The Sun.
London, England, 1848-05-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 15, 18-Is.

The law officers of the Crown in Ireland have been
most unjuiltly and unfairly censured for the manner
against Messrs.
in which the State prosecutions
O'Bame, MEABHEa, and MITCHEL have hitherto
been conducted—blunders have been imputed to
them which had no real existence, and for which,
even if the assertions bad really been well founded
they could not be considered in any degree respon:
sible. The frivolous and untenable objections taken
on behalf of Mr. MITCHEL, with the sole object of
postponing the trial, or at all events the judgment,
until after the long vacation, were all assumed to be
sustainable in law and his (supposed) triumpi,F,,r,
the Crown prosecutors was loudly boasted of ; As*

• temporary difficulties were interposed, the incapacity
and ignorance of the Government adviser were pro-
claimed in every quarter; and when those difficulties
were overcome, and the various attempts iat procras-
tination frustrated, the luck of the law officers was
alluded to, as if their success had been owing to good
fortune rather than to their legal attainments and
professional ability. It is but an act of common jus-
tice to those talented and learned gentlemen indi-
vidually, and to the Irish bar, of which they are such
distingushed members, that the public mind should
be disabused—the erroneous statements that had been
so industriously circulated, rectified, and the real
state of facts explained—so that it may be made
apparent that the laurels obtained by their admirable
management of the Crown prosecutions at the Special
Commissions in Limerick, Clare, and Tipperary, have
not been in any manner tarnished, and that they still
merit the same approbation which was so universally
bestowed upon them, a few short months since, for
the able and effective manner in which they had
discharged their arduous and important duties since
their respective appointments to their high and re-
sponsible offices.
The principal errors ascribed to the law officers
were—let. That a member of the town council was
erroneously placed upon the grand jury, by which
the bills of indictment found by that body were ren-
dered informal and void. 2dly. That a nolle prosequi
was entered to the bills of indictment found against
Mr. Mfrcuan, in place of their having been quashed,
as might easily have been done on application to the
court, before the ex officio information had been filed,
and that in consequence a those grave informalities
the chief criminal had succeeded in baffiing the
authorities, and that he would be enabled to pursue
his course of sedition throughout the entire summer
undeterred by the abortive efforts made to bring him
to justice, by which the administration of the law
would be brought into considerable disrepute, and a
most injurious effect created in the public mind.
Now, as to the first point—the law-officers of the
Crown have nothing whatever to say to the appoint-
ment of the grand jury. The High Sheriff is alone
responsible therefor,, and anyi interference with that
iiirnsedsetloectgiornavewaonudld
sdeercioiduesdrlyepreexhpeonse.
cnedeed, we should have heard of pack-
tasuil
olnncp.taitotTni
eahareyenh,ihni
pack-
ing of juries! unwarrantable and atrocious acts
t
of Government officials !! impeachments would be
ten
tobirth-right
e beenthe
invaded, free-born
and
allci tizen
wouldhrea be said
the
the
changes would have been rung usque ad nauseam
on the tyrannical and despotic Act. But there
was no such improper interference. The law officers
pursued a constitutional course, such as had ever
been followed by their predecessors in office in either
country. In fact, the Crown prosecutors know
nothing of the composition of the grand juries. They
are never in attendance or represented while the
members of that body are being sworn in. They
prepare the bills which are preferred, and see that
there is sufficient evidence to sustain the several
charges, but to that extent only they are concerned.
Now, however, we find them reproached for not
having provided a better jury when it is manifest
that they could not be held in any respect responsible
for the error, if any error really had taken place,
which we altogether deny. It is true that the statute
provides that a town councillor shall not be placed
upon the list of special jurors, but there is no prohi-
bition whatever to his acting as a grand juror, and
even if he was incompetent to act in that capacity,
the bills would not be vitiated if found by twelve
persons to whom no objection could have been of-
fered, which was th 3 case in the present instance.
It may be said that the Attorney-General, by aban-
doning the indictments and filing the informations in
place thereof, admitted the validity of the plea.
This is by no means the case. That able lawyer im-
mediately perceived that though he would inevitably
have succeeded in the argument, and set aside the
plea in abatement, the object of the defendant would
be attained. By a masterly move he escaped
the trap that had been laid for him. He
abandoned the indictments, and in pursuance of his
undoubted right filed ex officio informations for the
same offtnces charged in the indictments. By this
step alone he would be enabled to have the defendant
brought up for j uJgment (if convicted) before the
setting in of the long vacation.
On the second point he acted with equal prudence
and sagacity in entering the nolle prosequi, in place of
"quashing " the former bill. the latter course would
have entailed the necessity of a motion in open court,
of which notice should have been given to the de-
fendant. Time was an essential element in the
transaction, as the loss of a single day might have
prevented the possibility of a trial in sufficient time
to have judgments given before the end of Trinity
term;, he therefore followed the course which he was
enabled to do of his own authority, without any loss
of time whatever.

