The Sun.
London, England, 1833-03-05 00:00:00

COUNTY OF LOUTH ASSIZES.

DUNDALK, FEB. 27.

Baron Sir W. C. Smith and Chief Justice Bushe ar-
rived here last night between eight and nine o'clock,
accompanied by Edward Tipping, Esq., High Sheriff, and
attended by a numerous cortege. About twelve o'clock
to-day the Hon. Baron took his seat in this Court, imme-
diately after which the commission was read by Walter
Bourne, jun., Esq., and the grand pannel called over.
BARON SMITH'S CHARGE.

The Jury having been empannelled, Sir W. Small ad-
dressed them and a very crowded Court (every individual
listening with almost breathless attention) as follows :
Gentlemen of the Grand Jury,—l am sorry to have, in
addressing you, to begin by deploring what has at least
'been very recently the situation of your county. If re.
tort has not exaggerated, it must, however, he deplored.
If peace be tranquilla libertas (and it has been so defined),
six weeks have not elapsed since the condition of Louth
was any thing but peaceful. On the contrary, quietusn
aervitium would have been a better description of its state.
lts mock tranquillity seemed produced by the prostration
of the law ; the non-resistance of the well-disposed, and
triumphant ascendant of vulgar and lawless power, which
was only not in savage action because it appeared
already to have won the, day. Thus, by a sort of prac-
tical paradox, the lightness of its calendar showed the
state of your county to be alarming. I am aware that
it has, still more recently, and very suddenly, assumed the
appearance of tranquillity of a somewhat different na-
ture ; but can a change so instantaneous be traced to
causes justifying rational exultation ? Can the latter calm
be less treacherous or delusive than the first ? May it not
have in part arisen from a certain completeness of organ-
isation—a perfection of seditious discipline, which can
render implicit and prompt obedience to, epistolary edicts,
aided by universal and influential subsidiary efforts to
enforce them? May not the arrival of a stipendiary ma-
gistrate, the addition to the police,—nay, the speech and
measures with which the Parliamentary session has been
opened, have contributed to produce a calm less trium-
phant, but more insidious, than the first? A spirit that
lurks, and merely waits its opportunity for effectual mis-
chief, is not laid. A quiet, originating in terror and in
craft, would seem to have succeeded one which had its
more insolent and haughty source in unencountered
strength and successful intimidation. But even the
former domineering and despotic stillness, which has,
with a suddenness so conspicuous, given way to a different
calm, was not uninterrupted. By occasional outrages it
evinced that savage ferocity was but suspended, and
these outrages were characterised by a system, and
uniformly pointed in a direction, which showed them to be
tesults of consistent plans, and of a factious confedera-
tion, if individuals of the humbler class were the chief
objects of such aggression, yet I have learned, from some-
thing more authentic than mere rumour, that for this the
kgettry were in some degrees indebted to their own precau-
tions—that their dwellings were, in too many instances,
transformed to redoubts, which their garrisons would
scarcely venture to issue from unarmed. This is a state
of things which could not list. Either the law, or some-
thing stronger than the law, must put it down ; or it
would prostrate the fair fabric of our laws and Constitu-
tion. Indeed, that something stronger than pre-ent law,
—that dictatorial authority, which insubordination has
provoked, seems on the point of being enacted. The tem-
porary despotism which, urged by a strong necessity, it
sanctions, will, I moat anxiously hope, be of but short
duration ; and I as sincerely hype and trust, that the die.
cretienary powers which it confers will be as wisely and
judiciously, as I am sure they will be honestly and hu-
manely, used ; that they will he administered with
reference rather to the spirit, than to what may turn
out to he the mere letter of the coercive law ; that
they will be pointed against the seditious movements
which this absolute authority was intended to
resist ; that its salutary conflict (in the language
of the Royal speech) will be "with that spirit of insubor-
dination:and violence which has risen to the most fearful
height, rendering life and property insecure, defying the
authority of the laws, and threatening the most fatal con-
sequences, if not promptly and effectually repressed."
Vulgar cunning has been much too long, and (considering
how clumsy was its artifice) most unaccountably trium-
phant ; but right-handed wisdom, at the long-run, will
overcome it. The stern code which is said to be impend-
ing I have seen described as the ens'avement of our country.
If permanently established, it would be truly so described ;
het, considered as a transient system, it may, on the con-
trary, if duly administered, be our liberation. it may
rescue from insecurity the now precarious lives and proper-
ties of the loyal and well-conducted. It may liberate from
manacles, insult, and aggression, the fettered, the violated,
and derided law. It may rescue a maniac multitude from the
destructive frenzy into which it has been goaded. It may do
co by an application of indispensable and salutary coercion.
As long as England conforms to the true principles of the
Union, I shall wish the strict and blending connexion which
is established to subsist. But one of those principles, and
a main one, is this :—that Ireland, which before the
Union, was an independent though connected country,
should, by the Union, not have lost, but incorporated its
independence ; and become of the British empire, not a
province, but a part. We owe what may be called alle-
giance to the Union, but not any to connexion substan-
tially different from what the articies of the Union have
prescribed. It is our charter, for which we have paid a
weighty price; which it is our right and duty loyally to
defend, and which, but with our lives, we ought not to
surrender. If it were violated,—but it never will be, an
Irishman's duties might become (Efferent from what they
are. After dwelling at length on the Grand and Petit
Jury system in Ireland, Mr. Baron Smith said, the cri-
minal law is a frontier and key-fortress, the destruction or
surrender of which would leave our social establishments
quite exposed and without defence. But if the jurors who
garrison this fortress be not " good men and true ;"
if they be improbi, not probi ; if instead of being
" not suspect," they are obnoxious to well-merited suspi-
cion and distrust—such a garrison might betray the for-
tress, and lay the constitution open to the invader. lam
a sufficient old bird to distinguish chaff from grain—a suf-
ficiently old (I will not say statesman) to have learned the
diplomatic cipher of sedition. Accordingly, when the
factious enjoin tranquillity, I understand the drift, and do
not doubt the sincerity of the injunction; Duly interpreted,
it is this Do not, by premature explosion, suffer the
formidable extent and mischief of your revolutionary ob-
j- cts to transpire. In doing so you will defeat them, de-
tect the ambuscade, and frustrae half the plans of us,
your whole-length leaders. If your intentions be thus
noised, the constituted authorities will no longer slumber ;
they will encounter your daring projects ; and perhaps
may not be quite too late to check your pride.' " Why
must this be a true interpretation of their injunctions ?
Because we must otherwise suppose them intent on extin-
guishing a conflagration which their every act, and every
breath, is contributing to promote. lam less given to

