The Sun.
London, England, 1856-10-28 00:00:00

arrive at a sound conclusion on the important

question.
Without being advocates for great severity, we
have always deemed that capital punishment was
indispensable in extreme cases. Where any
person wilfully and deliberately, with malice afore-
thought, shed the blood of his fellow-creature, he
ought to expiate the terrible offence by enduring
the extreme penalty of the law. Whenever ex-
tenuating circumstances could be established
there would be ground for mitigation. But in
cases like those of PALMER, DOTE, CELESTINA
SUMNER, and others, to which we might allude,
there could be no claim for clemency. The
offenders had by their own atrocities placed them-
selves outside the pale of humanity—were rabid
animals, who should no more cumber the earth ;
and whose removal would, at the same time, afford
a salutary example, and remove offenders who had
forfeited every claim to sympathy or forbearance.
We are, however, bound to consider the con-
flicting views of those who honestly and con.
-cieutiously believe that no man is authorised to
deprive his fellow-man of life, and who also ques-
tion the expediency and policy of the proceeding.
If any point has been established, we should ra-
ther say admitted, on all sides, it is that the law
is not one of venteance. It is merely as an
" example," to prevent others from committing
,imilar outrages, that the fearful exhibition which
some good men have not refrained from terming
a judicial murder, has been tolerated. A new
advocate has now published his opinions on
the interesting question--one whose antecedents
have entitled him to pronounce, ex cathedra, on
the point. Never, perhaps, was there a more
efficient and experienced advocate in criminal
_eases than Mr. Commissioner PHILLIPS. During
he period of his practice he was concerned in
every great case, and the tact and eloquence in-
variably displayed secured an eager competition for
his invaluable services. He necessarily possessed
the confidence of his clients, and thus had access
to sources of information hermetically sealed to
the community at large. He had thus unques-
tionable data on which to found his judgment,
and when we find the result of his experience
given to the public, we are bound to bestow on it
the attentive consideration to which it is so emi-
nently entitled.
It has been clearly a " labour of love," with
the learned Commissioner. He has entered
heart and soul into the question on which he is
so well qualified to speak, and has certainly
wade out a case
,sufficient to induce any unpre-
judiced person to ponder seriously on the point.
The matter is treated in a manly and straight-
forward manner, without any of that maudlin
sentimentality that too often disgusts the reader.
Every point is fairly grappled with ; Mr.
Pamirs respects the views of his opponents, and,
treating them as conscientious men, endeavours
to show that they have been led astray by evil
example, when the hangman was the great school-
master of the nation, and when, what was in
the language of the initiated, designated as
" nibbling a wipe," or "lifting a calico," was
deemed worthy of death on the scaffold ; and
" hanging was civilised, Christian England's uni-
versal panacea—her legislative specific !"
Mr. PHILLIPS not merely questions the expe-
diency, but the right, to deliberately take the life
Jf a fellow-creature under any circumstances.
He argues, and with great apparent foundation,
that inasmuch as arnan has no right to take his own
life under any state of affairs, he cannot confer
upon another or others a privilege which he does
not himself possess 1 He thinks that the divine
admonition, "Thou shalt do no murder," is as
binding on a nation as on an individual, and that
the exemption to CAIN should be extended to all
Whose who have followed the awful precedent.
But the main part of the argument is directed to
the policy and expediency of the law. On this
oart of the case the learned Commissioner is
peculiarly felicitous, and he strengthens his
arguments by a reference to a c/arura et
venerabile nornen, the late Mr. HARMER, whose
experience in criminal cases had seldom beon
equalled—never surpassed. Into all the details
as to the effect on society and on the culprit, the
earned gentleman has fully entered. He has
pointed out the possibility of mistake—a fear-
11l error, indeed, when the life of an innocent
person may be sacrificed under the colour of law.
He has shown that such things have been,
and, therefore, proves that they may again
cake place. Without saying anything ourselves,
ve earnestly commend Mr. Commissioner PHIL-
Lrps's admirable brochure, " Vacation Thoughts
-fla Capital Punishment," to the attentive conside-
ration of our readers. We promise them that
it will well repay perusal, and that it will place
in old question in a new and very interesting

point of view._

Ireland, after so many years of suffering and
desolation, after all the.- turmoils of a long
political agitation, after having been decimated
liy famine, and in a great measure also depopu-
lated hero and there by the effects of a wholesale
and systematic immigration— Ireland so long
squalid, hopeless, disaffected, and poverty-
stricken, may at length, thank GOD ! be spoken of
in the year of grace, 1856, as—tranquil—happy
—loyal—and prosperous ! Her prosperity, too, is
not merely temporary, and so far illusory, but
permanent and substantial. Her tranquillity is
not simply partial or superficial, but profound and
universal. Her' happiness is neither assumed nor
local, but genuine and complete. Above all, her
loyalty is by no means either affected or excep-
tional, but entire and enthusiastic. As glaringly
and resplendently demonstrative of all this, it is
only necessary to direct attention to the magni-
ficent, and we may venture to add without any-
thing at all like exaggeration, the wholly unex,
ampled banquet given on Wednesday the 22d of
October, in a grand temporary building erected for
the occasion, in the Irish capital—the great Dublin
Banquet to some 3,500 of our Crimean Heroe-,
bronzed and bearded, wounded and decorated—
brave sons of our soil, who fought, and bled, and
starved, and conquered in front of the deadly
earthworks of the beleaguered city of Sebastopol.
There can be no question at all about this—that
the Crimean Banquet given by the Dublivite,
totally and signally eclipsed the previous one given
to the brothers in arms of the feasted soldiery by
the openhanded, large-hearted, but bungling
Londoners ! Added to which the speech of the
evening, on the 22d October, far surpassed any
one of the many successful and characteristicte yanoyccoansieonoof
ftlatheeveaarriolirear
oratorshguns aran indulged in by
who spoke upon the
but in every way subordinate
ovation—the admir-
able and even inimitable speech delivered upon
Wednesday last to the assembled soldiers from
the Crimea, by his Excellency the present populaw
and gifted Lord-Lieutenant' That brief but
thrilling and trumpet-tongued oration we take to
be so very masterly in its way, especially as ex-
pressive of the significance of the great Dublin
Demonstration, that we do not apologise for re-
produning it here once again, in its eloquent and
heart-stirring, and soul-exciting completeness.
His Excellency said:—
" Soldiers of the Crimea,—My wish now is not to
wink long, but loud. I wish that every DM I see be.