Another plea in abatement was then filed on behalf
of the gentleman who had previously professed his
anxiety to meet any charge that the Government
might venture to prefer against him, this was imme-
diately demurred to, and the unanimous and unhesi-
tating judgment of the Court affirmed the propriety
of the course pursued by the law officers. The last
subterfuge was apparently set aside. By obtaining
a four day rule before judgment in demurrer could
be required, Mr. MiTcnEL, however, attained a
temporary triumph, and it was thought that, as suffi-
cient notice of trial for the sittings after term could
not be given, no trial could take place until after
Trinity term, and consequently that he could not be
called up for judgment until November. This last
expedient was set aside—this tabula naufragice
was torn from his grasp. On the application cf the
Attorney-General, the 29th of May and the Ist of
June have been fixed for the trials, and Mr. JOHN
MITCHEL must set his fate upon the contest he so
often professed his desire to meet. This, however, is
not all. He has not only been defeated in his various
attempts at procrastination, but new and more serious
charges have been preferred against him under the
recent Act. He is at this moment in actual custody,
having been arrested on Saturday evening, and his
trial will, it is said, take place on Saturday next.
He was probably only suffered to remain at large
until the decision of the Court had been pro-
nounced on the application for fixing the days of trial
of the indictment for misdemeanour, in order that
it might not be supposed that the law officers were
influenced by any feelings of annoyance in insti-
tuting the latter prosecution. This cannot by any
possibility now be asserted, as they have succeeded
in every particular.
We trust that we have now fully and satisfactorily
proved that, so far from being amenable to any
charge of negligence or blundering, the Irish law
officers have evinced throughout the whole proceed
ings the prudence and sagacity that might have been I
expected from persons who had obtained such high
professional reputations as Messrs. MONAHAN and
HATCHELL have long enjoyed in the estimation of
their brothers at the bar, and of the community in
general.

Death suddenly distracts our attentionfroomlt.h
turmoils of continental revolution to the contempla-
tion of a career, the principal vicissitudes f
were traceable to the fluctuations of the funds.
ALEXANDER BARING, or, as he was respectfully a
out of the circle of his old commercial intimates, Lord
ASHBURTON, has closed his prolonged and honourable
existence. Before any decisive opinion can be pro-
nounced upon his character as a politician, it will be
advisable to preface our remarks by a rapid epitome
of his life, recounting in succession the incidents
which chequered his progress as a trader, as a tra-
veller, as a Member of Parliatnent, as a country
gentleman, as an amateur agriculturist, as a noble-
man, as a statesman, and as a diplomatist.
ALEXANDER BARING, the second son of Sir FRANCIS
BARING, Bart., by the daughter of WILLIAM HER-
RING, Esq., was born on the 27th of October, 1774.
Consequently he was in his seventy-fourth year
when, on Friday morning, he breathed his last, at
Longleat, Warminster, Wiltshire, the estate of his
grandson, the youthful Marquis of Bath. Scarcely a
fortnight previously to his demise, the younger and
elder brother of Lord ASEIBURTON, HENRY BARING,
and Sir TuomAs BARING, Bart., expired, so
that almost within the first quarter of 1848, •the
second generation of this great commercial family
has terminated. We say the second generation ad-
viledly, for although the family of Bi.RING had been
eistablishad as traders as far back as the middle of the

