The Sun.
London, England, 1848-04-17 00:00:00

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE
BRADFORD REFORM ASSOCIATION.
Sir,—On Wednesday, the 12th, the Crown and
Government Security Bill was considered in Com-
mittee. If evidence were wanted of the principal
point at issue, the danger and undesirableness of pro-
secuting for words spoken, it would have been given
in the course of this debate. It was experimentally
established, that of words spoken within the last half
hour, in the hearing of men of average talent and with
no assignableintention tomisrepresent oralter, there was
no posssibility of coming at anything like a just report
or accurate repetition. For example, the Member
for Pomfret, designated for distinction the "learned,"
made a verbal statement of the difficulties attending
prosecutions of the nature proposed. An ex-Attorney-
General replied, and he and various Members made
their several statements of what they conceived the
Member for Pomfret to have said. But not one of them
touched or came near to the accurate statement.
Fancy the learned Member for Pomfret to have been
on his trial with the prospect of transportation for
life, for " open and advised speaking" tending to
" deprive or depose" parole evidence from the " style,
honour, or name" it at present occupies in the estima-
tion of the law or lawyers, and there will be a pretty
exact representation of the case. All the witnesses,
within half an hour after the facts, roundly stated
that the learned Member for Pomfret had
asserted the inadequacy of parole evidence;
meaning, as is the understanding of the
term " parole evidence " and nothing else, evi-
dence given by word of mouth by a witnessbefore
the court. For satisfaction I have looked into Black-
stone, and the first words I find are, "proofs are either
written or parol, that is, by word of mouth." This,
then, was the statement of the witnesses. And after
all, the truth was that the learned Member had not
expressed the slightest intention, compassing, or de-
vising of any such attack, or any question on
the merits of parole evidence at all ; but what
he said was a thing as distinct as light from
darkness, from anything stated by the witnesses, for
it was that neither parole evidence nor any 'other
evidence within the reach of man, Was to be trusted
for the establidtment of acts committed by parole or
utterance only, and where no written or other docu-
ment made part of the act charged. I submit the
difference to every man, high or low, who signed the
great petition, and beg him to view the enormity of
the failure of these witnesses to describe. Yet this
is what men are to be exposed to, when their
transportation for life is the question concerned.
A House of Commons, Attorneys-General and all,
half an hour after the facts, is utterly unable to dis-
tinguish between a man's having spoken of evidence
by word of mouth, and evidence to a crime charged
to have been committed by word of mouth ; yet men
are to be transported for life on the evidence of wit-
nesses to words only, under the accumulation of
every possible source of mistake or corruption of the
truth. The experiment in the House o
is, of Commons
invincibly demonstrates, that the great difference be-
tween written and spoken words that in the one
case there is a corpus delicti capable of being laid in
its proper person upon the table of the court, and in
the other there is not; that in the one case the liters
scripts rnanet, and in the other the proof is in its
nature secondary, and cannot be produced in court
except by a sort of hearsay.
On Thursday the principal incidents were con-
nected with the Special Report on the Petition for
"universal Suffrage, &c." The Committee on Public
Petitions stated themselves to have discovered, that
the number of signatures was only one million nine
hundred and seventy-five thousand four hundred and
ninety-six. That on numerous consecutive sheets
the signatures are in one and the same handvtriting.
That the names of distinguished individuals occur in
it, who cannot be supposed to have concurred in its
prayer. That there were names obviously altogether
fictitious. And that there were words and phrases
written in the form of signatures, which decency
prevents from being reported.
All this looks as if there had been a good deal of
neglect somewhere; for everybody knew that facts
of this nature would damage a petition, and therefore
somebody should have looked to hindering it. The
best advice that can be given to the petitioners, is
that it.should not happen another time. Meanwhile
the allegations must be reduced to their real value.
