The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-26 00:00:00

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LONDON; TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1843,

The proceedings at the Central Criminal Court,
during the last fcw days, are suggestive of the most
&lions considerations. We do not allude to the case
of the unfortunate individual who has already been
convicted on the second count of the indictment, and
ho will have to expiate the offence, of which a jury
of his countrymen have declared him t) be guilty.
Still less do we allude to that of the other prisoners
who are now actually on their trials, or who are
awaiting the investigations that must decide the
question of their guilt or innocence, of their freedom
or captivity. Whatever may be our private opinions re-
specting the acts charged against these parties, we shall
abstain from any expression thereof until the last
solemn inquiry has terminated, and the fate of the
last prisoner has been decided, and no longer hangs
trembling in the balance. What we would now in-
rite the public attention to is the necessity of a
speedy revision of certain defects still existing in the
administration of the law, with a view to their re-
moval and the adoption of a more just and equitable
system.

The first point to which we would advert is, that
under the present system a person charged with
a grave and heavy offence, which may in-
volve even his life itself, or his perpetual
banishment from his native land, and the forfeiture of
his liberty during his future existence, is kept coin-
pirativk•ly ignorant of the exact nature of the charge
preferred against him, and is called upon to plead
without a moment's time being allowed to his legal
advisers to consider the nature of the defence that
may be offered on his behalf, or to examine whether
the indictment is framed in strict accordance with
law. We repeatedly witness the most unseemly
altercations between the law officers of the
Cl own and counsel engaged in behalf of
prisoners, more especially when the offences
charged are of a political character, arising
from the refusal to grant applications which
should be conceded "Ex debito justitite." Copies of
the indictments are perpetually asked for, and almost
invariably refused, where the request is merely a
matter of favour that can be legally denied. Copies
of the jury panel, too, are sometimes desired, but these
are never granted in any case, and we consequently
find the time of the Court repeatedly taken up, to the
great obstruction, of the public business, by repeated
arguments, as to the right of the prisoner,
whether he is entitled to have the indictment
read over three times, verbatim, in a slow and audible
tone of voice, or whether he must be contented with
one such reading, or whether he is authorised, before
each juror is empannelled to try the case, to examine
the party on what is termed in law the " voir dire,"
in order to ascertain by his own evidence whether he
entertains any bias or prejudice that would render
him ineligible to decide indifferently between our
Sovereign Lady the QUEEN and the prisoner or
prisoners at the bar. All these discussions,
highly prejudicial to the course of justice,
ard too often calculated to bring the admi-
nistration of the criminal law into contempt
and disrepute, would be altogether avoided by en-
titling every prisoner to have a copy of the indict-
ment which it is intended to prefer against him
delivered to him, at least one clear day before he can
be called upon to plead thereto; and also (if he chooses
to demand it) to have a copy
of
the jurors' list, from
which those who are to try
h will
ed
so
at the same time, or ,
at
least be em
to pannell
a moderate time for investigation before allow
he
shall decide whether he will exercise
the-
right of setting aside peremptorily
a particular jury
may, or challenging for express Cause,such as pre-
oonceiv.4d opinions, partiality, or the like.

Undue the present practice a powerful illustration is
afforded of the far greater respect for, and:protection
to property evinced by the British law, than it ex-
hibits for life or liberty. If a pecuniary claim is
made upon any parson, he can obtain a copy of the
declaration from the proper officer (upon paying a
modente fee for scriveney), and the particulars
of the plaintiff's demand must be served on
him four clear days at least, before he is called
upon to plead to the action. In cases of misdemeanour
he may also obtain a copy of the bill of indictment,

but if the charge be of a felonious character that pri-
vilege is denied, and although all his goods and chat-
tels may be forfeited to the Crown upon his convic-
tion, and his future prospects in life for ever blighted,
he is not permitted to obtain that which is essential to
a fair and impartial trial. The humane theory of
the British law is, that it is better that ninety-nine
guilty persons should escape the punishment due
to their crimes, than that one innocent man should
suffer. In practice, however, innocent men are re-
fused what may be essential to make their innocence
apparent, lest a guilty person might possibly escape,
by the opportunity afforded to his advocate of dis-
covering a flaw in the indictment, if any blot should
actually exist therein. Why should persons be de-
barred from the strictest inquiry into the validity
and legality of the charge, because the results are of
an infinitely more momentous character than any
that could follow an adverse decision in a civil case
or in one of misdemeanour.

