re-
main, as at present, undecided. If he be found

guilty, the Judges will have the question argued be-
fore them, and they will then declare, or, in fact,
make the law. According to the CHIEV JUSTICE
the law on this point does not now exist. Mr.
FROST and his companions, therefore, will be con-
demned, if at all, by an es post facto law, made by
the Judges. We can say beforehand that the Jury
may as well find a verdict of acquittal, for to hang
them on a Judge-made es post facto law will ap-
pear to the bulk of the people as no better than

murder.
What influence the finding of the Jury as to the
facts may have on the minds of the Judges we
cannot say ; but in the present state of society, and
during the present conflict of opinions, that the find-
ing will have no influence on them is not in human
nature. We apprehend, therefore, that the Judge
should have had the point of law settled before
proceeding to try the facts. We know that such
is not the usual custom—but the usual custom is
bad, and always calls on the Judges to make or
declare the law after the facts are known, and after
a verdict is pronounced. According to the books,
however, men are not to be punished for violating
what Judges may hereafter declare tobe a law, but for
trespassing on laws which are already made and
known. This is not quite as bad as the celebrated
case of STRAFFORD, but it is equally a violation

of a received principle.
If the defects of the law should warn our rulers
not to rely on it too much, there are some observa-
tions of the ATTORNEY-GENERAL which should
not be without instruction for the ruled. The
Learned Gentleman described the statute of ED-
WARD 111. as the safeguard of theli rties of Eng-
lishmen—another Magna Charta. But when this
statute was passed, civil wars feuds amongst
nobles, and amongst different clas sof the people,
were extremely common, and it was customary, as
one party got the upper hand, to satiate its ven-
geance on the other, under the guise
of the law. Hence, according to the
ATTORNEY-GENERAL, the law of treason
was then extremely vague, and the Statute did
limit and define treason somewhat more narrowly
than before. Thus this second Magna Charta of
Englishmen is something a little better, and only
a very little better, than the rude and scandalous
practices of feudal barbarians, satiating their venge-
ance by the forms of law, and bringing, as they
could, all their quarrels into the net of treason. This
law, as we have already shown, can by no means
be relied on to preserr 'lie peace of society, and
this brief remark on its origin should satisfy every
one that it is a disgrace to the age to have no better
protection for the rights of individuals than such
enactments. We want a new and a rational
Treason Law, for, according to this Magna Charta,
as lately interpreted by Sir N. TINDAL, the moral
duty of the people to collect in numbers and over-
awe the unrighteous Legislature which maintains
, the Devil's laws, is high treason.

By the report which has reached us to-day some
witnesses have been examined, and as there are a
great many to examine, the trial promises to be
very long. It is itnpossible to read the evidence of
Sir THOMAS PHILLIPS, the late Mayor,
without being convinced that party spirit,
and party feuds, have had much more to
do with the outbreak than treason. At one
time—if the questions put in the cross-exami-
nation to Sir THOMAS, (the answers to which
were of the non mi ricordo character) are founded
in fact—Sir THOMAS appears to have been as
violent a partisan as over was Mr. FROST.
Amongst the Welsh hills, and on the border
county, it is natural that old party feel-
ings should exist in much more force than
in our crowded cities. Mr. FROST was probably
acting on those feelings, and on revived recollec-
tions. There was a border-feud, degenerating into
a border-war—or, as it has been not unaptly de-
scribed, by a Correspondent of ours, a baby-
war—and that such a circumstance should be
exalted into treason, seems to us an additional
reason for asserting that the treason-laws require to
be amended, before men be hanged for violating them.

A Ministerial Contemporary asks whether the
reward bestowed on 1)r. MOLESWORTH for pro-
posing Mr. BRADSHAW'S health, will tend " to
increase the attachment of the people to the Esta-
blished Church, of which the Archbishop of CAN-
TERBURY is the head of its hierarchy, and ought to
be one of the most jealous guardians of its cha-
racter and interests." We answer that, of the
Tories, it will increase the attachment. Our Contem-
porary must be woefully ignorant of what passes in
Tory circles, if he be not aware that the senti-
ments Mr. BRADSHAw blurted out publicly, are
privately entertained and expressed by almost all
the Tories. They may blame Mr. BRADS.HAW'S
indiscretion—none of them show any loyalty to
the QUEEN. The Tories will only be more
strongly than ever attached to the Church, and to
the ARcHßisnoe for his courage in rewarding the
abettor of Mr. BRADsHAw. What number of
the people of England arc Tories, we have no
accurate means of judging ; but we should suppose
that beyond the Squires and their dependant)—the
Clergy and their slaves—the number is very small.
If by the people of England we understand
those who are capable of thinking for them-
selves, the great masses who honestly earn the r
own bread, and are contented when they can ,et
the produce of their own labour, the act of the
ARCHBISHOP is calculated to add to the odium
under which the Church now labours. If the
ARCHBISHOP, like Dr. CHALMERS, dare not
set himself openly in opposition to the secular au-
Ihority, he shows by his conduct that he is equally
willing to exalt the spiritual power. He has given
his beloved son in the Church, Dr. MoLEs-
WORTH, absolution, by the recent appointment, for
all his civil offences.

When we published, some (lays ago, the Papal
Bull for the abolition of sl,,very, we took the trouble