It was stated in the House that the name of the
Duke of Wellington appeared written sixteen or
seventeen times ; which is tantamount to observing
that in one petition with a hundred thousand
names, or in one out of a hundred pe-
titions with a thousand names, which is
vastly more than the average number to a petition,
the name of the Duke of Wellington was found in-
serted once by way of joke. The same may be said
of the fictitious signatures and the indecent. It is
plain that no single instance of this kind would be
held to vitiate a petition with five hundred or a thou-
sand names; though it might be made a handle of
against the Member who presented it. I have seen
indications of a like facetious spirit in petitions put
into my hands ; but should have thought myself an
egregious ass if I had allowed these tares of an
enemy's sowing to interfere with the honest object of
the body of petitioners. In the present case the charge
of personal carelessness is only formal ; for by the
showing of the Committee it would hare taken the
Member for Nottingham three weeks, working
twelve hours a day and resting on Sundays,
to examine the names himself. Nothing can
be plainer than that the things complained
of were in the main the work of enemies and not of
friends. It is folly to go before the millions with
nonsense on such a subject. For example, it has been
stated that in one part of the petition was found
written, "We could not get paid for any more ;"
and there were innocents who lifted up their
hands in amaze at the depravity of the unrepre-
sented classes. The most serious part of the charge,
is that of sheets of names being written in one
hand. It is a thing that has often been heard
of before ; and it would be desirable to know how
many sheets, and whether the names thus suspiciously
added, made one in a thousand, or one in ten thou-
sand, of the whole. I say " suspiciously," because
where men of limited habits of writing are concerned,
the proof of fraudulent intention is not absolute.
Nothing might more easily happen, than that the
inmates of a given factory or neighbourhood, should
invite the best writer among them to write their
names as the readiest way. Soldiers in signing their
regimental accounts, have a tendency to the same
kind of thing which it requires positive exertion to
prevent. The petitioners, or some of them, acknow-
ledge that the thing was done, but not in fraud. At
the same time there is no denying, that it must not
happen again.
It was charged that among the signatures are those
of women. There is no legal objection to women
signing ; nor any objection at all, except that if not
noticed it may affect the estimate of the relative
strength of the petitioners. In the actual case, the
charge ends in the notable discovery, that every
twelfth name was a woman's.
Violent attempts were made to fasten a charge on
the Member for Nottingham, for having described his
petition as signed by five millions, when it turned out
to be signed by only two millions. Now every man
in his heart knows, that this in the main is only pant;
though it is undeniable that accuracy of statement is
always desirable, and that a man risks giving an ad-
vantage to his enemies by not attending to it. Princi-
pals make their statements upon the information of
subordinates ; and of the information of subordinates
there is little to be said, but that it is almost
always wrong. There is scarcely a public
meeting on an agitating subject, where the numbers
are not doubled by the reports on one side, and
halved on the other; and if a Member of Parliament
were to be taken to task, for having stated the
numbers of a meeting he never counted, according to
the estimate in his own party's journals, he would be
in something like the position of the Member for
Nottingham on this part of the case.
All this was followed by a scene, of which the public
journals may be referred to for the facts, and the ten-
dency of which may be considered as being signally to
increase the influence and numbers of those who may be
in a dangerous state of discontent. Born in a society
which does not recognise the duello, and only fights
at the command of the civil magistrate, it can be no
desire of mine to meddle unnecessarily with such sub-
jects. But, familiar as I must inevitably have been
with every existing opinion, I see no objection to
saying, that under no code on earth would the con-
duct of the Member for Nottingham be considered as
anything but the most eminently proper, and that
nothing would have justified him in carrying his re-
sentment beyond the opportunity for condonation.
On the whole the attack on the petition is what is
technically termed " a mare's nest ;" the fallacy
lying, in collecting the deaf nuts out of a ship-load,
and parading them as if they came out of a gallon.
1 After every conceivable deduction, it is clearly the
petition of a million and three quarters of earnest
men ; and nobody will be the better for the way in
which it has been treated.
On Friday the debate on the " Security" Bill was
continued to a late hour in Committee. The Go-
vernment holds to the punishment for words; and the
Solicitor-General as good as told the House, that the
limited period was only to get over present opposition,
and there was no doubt of the law being meant to be
perpetual. An Alien Bill is before the other House,
and altogether we are a gcod way on the road to
1798. I thought the Whigs would have carried us
off the shore ; but I begin to be afraid it must be done
on the other tack.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T.
RRONET THOMPSON.
Blackheath, London, April 17, 1848.

CONSECRATION OF ST. JUDE S CHURCH, WRITE-
caArEL.—On Saturday tho new church of St. Jude's,
Commercial-street, Whitechapel, was consecrated by the
Bishop of London, in the presence of a highly respec-
table congregation,