The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 5, 1860

that it was perfectly easy from the outside to put the
window in the condition in which it was discovered
on the morning after the murder. He did not mean
to assert that the crime was perpetrated by a stranger,
but he had thought it his duty to show that the
hypothesis of this being an accidental murder, the
original intention going no further than the stealing
of the child, and of its having been perpetrated by
a stranger, and not by any of the inmates of the
house, was not inconsistent with the facts which
had been proved in evidence. Another speculation
in which Mr. Saunders had indulged was that the
murder must have been done by more than one
person. There was no reasonable proof of that.
Surely it was possible for a strong and active man
or woman to take a child of four years of age from
a cot, and, having first stifled its cries, to take it
away without being heard. But Mr. Saunders,
having laid down the proposition that the murder
could not have been done by one person, had very
illogically jumped to the conclusion that of the two
persons engaged in the act the prisoner must have
been one, whoever the other might have been. In
the dark ages, when judges were corrupt, when
witnesses were perjured, when oppression in every
shape found its way into our criminal courts, the
characters and lives of aceused parties were not al-
lowed, in theory at all events, to be reasoned away
after such an ingenious fashion. Coke, alluding Co
high treason, said, the guilt of a person was not to
be proved by reasoning, or by inferences, or by
flashes of wit, but by plain, clear, and satisfactory
testimony ; yet Mr. Saunders -had ventured to ask
• the bench to take ingenious speculations for proof,
• but—

Such reasoning falls like an inverted cone,
Wanting the proper base to rest upon."
The learned gentleman proceeded to direct attention
to the facts of the case. He referred to the charge
which had been made against Miss Constance Kent,
and expressed his opinion that the magistrates
wisely and justly discharged that young lady from
custody, although the evidence against her was con-
siderably stronger than that against the poor girl
now at the bar. That prosecution having failed, it
was then, he said, that directions came down from
the Home office, that the Attorney-General was con-
sulted, and that Mr, Slack was imported into the
case and commenced those inquiries at Road and
elsewhere which, he believed, would be reprobated
and denounced by everybody capable of forming an
opinion on the subject as alike alien to the spirit of
English law and subversive of every known princi-
ple of English justice. There was a time when
accused parties were placed upon the rack and sub-.
jected to every species of torture. There had oven
been cases of persons tortured to death in order that
some confession might be extorted from them. What
was the difference between the investigation con-
Bunted by Mr. Slack and the inquiry of a Grand
Inquisitor surrounded by his familiars, with the rack
in the next room, except that instead of physical
torture it was a species of mental torture which he
applied to every witness called before him ? How
had the prisoner at the bar been treated ? While
Mr. Kent and his family had from first to last en-
joyed the assistance of an attorney, who during the
examinations conducted by Mr. Slack not only put
questions, but interposed to prevent other questions
being put—while Mr. Slack had listened to the state-
ments of every inmate of the house, collating and
comparing them with one another, and drawing in-
ferences from them simply and in combination—the
poor, girl at the bar was not examined at all. She
was at home with her father, the police knew where to
find her, but she was never called upon to give her ac-
count of the transaction. In her absence, by means of
statements collected from other parties interrogated
by Mr. Slack, the conclusion was finally reached
that a warrant should be issued for her apprehen-
sion upon the charge of murder. When it was
known to the bench, as it now was, that the only
evidence against her consisted of some contradic-
tory statements made by the poor girl herself, he
fearlessly asked whether it would not have been
fairer and in more strict accordance with every rule
of law as well as every principle of justice if Mr.
Slack had examined her in the same way as the
other servants, and given her an opportunity of
explaining what was now said to be inconsistent
and contradictory in her testimony ? It looked as
if there were a preconceived determination to do
something or other by means of which somebody
not upon the spot should somehow or other be made
a victim. The police had been bellied in one in-
quiry. Mr. Slack was called in. Public indigna-
tion was aroused by the thought that an atrocious
crime could have been perpetrated and no clue dis-
covered to the perpetrator. Was he wrong in sup-
posing that an inquiry was instituted, not for the
purpose of eliciting the truth, but for the purpose
of collecting evidence against a particular person ?
