The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-29 00:00:00

. ,
gamed intim:dealt against the Union before it took place.
Among these were extracts from a speech of Mr. Bombe,
and a pamphlet of Mr. Jelib; both gentlemen then before
him as Judges of King's Bench, and feim an anti-1.1,6-o
eiieecii of Mr. Plunket, now Lord Plunket, Chancellor
of Ireland. He contrasted their tango tge against the
ineasnre with his own for its repeal,
and besought the
Jury not to punish his client for sen•iinents which had
been so eloquently promulgated by the highest ornam,nts
of this country long before.
After the delivery of Mr. O'Connell's speech, which
occupied three hours and a half the Court adjourned, at
The request of the Jury, till this morning.
The Solicitor-General, in his reply. denied that the
the law, and 'he proteetien of his Majesty's subj-cta. from
prosecution had goy other object than the vindication of
the illusion and coneequ-nt milsehirf and injure which an
individual of great talent and influence might diffuse
the chase er,
through the country, if publications df
will the 'denature which this bore, flowed to cir-
culate with impunity. Ir was not the act of o:llsanshin
and
—it emanated from no Whig or Tory feeling or pritivig
—hut from the conscientious discharge of his duty by the
Attorney-General, who wished to save his countrymen
from despotism of a new order; from the car of a dicta-
torial tyranny, which attempted to bear down every party
and sect that would not join in the mad cry of radicalism
and wild and undefined revolution. "It is time," said
the Selicitor-General, "for honest men of every piety and
persuasion to unite against a licentiousness which. under
the pretext of improving the country, would only demo-
ralize its people, and retard the progress of improvement
and rational reform."
The Chief Justice charged the Jury briefly ; telling
them the liberty of the pre-s and of the subject were the
same—both were free to discu-e and comment upon any
stoject they pleased, provided that, in doing so, no public
or private mischief was effected.
The Jury, in giving in their verdict, recommended
defendant to mercy ; and, with the content of the Crown
Counsel, he was allowed to stand out, on his recogni-
zance', until the first day of next term.
It was stated in Court that the Attorney-General was
his morning confined to bed by sudden illness.

LIBEL LAW.

