The Sun.
London, England, 1833-06-13 00:00:00

tion of the Riot Act. Assuming all that had been gated of
the conduct of the police to be correct, he would ask if the
Hon. and Learned Member for Bath meant to say that
the violence of any of the police in one part of the ground,
or in many parts, could justify the slaying of another police-
man in a different part of the ground ? To this it was that the
assumptions of the Honourable Member for Bath would lead.
He hoped to God the case would have a fair trial, and that
the individual, having defended himself, would have a ver.
dict of acquittal; but he must say, that upon the
fact, as stated before the coroner's jury, their verdict
ought not to have been justifiable homicide, but murder, With
respect to the application to the Court of King's Bench
to quash the verdict of the Jury, it had been made by him
in concurrence with his Hon. Colleague the Attorney-General ;
that Court by qualifying the verdict of the Jury had decided
upon its impropriety, and upon the illegality of this
meeting, and he thought that the House would take the opinion
of the Honourable Court in preference to that of the Honourable
Member for Bath. The House would be surprised when he
told them that some portion of the public press had advised
persons attending these meetings to arm themselves with knives
to meet the police, and that advice had been sanctioned by
the verdict of an English Coroner's Jury, who said it was
justifiable homicide to put a policeman to death while on duty.
Such was the opinion of an English coroner's jury.—(Hear,
hear.) For these reasons he had thought it his duty to bring
the verdict of the jury before the Court of King's Bench ; that
Court had, no choice but to decide upon the facts that were
brought before them, and upon those facts they had come to
the determination of quashing the verdict. Though he
had been condemned for the course he had adopted by the
Hon. Member for Bath, he rejoiced to know that he had the
favourable opinion of the thinking part of the public with
him. The next charge that had been made against him was,
that there had not been a fresh inquiry. Now it had
in previous cases been decided that there could be no 1
fresh enquiry without the special order of the Court of King's
Bench, and without the deceased was exhumed, and sub-
mitted for the inspection of a fresh jury. It would be fatal
to the verdict of any jury on an inquest, if it should
appear that they had proceeded without a view of the
body. He had not advised the adoption of that
course, because he saw no necessity for it, being clearly of
opinion that such an inquiry was not at all likely to facilitate
the justice of the case. Being of that opinion, he had thought
it his duty to apply to the Court of Kir g's Bench
to quash the verdict without a " inquirendo "
If any of his Majesty's subjects were dissatisfied with that
course, it was competent to them to make a motion on the
subject before the King's Bench, which would exercise its own
opinion whether it would refuse or grant the motion Before he sat
down, he must protest against the doctrine of the Hon. Member
for Bath that the meeting was legal. Its legality did not de-
pend on its numbers ; there might be a legal meeting of hun-
dreds of thousands, and an illegal one consisting only of three
persons. Where there was a meeting to supersede the
constitution, and put down King, Lords, and Commons, snch
a meeting was illegal, and it was wholly immaterial what the
numbers attending it were. Could any reasonable man look at
the placard calling the meeting, and say that a meeting
assembled in consequence was legal ?—(Hear, hear, hear.)—
It was impossible. That meeting was called for the pur-
pose of calling on Parliament to dissolve itself, and
place in its room Mr. Lee and Mr. Mee.—(Hear.) That
placard called the meeting to form a National Convention,
which it described as the only means of securing the rights of
the people, and by that means to bring about a violent revolu-
tion in the country. Such a meeting was dangerous to the
public peace and had therefore been properly suppressed. If,
as had been asserted, there was any brutality or intemperance
in the conduct of the police, he should be one of the last
to sanction it. He trusted that it would be investi-
gated, and the parties so acting punished.—(Hear, hear.)
He would never stand up as the advocate of an excess of au-
thority. If such was the fact, was it not strange that no pro-
ceedinglhad yet been taken against any one? The police had
been stabbed, but he had not, as yet, heard a single in.
stance of any persons attending the meeting with the
exception of them, having been hurt or wounded. If there
were any, he trusted they would call on the law to take their
case into consideration. He could assure the House that in
applying to the King's Bench to quash the verdict of the Jury,
he considered he was conferring a benefit on his country.