Again, the trial by jury is regarded as the great
palladium of an Englishman's liberty. It is his
proudest boast that he cannot be adjudged guilty of
any offence, save on the unanimous verdict of twelve
of his peers, indifferently and impartially selected.
This is a beautiful theory, but how is it carried out in
practice? The sheriff, an officer nominated, with some
rare exceptions, entirely by the Crown, in whose elec-
tion the people hare no share, nominates the jurymen as
he thinks proper. We doubt not that this extraordi.
nary power is in every instance most impartially and
fairly exercised ; but it may be abused, and in cases of
great political importance the imputation will fre-
quently be made, although perhaps most undeservedly.
Why should not every ground of suspicion be re-
moved by the publication of the jury panel a few days
before the sittings commence, and the delivery of a
copy to every prisoner who chooses to demand it ?
By this means the current of justice will flow pure
and unsullied, and be (as it ought) above the breath
of slander or reproach.

A banquet—brilliant, political, philosophic, enthu-
siastic—has at last taken place in the Champs
Elysees. Not the banquet of a few pottering re-
formers, sprinkled with the demireps of aristocracy,
and variegated by the colours of those statesmen who
degenerate from mob-orators to place-hunters, from
place-hunters to courtiers, and from courtiers down-
wards to the lowest grade of all, the sycophants of
kingcraft. Nothing of all this cast a gloom over
the convivialities of the Republicans who, on Friday
afternoon, dined under the green trees in the garden
of the Chalet. M. °DILLON BARROT, in the me-
morable spring of the current year, made an appoint-
ment with three millions of men on the Boule-
vards, and failed to keep it. The Parisians
could not easily forget that dereliction of political
consistency. No more patchwork improvements for
them ! no more cobbling of the old decaying consti-
tution ! no more extraction of the rotten planks, and
substitution of the sound ones as a compensation for
their evanescence ! The doom of the whole blundering
edifice was pronounced by the heroes of February.
The Past was swallowed in the Revolution. The
Present was a chaos, obscured by confusion, and dark-
ened by doubts, but lit up, nevertheless, with the
gleams of hope, and the meteors of popularity, and
the flashes of heroism, and the conflagrations
of oratory. As for the Future—it was a
region of dim anticipations, of doubts, and
anxieties, of the joy of confidence and of
the dejection of dread, a vista as fluctuating and
as feebly defined as might have been expected
from the perspective ambition of a volatile and ima-
ginative people. Talk as we may of the extravagance
of some of the leading statesmen of February—of the
despotism of the commissaries sent into the depart-
ments by the Provisional Minister of the Interior, of
the economic hallucinations of Louis Bemsc, of the
rhetorical rant of Ilccost in the Reforme, and the
subversive Socialism of ALBERT in the .Atelier—it
must be confessed that there was at least in these men
a manliness of daring which compensated in some
measure for the total want on their part of the dig-
nity of virtue or of the grandeur of patriotism. For
these reasons we have watched the character and the
proceedings of the democratic banquet of Friday,
without that inexorable predisposition to suspect and
to abhor which obscures the judgment of those who
are filled with an antipathy for Communism.
After the speech delivered by the President, N.
AUDRY DE PUTRAVEAU, in the course of which he
took en oath of fidelity to the Democratic Republic, an