estimate the value of a system I,y its theory than
by it 4 practical operation and effects. But the jury

system in Ireland, in the main, has worked well ; and

for whatever present safety, or prospect of future security
remains to it, the country is in part indebted to this
fact, that in the main its jury system has worked correc-
tively and well. If it continue in operation, it may still,
I think, work well ; not, perhaps, as well as it has done
heretofore (extrinsic aul formidably sufficient cause.,
lately come into robust existence, are likely .to prevent
this), but incomparably better than any system radically
different from it would be found to do. I even doubt

whether the very circumstances which may forbid its
working as well hereafter, as it has done heretofore, are
not additional and strong reasons for allowing it to con-
tinue. I take it to have hitherto, in general (though not
so Effectually as every friend to peace and order must de-
sire), been a barrier against aggressions of which no obser-
vant man can doubt the object; and, of course, I would
rather strengthen than remove this barrier, when these
aggressions are daily, and violently, and too successfully
increasing in audacity, mischief, and turbulent extent. To
the well working of our jury system there may, there must,
have been occasional exceptions ; but if " Crowners quest
law" juries have ever pronounced an officer of the law
to he a murderer for having performed his duty, in re-
pelling force by force; or found peasants guiltless if not
meritorious, for having resisted the law, and slain the
Ministers of justice, in their execution of it ; these could
not have been jurors empannelled by a Sheriff. But our
present system might be altered in such a way as to ex-
pose us to the risk of having juries commonly in a Crown
Court resembling those who are occasionally upon an in-
quest. I will net say that never at assizes have improper
verdicts been returned ; I will not say ti hether anything
of this sort Inte4 recently occurred ; but the errors, if com-
mitted, have in general produced, not the condemnation
of the innocent, but, what. must be considered as a lesser
evil, the acquittal of the guilty. And, above all, these
errors arose, not from the exercise of the Sheriff's right
of selection, but from causes, which a depriving him of
this right of selecting would increase; so that for one
objectionable verdict, we might then be likely to meet a
thousand, if.the Irish Constitution lasted long enough to
give tirre for their being found. I know a fashion
has arisen of arraigning the conduct of our Sheriffs, and
the working of our jury system in tievir hands. But
when, through the proceedings of some of these arraigurrs
I discern their views, my attachment to that system, in