Mr. O'CONNELL then rose to address the House. He
considered it impossible to exaggerate the effect which ought to
be given to the verdict of an honest jury. It was the Englishman'
only protection. It was impossible at the same time to exaggerates
the evils which would arise from the impunity of the police
force, when it was found that their conduct had been un-
constitutional, ferocious, and improper. The police in
Ireland were armed with deadly weapons, and the cases
in which they inflicted murder were monstrous, and continu-
ally recurring. Yet notwithstanding this, on every occasion,
they had the usual official eulogium passed on their conduct by
those connected with the Government. It was therefore
most important that the police should be very strictly and
jealously watched— (Hear, hear) and it was equally
important that the verdict of an honest jury should be
respected. A verdict of a jury might indeed be informal, and
on that account might be quashed, and such was the case in
the present instance. It was only on a ground
of technicality with which the jury in the present
instance had nothing to do—(Hear, hear)—that the Court
of King's Bench had set aside theirl finding. There was a
formal heading to the inquisition, which was either the work
of the Coroner or of some other person, but which was altoge-
ther independent of the verdict of the Jury. In this instance, he
was informed, it been drawn up by a person named Stafford,
in Bow-street. In that inquisition it was stated that the man
Cully was " in the peace of God and our Lord the King, and
that he was there killed in the exercise of his duty." Now
this was a matter which it was impossible for the Jury to find,
and at the same time to find he was slain justifiably.—(Hear,
hear, hear.) But this certainly had never, in fact, been
called to the attention of the jury. It was totally inconsistent
with their verdict, and it was quite impossible that they could
have referred to it. Now, it was the practice in Ireland,
when a coroner's inquest took place, that the entire
evidence was embodied in the finding and when cer.
tiorari was applied for, the whole evidence, as
well as the finding, was before the Court. But that was not the
case in England. Only the inquisition, which, in fact, was
drawn up with great technical formality, and which was alto-
gether independent of the verdict of the Jury, was required to
be produded in Court, and it happened in this instance, as he
had already stated, that the heading was altogether inconsistent
with the finding of the Jury.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL said that the inquisition
containing the clause referred to had been signed by all the
Jury, and it was therefore to be taken for granted that they
were acquainted with its contents.
Mr. O'CONNELL continued—lt was impossible that their
attention could have been called to such a clause. They must
indeed have been insane if they could have found that the
man was, in the peace of God and of our Lord the King,
in the exercise of his duty, and was slain justifiably
but it was the duty of the Coroner to have apprised them of
it, and shown them that their two findings were inconsistent;
but that did not disparage the verdict of the Jury. A goad
deal had been said about the meeting having been illegal, and he
would admit that it had been called for an illegal purpose. The
law in reference to illegal assemblies consisted of three parts--
as it respected a riot, a route, and an unlawful assembly.
A riot might consist of any three or more persons, who
were engaged with force and violence breaking the peace.
(Hear, hear.) In a case of that description every man
was a constable, and could arrest the rioters. A route was
defined to be an assembly, intending to carry an illegal ob-
ject by violence ; and the third case was, when there was an
illegal object, but no force or violence intended. Of
this last character was the meeting in question.—
(Hear, hear, hear.) On information, a Magistrate's
warrant might have been procured, and they might have been
arrested ; but what was the evidence ? As far as appeared by
the reports, the conventionalists used no violence. The evidence
went to prove first of all an attack by the police on the flags and
banners. There was no evidence to show that they had been
impeded in any attempt to arrest any of th e meeting, but evidence
on the other side to prove that the rush at the flags was
accompanied by promiscuous and inhuman assaults on the
multitude, brutally beating them, and the blood was seen
streaming at every side from their blows.—(Hear, hear,)
The law applicable to such a case was, that on the warrant of a
magistrate, there should have been arrest. There was
no arrest—there was no attempt to impede the arrest, but on
the contrary, without notice, without warning the people,
certainly an assault was made, beating them to right and left,
following women and men who were unprotected and un-
armed up the stairs, where they fled for refuge. With
these facts before them, it was impossible the Jury
could have come to any other verdict.—(Hear, hear.)
The true and legal meaning of justifiable homicide was, where
a man, who was pursued and attacked by another, retired as far
as be could, and tried to escape but could not, that then
he turned round and killed the man who would have
killed him, and caused death in order to save his own life.—
(Hear, hear, hear,) Now the jury had found--he would
leave out of view at present what was said about the Riot Act
and about the conduct of the Government; but they found
that the conduct of the police was brutal, ferocious, and un-
provoked by the people. Now, if such was the case, he would
defy any lawyer to say that a verdict of any thing but justifiable
homicide could have been returned.
Sir GEORGE GREY said the Learned Solicitor. General
had assumed all these facts in his application to set aside the
verdict.

Mr. O'CONNELL—He could not have done so, he was too
good a lawyer to have done so, Then take it the other
way,—a policeman acted, not in the peace of our Lord
the King in the way described in the verdict, against the
people. Putting all the facts together, would any one
tell him, would any lawyer say, that a man hard
pressed in the way he had described, would not be
justified in saving his own life even at the
expense of that of his antagonists. Good God, was a police.
man to have a privilege to kill when and where he thought it
proper ? He might be told that in that House, but no man
would dare to broach such a doctrine in a court of law,
for there he would be instantly set down, and his bold assertion
at once met with a flat contradiction. The police were now
become soldiers in a difflirent dress, and were only not so well
conducted as soldiers, at least in his country. He believed that
here the police had in general been well governed and conducted,
but here was the first case where they were convicted by a jury
of brutality and ferocity; therefore he was the more anxious
to take advantage of it, in order that it might be a lesson to them,
before they got so low in the scale of brutality as their fellows
were in Ireland, for then there would be no hope of them.—
Had the Jury had a co-oner who had done his duty, and drawn
up such an inquisition as his duty was to have done then, no