(From the Brighton Guardian.)
THE KING v. COHEN.
In order that the (pi stion may be properly undiirstooile
we must recapitulate the early proc-edings in this cans
The proceeding was by indic-ment, the bill to the grand
jury of the March Assizes, 1832, being presented person-
ally by Mr. Mabbott, he being both a Magisttate and
a member of that jury, which reckoned at the time 2t
Magistrates among the 23 persons of whom it West
composed. The bill so presented charged a libel on the
magistrates of Sussex.—that is to say, on the 20 magie-
trates then present and on their 180 colleague. ; it also
charged inciting the oppressed labourer tii acts of vio-
lence; and this grand jury of maeisrratee returned a
ue bill after so scanty an inquiry, that it may he
truly said there was no inquiry at all Nay, we have tern
assured by one of the gentlemen present, that the right in
the grand jury to inquire in o the merits of the charge
was stoutly rsisted, it being asserted that the mere proof
of publication was all that it was necessary to lay Ii tore
the grand jury to justify the finning of the true b:II.
T e consideration of the questions,—" libel or no
ithel ?"—" the existence or the non-existence of t:l*
motives charged ?" were, it was said, to he determined on
the trial. Now, we must here he allowed to say that
the gentl men who submitted to this dictation, and who
t, us allowed their own judgment to he set -it naught. were
either unacquainted with the duties of their appttintinent,
or failedtheinsei in
themselves
oeaenointagigtihte naa
nt
(hi t
u)y which they had
iceddi.e b rued
~;,,,f
them. It is, we apprehend, the duiy of the grand jury
to be sati-fi d that the warty prosecuting can st least "rake
out a prima ficie case against Limp rty charged. If we
have been riehrly 'wormed, the grand jury in this case was
not so satisfied; and conscquenily the obligation volunta-
rily undertaken by them was not redeemed. And in this
particular case the neglect was the more unparilmianie,
b icause the gentlemen composing the grand joy were
themselves interested parties—they were, in fact, prosecu-
tors, and they constituted themselves judges in the first
instance—they complained of a wrong done to their rept .
t ition, and they hastened to condemn ; and, according to
our view of the matter, they thereby violated one of the
most important attributes of justice. Nor does the mis-
chief stop here ; they have assisted in discrediting the ad-
ministration of the laws. Had they insisted on that stria t
inquiry which it was their duty to institute, they would
in all probability have refund their sanction to a proceeding
whii h has been condemned by the independent as opprera.
sive, and even by the timid as most impolitic, and which,
by being carried vindictively to its legal termination, has
not a little damaged the reputatiou of institutions which
it is unwise in the possessors of power to force under the
rigid scrutiny of the governed.
The true bill being obtained, the defendant sought to
change the venue,—that is to say, to take from out of
the sphere of influence possessed by the 200 magistrates
of Sussex the trial of a question in the result of which
those magistrates were deeply interested. In this applica-
tion, which was to the Court of King's Bench, ihe
def,ndant was unsuccessful, although the Court which
rejected his application was compelled to admit its pro-
priety by refusing to allow the prosecutor his cons And
it must be here frankly stated that this application to take
the trial out of Sus-ex was made in the anticipation; borne
out by the result, that the prosecutor would violate.—
legally, of course—one of the boasted privileges of Eriglieli-
men. We say advisedly that he violated this important
privilege legally, because we desire to show that, except
perhaps in some questions of life or death in which the
peasant and the peer are equally protected, the law sides
with the rich to the disadvant ige of the poor. The
prosecutor, who is wealthy, struck a special jury, at the
expense to him of some 251. or 301. ; and by this
sacr fine to the rapacity of our hungry courts, he
was allowed to strip the defendant of the protec-
tion which a "jury of his peers" would have
thrown around him. The defendant's station in life ranks
him among common jurors ; and if the excellent principtc
that a man shall be tried by his squall had not in this
instance been virtually blotted out by the wealth of the
prosecutor, the trial of the defendant would have taken
place before a common jury. It was on the reputation,
the property, and Vie liberty of Mr. Cohen, and net of
Mr. Mabbutt, the jury were empannelled to decide. Had
the converse been the fact, and had Mr. Mabbott struck a
special jury, it would not have been competent for his
prosecutor to have had him tried and condemned by a
common jury. Mr. Mabbott would have insisted on the
privile:e of being tried by his peers, or equals, and the
law would have yielded to his just demand. He must, it
is true, have paid for enjeying the privilege. Ties tier,
however, only serves to set in a, stronger light the
alarming truth, that the law—that law which we are
enjoined to respect and reverence—bestows its smiles on
the possess ors of wealth.
The defendant being thus deprived of the privilege of
being tried by his peers, the case went to a special jury at
Lewes on July 31, 1833, when the foreman announced,
as it appeared to us with no trifling inward eatieftction,
the unanimous verdict of the jury. It might have been
the gentleman's manner; but to our inquiring, and per-
haps prejudiced senses, his eagerness, anti the tone ofvoice
in which he uttered the words " My Lord, we are all
agreed," conveyed the idea of the triumph of a political
e temy.
The circumstances which we have above detailed, and
the almost indecent haste with which the grand jury re-
turned a true bill, impressed us a. the rime with the belief
that the prosecution proceeded from the magistracy, and
we think we shall not he required to apologize for having
arrived at that conclusion. The communications, how-
ever, which we subsequently received, and the result of
the inquiri s we felt it our duty to institute, soon corrected
the error under which we laboured ; and the impro.ed
impression we then received was fully confirmed on the
trial, when Mr. Sergeant Spankie, addressing the jury,
said—" I appear, however, for a private preercutnt, whose
duty is painful, but to whom society is deeply indebted."
In the Court of King's Bench, on Saturday-week,
the None Mr. Sergeant Spankie insisted that the prose-
cution bad been instituted by " the magistrates," who,
lie added, appeared by " their solicitor, the clerk of the
peace."

The new comedy at the Ad:lphi Theatre, for
go we may call it, improves each night on repe ition. It
certainly required mumi tact on be aathor'a part to divist
it of tl.e grossness of Fauhide, but be Dd. completely suc-
ceeded in doing co.

Tto
seiranred
Lady .
~idence in Palac..yard,
toorr(:tuo:
from Lauriston G.ttage, Wald. r-
-
The
Mannerse
Speaker
Sutton of thee r. House
B,)are, about the 10th of Dreernber. The Goalie ;runt of
the Speaker'sliou-e h4s fairly undertone hu,Le n,er,..ry
repots, and ti e e Paoliamntity
Levee Room is a.so no irr-
going a thorough ren•Nation prepat att.ry t.i tne comm c
e,.e•
ment of the euminK session, Mistly Hall, in Es-ex, z.r
several years tenanted by the Spvuker and hi. faattly, tiax
been given up by him to the proprietor, Lord Riven, the
are
d
,us having expired.