oration was uttered by M. LEDRU ROLLIN, the dis-
tinguished but unpopular member of the Provi,ional
Government and the ExQcutive Commission. To
den) the eloquence of this oration would be as ridicu-
lous as to deny that its tendency, though obscure and
inferential, was in a very peculiar degree pernicious.
The orator repudiated Socialism, but in the same
breath he adopted its synonym, called Social Repub-
licanism. lie reverenced not FOUREIER, but the
ghost of FOURRIER, not Saint SimoN, but his sha-
dow, not the Organization of Labour, but the aboli-

ion of competition. He grew impassioned as he

tracked the recollections evoked over the sequence of
fifty-six years when he raised his wine. cup to his lips
and drank To the Anniversary of the 22d September,
1792 ! The Right to Labour ! he exclaimed : Was
that Socialism ? No : it was not Socialism—it was
Republicanism ! The infinitesimal division and dis-
tribution of property! Was that Socialism ? No : it
was not Socialism—it was Republicanism ? The
Equalization of public imposts! Was that Socialism ?
No :it was not Socialism—it was Republicanism !
The abolition of monastic vows ! Was that Social-
ism ? No : it was not Socialism—it was
Republicanism ! " Yes ! it is Republicanism !" he
exclaimed, "it is Republicanism ! and the adver.
saries of the true Republic are aware that that Re-
public, if once rooted in the morals of the country,
cannot be overthrown." A sophism, that—and a
sophism to our thinking as tawdry and hollow as any
one of those shallow dogmas which have been born
from the soul of an unprincipled ambition. For a
man who insinuates the spoliations of the rich, to talk
of the morals of the country ! For a man who
hints at the despotism of the rabble over
the conscience, to talk, forsooth, of the
morality of his proposed institutions ! But enough
of this brawling affectation of justice—this flimsy
pretence of humanity—this tinselled mask of pa.
triotism. The violence of the sentiments enunciated
on Friday evening, in the gardens of the Chalet and
in the Champs Elysees, by M. 'ADM" ROLLIN, has
done more to damage his reputation as a Republican
statesman than the insolence of his circulars or the
tyrannical behaviour of his commissaries. Hence- I

"orth his name will never be whispered among
;hose of the practicable politicians capable of

securing the salvation of the Republic. He can
never regain power except by building up for
himself a new popularity; and to acquire a new po-
pularity, it is necessary for him to repudiate almost

every act of his past career. History will pre,
serve his name among those men who, by a glo
rious display of courage, or rather by a magnificen

ebullition of audacity, saved France on the 24th

February. The glory of that event will pre-
serve his name to posterity, but the frivo-
lity of his ideas, and the rashness of his
philosophy, will cover the subsequent incidents of his
biography with the pall of oblivion, that pall which
conceals nothing but baseness and corruption. M.
LEDBU Ronnui has had opportunity enough to be a
great man, and has been, without courage enough to
render himself a bad man—he was shot up into cele•

brity, almost by accident, and in obedience to all the
laws of moral and intellectual gravitation, is now
falling into the depths of insignificance.

SPAIN.

Madrid journals of the 20th have arrived.

General CORDOVA and his staff arrived at Barce-
lona on the 17th. The General immediately assumed
the command of the province of Catalonia. It was
announced in Madrid that AMETTLEE, at the head of
400 mien, bad entered Catalonia.

MADRID BOLSA, SEPT. 19.—Three, 19 15.16 i ;
Fives, 101 i ; Exchange on London, 47 80 cash.

ROYAL SAPPERS AND MINERS.—The 12th com-
pany of this branch of the Ordnance corps were medi-
cally inspected at the Ordnance Hospital on Friday lest,
and their baggage put on board the Princess Royal,
hired transport ship at Woolwich, on Saturday, and the
company under the command of Captain Baillie, RE.,
will embark to-day, Monday, September 25, for Gib-
raltar, to relieve the 11th company under the command
of Captain Ilutclainson, stationed at Gibraltar since
June,