The Sun.
London, England, 1858-06-21 00:00:00

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duty which he had to perform, for he felt as much as
Mr, Sleigh for the position in which the defendant
had placed himself, but it must not go forth into
the world that a man might at midnight go to a
house armed with such a stick as that which had
been produced, to demand explanations, and com-
mit a most murderous assault, if, at that unreason-
able, hour, explanations were refused. As to the
I evidence, it was of' the most daninatory character, 1
and it was idle to talk of offering an apology after
such an assault. Taking all the circumstances into
account, it was for the Lord Mayor to decide whe-
ther the case did not come under the law which
made an assault a felony. It was perfectly clear
that the defendant went forthe purpose of commit-
ting an assault, and not for explanation, and in his
(Mr. Atkinson's) opinion, the case came within
Peel's Act, as it was called, so as to leave the Court
no choice in the matter, but to commit the defen-
dant for trial for felony.
The Lord Mayor—The evidence having been
gone into, the case is quite out of the hands of Mr.
May, and to my mind the evidence is quite conclu-
sive as to the nature of the assault, so that I can
only commit the defendant to take his trial for
felony.
Defendant, who left himself in the hands of his
le2al adviser, was committed accordingly, but was
admitted to bail, himself in 2001. and two sureties
in 1001. each.

THE TRIALS OF SIR H. MEUX AND

LADY DINORBEN.

(Prom, the Times.)
If a great scandal would burst and die we might
pass to windward and go on our way in silence.
But it is not the custom of such things to come
stillborn. They walk the town, they offend our
decent instincts, they give occasion to the populace
to say to one another, " See that mean dirty thing.
It has escaped from a great house. All great houses
have familiars such as this, but they are kept close
ri.t home." Nothing can be more natural, but no-
thing can be more unjust. When the private life
of some rich or noble house is revealed it is because
some unusual circumstance has disturbed its ordi-
nary tenor. The curtain always rises, not upon
a calm domestic scene, where every member of the
family is most unostentatiously employed in the
duties, the pleasures, and the affections of home ;
but there are 12 sworn jurors of puzzled aspect,
a judge much lamenting that he is obliged to play
the part of moderator in the great strife of conflict-
ing scandals, witnesses who have ransacked their
memories to produce every little dark-coloured fact,
and a long array of lawyers, applying the micro-
scope of their venal rhetoric to every small word or
act, or scrap of writing. With these helps a small
matter may be worked up into a large scandal.
Moreover, the public does not always trouble itself
to distinguish between the fringes and skirtings and
the solid broadcloth. There are men and women
who figure in " high life" for the first and last time
in the report of a divorce case. It is not more just
to estimate the morals of our higher classes by the
proceedings in the House of Lords or the Court of
Chancery than it would be to judge of our middle
classes by the reports of the Bankruptcy Courts, or
of our lower classes by the revelations of the police
• offices.

The past week saw the termination of two of those
uncomfortable cases which unfortunately do not
expend all their discredit upon those immediately
concerned in them. No one, we presume, would
care to become the historian of the house of Meux,
and it is fortunately unnecessary to go further back
in point of date than the year 1841, when the pre-
sent Sir Henry Meux, having passed through Eton
and Christchurch, and being strong in body, if not
in mind, succeeded to the Hertfordshire estate and
to the enormous profits of the brewery. How he
spent this income it is useless now to inquire. He
has three sisters, Lady Malden, Mrs. Arahin, and
Lady Smijth. Lady Malden previous to her marriage
had kept his house for him, and to her he had obli-
gations which he seems to have most generously dis
charged. In 1855 this rich and prosperous man
married a daughter of Lord Ernest Bruce, and a
son was born to him. He was therefore at what
men call the height of his prosperity, when the
shadow of a terrible doom stole over him. Before
his son was born he made a will, leaving his real
property to any eldest son, and 20,0001. each to
any other children he might have. His wife took a
life interest in the remainder, but Lis sisters were
not mentioned. The law, however, would remedy
this omission in case the infant son of Sir Henry