He very much mistook the tribunal which he had
the honour of addressing if they would consent to
allow themselves to be made the instruments of this
terrible injustice. He believed they would tell
the prosecutors that before they could ask them
to commit the prisoner for trial they must prove
two things—first, that they had conducted the
preliminary inquiry fairly; and, secondly, that
there was really some substantial evidence against
the accused. The present was no ordinary case.
A committal would not only condemn his client
to an unjust imprisonment, but would cast a stigma
upon her for ever. What were the facts which
had been proved against her? There were
only three points which had the slightest bearing
upon the case, and they were all well known before
they were put into the crucible of Mr. Slack and
came out with a different stamp. These three points
were the statements made by the prisoner about
the blanket, the piece of flannel found underneath
the body, and the kneeling up in the bed on the
morning of the murder. As to the first point, the
learned counsel contended chat the alleged contra-
dictions were known to the prosecution long before
she left her situation at Road. But if this were not
so, would the Bench attach any great importance
to any slight discrepancies in statements made by
the prisoner or any other inmate of the hoe, on
that melancholy morning ? Surely not. Why had
she never been asked to give an explanation of these
discrepancies—if discrepancies they were—and why
had not her explanation been allowed to find its
way into that mysterious writing-case of Mr. Slack,
which probably might contain the materials for
some future charge against some other person ?
With regard to the piece of flannel, the learned
counsel commented severely on the evidence of the
woman Dallimore, who, he said, if she had not com-
mitted perjury, had shown such an indifference to
truth as to render her evidence utterly worthless.
Yet this was the woman who was introduced at the
close of the prosecution to strengthen the weak
parts of the case. After the intimation which had
fallen from the bench as to this piece of flannel, he
would say very little more on the point, except to
regret that a woman who had manifested such reck-
less indifference to the fate of the poor girl at the
bar and to the interests of justice had been called
as a witness in the case. What did the conversa-
tions which this woman to-day had been called
upon to detail imply ? Absolutely nothing as
indieating the prisoner's guilt. The witness was
contradicted in the particulars 'she gave by her
own husband, and her testimony was entirely
unworthy of credence. With regard to the
first point, the statement of the prisoner as
to her first missing the child from the cot by kneel-
ing up in her bed, he would not believe that any
importance would be attached to the experiments
which had been made behind the back of the pri-
soner, in order to manufacture evidence against her.
Would it not have been fair to ask her to show in
what position she was when she first missed the
child ? Why fasten her to the expression that she
knelt in the 'bed, and then employ Sergeant Wolfe
and Mrs. Dallimore to make experiments to shoW
that it was impossible her statement could be true?
If the intention had really been to ascertain the
truth, why was not the same measure of justice
meted out to the prisoner which was afforded to the
other inmates of the house, and why had this poor
girl alone been denied the opportunity of demon-
strating the position from which she said she had
missed the child ? These were the only three points
in the evidence which had been adduced on which
he thought it necessary to offer any observations.
He might express the hope that the magistrates
were not going to commit the prisoner for trial, not
because they helievedthere was evidence enough to
warrant them in doing so, but because it was a kind
of tentative process to which they were invited by
the prosecution, in the hope that something else
might turn up. He could not suppose that whether
the prosecution was or was not, encouraged by the
law officers of the Crown, they would allow them-
selves to be made the instruments of such a dirty
proceeding—a proceeding which could not fail to
be detrimental to the cause of truth, and subversive
at once of every rule of law and every principle of
justice, natural as well as legal. God forbid that
he should attempt to cast suspicion upon any in-
dividual, but he could not help saying that if Mr.
Kent were to be placed at the bar the evi-
dence against him would ba far stronger
than that which had been produced against
this poor girl. There could be no doubt, at all
events, that the testimony adduced when
Miss Constance Kent was charged was more com-
plete than anything which bad been laid before the
bench on the present occasion, and, as the magis-
trates had most justly refused to commit that young
lady, so he hoped they would not hesitate to adopt
the same course with respect to his unfortunate
client.
The
magistrates then withdrew to deliberate in
private, and were absent for about half an hour.
On their return,
The Chairman said,—We do 'not think that a
sufficient prima facie case has been established for
committing young person
the at the bar to gaol for