The Sun.
London, England, 1833-03-04 00:00:00

with the administration of law. It is not long since
the terror of strange crimes disordered the wits of
great numbers of people. The dread of the Burkers
was so great that simple folks were afraid of walking
after dusk lest pitch plaisters should be clapped on
their mouths, and they should be thrust into sacks,
suffocated, and sold to the surgeons. Lord Mel-
bourne, too, was lately alarmed for the safety of the
State by the broad sword exercise of half a dozen
poor fellows who were apprehended for this dange-
rous practice with wooden swords, and not brought
to trial, the intimidation of ridicule having deterred
the Secretary of State from going through with the
performance of his gravest duty. A stone was thrown
at the King, as the Tories say, by reason of the
Political Unions. Bristol was sacked and burnt in
honour of Reform, according to the same veracious
authorities. Let us imagine an Irish Stanley, or
Aithorp, in an Imperial Parliament at llablin, re-
presenting these and a hundred other instances,
coloured by prejudiced witnesses, and crowned with
the citation of a Grub-street ballad, as reasons for
suspending the constitutional rights of Englishmen,
and subjecting their houses to night-searches, and
prohibiting their political or convivial meetings, and
making their absence from home after or before sun-
rise a crime in this foggy land, where the proceedings
of the sun are far from notorious ! We do not mean
by these illustrations to deny the prevalence of law-
lessness and outrage in Ireland, but we mean to con-
tend that these things are always exaggerated ; and
that, even without exaggeration, such a recital of
crimes as occupies a statesman an hour—a night
—a week in the oral delivery, can furnish no
ground for invading the constitution of a nation.
But we go farther—we assert that no state of
things existing or imaginable can prove the expe-
diency of the proposed law. No amount of crime,
from Cain down to the present hour, can show that
soldiers have the qualifications of Judges. If the
qualifications of Judges be not wanted—if, as we
believe the whole object is to spread abroad the
terror of punishment, better to decimate the people,
pass a Bill subjecting every tenth man to transpor-
tation, and giving the Viceroy, or delegates of his
appointment, the selection of the sufferers. The ad-

vantage of this over the pending measure would
cottsi•t in the security and ease of mind of the nine-
tenths when the tenth had been picked out and sen-
tenced. Under the proposed law, none can imagine
themselves for a moment safe, because, if not ob•
noxious to the Government, the magistracy, the
squirearchy, or the hierarchy, or the police, or any
one in authority, or any one connected with or
having the ear of any one in authority—if free from
apprehensions of enmity from all these quarrers,
there is yet the danger of the prejudices or errors,
or grudges of the soldiery; for well we all know
that when the sword is sent out on any extraor-
dinary commission, it is apt not only to do and over-
do its appointed task, but also to cut out a little
work on its private account. It is proposed that a
lawyer should attend the courtsmartial as assessor,
to instruct the military judges in the law of the
land. If they defer to his suggestions, he is in effect
the Judge; and why not make him so &redly, and
in the most efficient way, and unhampered with
chose whom he has to guide? He must do better
without than with the ignoramuses. They can be
no help to him; and the bundle of sticks impeding
the working instrument, will have no civil sanction.
It is pretended that the alternative is the courtmar-
tial or legal, or magisterial functionaries steeped in
faction, in whom the people have no confidence; but
the Judge need not, should not be Irish, for never
will the laws be impartially administered in that

country till the whole of the bench and magistracy
be swept away, and their places filled with stran-
gers unwarped with local prejudices and party
spirit. Lord Althorp, however, observes,
" It has been mentioned, among other things, that a
Judge of Assize might be sent down to try offenders
without the aid of a jury; but, in my opinion, this mode
of habituating the minds of the people to a new species
of trial (tor new it would be, and without a single prece-
dent in its favour) by a Judge without the intervention of
a jury, would he more dangerous in itself, and more un-
con,i itutional and detrimental than the plan we propose."
Why, what is Lord Althorp proposing but to ha-
' bituate the minds of the people to a new species of
trial ? and has he not expressly advocated the Bill
on the grounds of its broad and revolting deviation
from all constitutional principles ? Have not he
and his colleagues asserted that the more startling
and unpopular the innovation, the safer and the
better for the people ? The trial by Judges of
Assize, he says, would not have precedent in its
favour. And what precedent in its favour has the
'rial by courtsmartial?—the tnurder of Sir William
Crosby, and the many other atrocities of the same
period which yet live in the recollection of the peo-
ple ? His Lordship continued,
"Another suggestion has been, that barristers, appointed
by the Crown, should try criminals without the interven-
tion of a jury. This scheme, in my mind, would he far
more objectionable than the employtnent of a Judge of
Assize; because the seltarion would be made by Govern-
ment, and it must be from barristers who are in ex-
pectation of reward and promotion, in consequence of
pleasing the Government; whereas a Judge, who had
risen to the head of his profession, might be supposed,
perhaps, above temptation. Such a precedent would be
perilous to the Constitution and faulty in principle, and
therefore I object to it."
If barristers (having in the administraton of jus-

tice the pride of craftsmen) are objectionable be-
cause they may be " in expectation of reward and
promotion in consequence of pleasing; the Govern-
ment" (and Lord Althorp seems to have a pretty
accurate knowledge of what will please the Go-
vernment, and implies it to be injustice to the
people), what is to be said for courts composed of
officers " in expectation of reward and promotion in
consequence of pleasing the Government," and
whose subservience will not be disturbed by any
very lively consciousness of the injustice they may
be committing while signalizing their zeal, and re-
commending themselves to the ruling powers ?
There is notoriously no class of men so im-
mediately under the influence of Government
as the military ; and though the influence
be not actively exerted, there will always be a
shrewd notion of the road to favour, which will
move eager aspirants to anticipate or outrun the
worst behests of theirpatrons. Further, we will assert
that no one can have mixed in the society of subal-
terns in the army, without observing their contempt
of popular spirit and popular rights, and their undis-
guised desire to trample upon an assertion of free-
dom, which may seem to rebuke their own state of
constraint. These dispositions, avowed without
shame, nay, boasted, were only to be laughed at
while these men were mere trailers of sabres and
smokers of segars; but when they are to be invested
with civil authority, their animosities, their splenetic
hostility to the independence of freemen, become se-
riously formidable. And if prejudices don't happen
to rankle in their own breasts, they are sure to be
infused by their provincial associates. All the
Ministers have abandoned the Irish Magistrates;
even Mr. Stanley admits that the powers called fur
cannot be intrusted to them. Public opinion has so
quickly and forcibly declared against martial law,
that there is an extreme anxiety on the part of
Ministers and their creatures to repudiate it, and
it is daily stated in print and Parliament, that it is
a vile Radical misrepresentation to talk of martial
law; but Lord Grey's description of the Bill on its '
introduction was, that it embodied "a mitigated
system of martial law !" It is pleaded, however,
that the martial courts will have to administer civil
law. The members, we reply, will be very apt to
administer the law of which they have knowledge,.
and it is not easy to conceive how they can admi-
nister the law of which they have no knowledge,
except at the prompting of the legal assessor, in
which case we see no reason why the assessor who
directs should not perform the full office of judge.
We ali know the story of the sign painter excel-
lently practised in painting red lions, and who was
employed to paint the sign of an angel. At first
lie suggested to Boniface the superior merits of a
red lion, but finding him obstinate, concluded,—" I
will paint an angel certainly if you insist ort it, but