sixteenth century, first at East Friesland and subse-
sequently at Bremen, Sir FRANCIS BARING was the
man who laid the foundation of that splendid palace
of traffic which now flourishes under the title of
"BARING, BROTHERS, and C 0.," and the vastness and
magnificence of which were materially stabilitated
by the mercantile genius of the departed statesman.
From the first entrance of ALEXANDER BARING
into the world of City business he was destined
to exercise an extraordinary influence on 'Change.
His' elder brother, as heir to the baronetcy, re-
mained in quietude until the moment of his decease,
participating in no manner in the transactions of the
firm, and living the tranquil life of a country baronet.
Upon ALEXANDER BARING devolved the great re-
sponsibilities of the establishment originated by Sir
FRANCIS BARING, that extraordinary trader
who was pronounced to be " the greatest
merchant in the world " by Lord ERSKINE,
and on the occasion of whose death, in the
September of 1810, there was a perceptible depres-
sion in the funds—the only occasion upon which such
a circumstance has ever occurred upon the demise of
a private individual. After receiving an education
consonant with his fortunes as a prospective mer-
chant, ALEXANDER BARING proceeded to America
for the purpose of ripening his intellect by travel,
and wandering through almost every portion of the
United States—the European continent being closed
against any such pacific expeditions by the terrors of
revolutionary conflict. It was in the course of these
Transatlantic peregrinations that the future Lord
ASHBURTON formed the acquaintance of GEORGE
WASHINGTON, and encountered the youthful
son of EGALITE, afterwards for seventeen years KING
of the FRENCH, and now an obscure and almost
impoverished refugee in the seclusion of Claremont.
On the 23d of August, 1798, ALEXANDER BARING,
then in his twenty-fourth year, married ANNE LOUISA,
the eldest daughter of WILLIAM BINGHAM, Esq., a
merchant of Philadelphia, and a member of the
American Congress. By this union he had issue
five sons and four daughters, his third daughter being
the Dowager Marchioness of BATH, and his eldest
son WILLIAM BINGHAM, late Paymaster-General,
M.P. for Thetford, being the successor to the title
and to the different estates lying in Hants, Kent,
Sussex, Hereford, Suffolk, and Middlesex. Besides
associationthe
f happiness n e
interestss s resuol resulting nt
the
fromß Aititi this
wimatch,th th theosc
of the house of "old BINGHAM of Philadelphia,', as
COBBETT irreverently called him, exercised a most
fortunate influence over the fate of the great firm of
London. In 1812, scarcely two years after his
father's decease had elevated him to the seniority in I
the establishment, ALEXANDER BARING entered Parlia-
ment. Taunton sent him to the House of Commons
as its representative, and he coutinued to remain
there in that capacity until 1826, when he was returned
foriCallington in Cornwall. In 1831 he was returned
for' Thetford, and in 1832 for North Essex. On the
formation of a Ministry by Sir ROBERT PEEL in
1834, Mr. BARING was nominated President of
the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint. When,
however, the Cabinet was broken up in the April of
1835, the subject of our biographic remarks was de-
prived of his brief tenure of statesmanship, though, as
a token of honour for himself individually, and of re-
spect for his class, he was thereupon elevated to the
Upper House by the title of Baron ASHBURTON, his
first cousin, DUNNING, the celebrated lawyer, having
been the first Lord ASHBURTON. About the last in-
cident of a remarkable character in the career of the
deceased nobleman was the circumstance of his being
dispatched in 1842, when nearly 70 years of age, as
an Ambassador or Plenipotentiary to North America,
for the purpose of negotiating a satisfactory
settlement of the memorable question of the Canada
Boundary. Such were the principal occurrences
in the life of ALEXANDER BARING, Lord Asn-
BURTON, a man who was more distinguished as a
merchant than as a legislator, an orator, or a member
of the Government, an I whose chief excellence
consisted in the application of the sound and
cautious intelligence of a business man to the mer-
cantile operations and financial arrangements of a
Legislatute: --IrOlfis respect the wag always 'listened
to with profoiita itte'netion, whether in the Lords, the
Commons, or the Council, for every one recognised in
him one of the grand magnates in the empire of Bri-
tish Commerce. Otherwise his powers were inferior
to the elevation of his position : he was too good a
merchant to be a great statesman, and had too much
deliberation of judgment to display any of the fire
or inspiration of eloquence.
As a politician, Lord ASHBURTON was a living
anomaly. A Whig at the commencement of his
Parliamentary life, he was suddenly transformed
into a Conservative in the middle of it, and towards
its gradual termination revealed something of the
leaven of ancient Toryism. An advocate of free
trade when free trade was regarded as a delusion—a
supporter of the sliding scale when the sliding scale was
despised, he became, in 1846, at the moment of the
great victory of commercial emancipation, a thorough
and uncompromising Protectionist. One while an almost
unconditional, and certainly an enthusiastic follower
of Sir ROBERT PEEL, he was at another his most
violent and contumacious antagonist. Almost every
theme of legislation elicited this duplex complexion
from his character. He illustrated anew, though in
an immeasurably less brilliant manner, that flucta.
ating incongruity which in the genius of NiccoLo
MACHIAVELLI was typified by Mr. MACAULAY as
bearing a resemblance to shot silk. Conspicuous,
however, as these anomalies were in the political
career of Lord ASHBURTON, they were not of such a
nature as to diminish in any particular the respect
with which he was personally regarded. Neither
can they to any peculiar extent deteriorate the dig-
nity of his reputation.

SPAIN.

The Madrid mail of the 9th has arrived.

Twenty-six prisoners, who were taken during the
outbreak, were tried by drumhead court-martial and
shot immediately. Domiciliary visits take place
every day, and it is said that NARVAEZ has ordered the
hotels of the Danish and Belgian Ministers to be
searched. The two Legations will, it is said, protest
against this violation of the law of nations, and as
Denmark has a fleet it is probable that she will do
more than protest, as against Denmark Spain is ut-
terly powerless; for Denmark can by her fleet cut
off all communication between Spain and her co-
lonies.