should die. Sir Henry's sisters would then take
as coheiresses on the termination of Lady Meux's
life interest. In July, 1857, Sir Henry made a
codicil to this will, and thereby left his property to
his children, but, if there should be no children,
then to his wife absolutely. Between tha will and
codicil, therefore, there is no practical difference if
the infant, Henry Bruce Meux, should grow up to
manhood. But there is a chance that this chill
may die, and if that should happen the property
would, under the terms of the will, go t ) the sisters
after the death of Lady Meux, and would go to the
widow absolutely under the terms of the codicil.
Sir Henry Meux has become an idiot. About that
there is no question. No one is interested in ques-
tioning it. The whole inquiry is a tight over the
anticipated or imagined grave of the infant boy.
The object of the sisters is to prove that their bro-
ther was mad on the 3d of July, 1857 ; if it can be
established that he was sane up to the 4th of July
it is sufficient to answer the purposes of the wife.
It is an edifying contest, and the proceedings pre
servo a consistent relation to their object. It was
proved that before theclose of 1856 Sir Henry shot
badly, and in some Cambridgeshire cover-shooting
shot General Hall in the leg. Lord Charles Clinton
remarked that 'it Henry had an impediment in his
speech, but was not drunk. The Hon. Charles
Butler found a difficulty in understanding what he
said. Sir Henry told a Mr. Blagg that certain
voters would vote for him who he (.Ir. Blagg) knew
would not do so. Mr. Marjoribanks remarked
that he walked badly. Lord Ra,nelagh recom-
mended him to give up Hertfordshire and stand
for Middlesex, for the same reason, it is to be sup-
posed, as that given for Hamlet's being sent to
England. Moreover, when he canvassed he left
to his professional agents the work of persuasion,
and limited his own form of salutation to " Will
you vote for me ? lam the senior member." The
sisters three, moreover, in their anxiety for trutb,
or in industrious prosecution of their case, ranged
the menials of the household in their ranks. Sir
Henry had intimated a belief that his butler was a
liar, and had scrutinised the weekly bills of his
French cook. The doctors, as usual, differed—they
differed in contraries and in contradictories, they
differed categ rrically and hypothetically, they dif-
fered subjectively and objectively, they differed in
diagnosis and in treatment. Weighing their evi-
dence in a pair of scales, the overweight seems to be
the opinion of Sir Benjamin Brodie—namely, that
he did not think Sir Henry's judgment upon the
qualification of an attorney worth much. We could
Lind 50 attorneys to say as tench for Sir Benjamin
Brodie. Far be it from us to say that Sir Henry
was not quite mad when he shot badly, and walked
badly, and talked badly, and canvassed badly, and
doubted the veracity of his butler and profanely
questioned the accounts of his French cook. There
certainly wore some other facts which would carry
the case rather further. But, if we must admit that
each of the imputed acts of commission and omis-
sion is an important item in an indictment against
a man's sanity, we must also tremble to think of the
mental c rntlition of many „Treople we have been
associating with for years. After a nine days'
wrangle, at a c:st of some 6001. or 7001. a day, over
the broken intelltet of this poor lunatic, the jury
came to the very sensible verdict that they could
not tell when his insanity assumed an aspect which
rendered him incapable of testamentary disposition.
They were right. As we approach and pass the sol-
stice we can can detect a change of temperature ;
but who can tell by his own mere organs of sense
at what moment he is passing the line ? The jury
seem to have felt that the inquiry, so far as
it was a contest., was unnecessary. Their de-
cision as to the validity of this codicil would
have been binding on no one. It was only an un-
seemly scramble for a better place in a future fight
—a fight only to come off in case of the untimely
death of the baby. Throughout this melancholy
exhibition the palm of unblushing coolness must
be awarded to Mr. Montagu Chambers. .During a
contest wherein every champion bore as his motto
" Aurc sacra fames," this philaophical and ethical
ornament of the Bar and the Legislature read a
serious lecture to Lady Meux upon the evils of too
great riches, the disadvantages of wealth, to a
widow sought in marriage by an ardent lover, and
the danger of exci.ing the loquacity of an evil-
nieak;ng world which might accrue from the fact of
a mother having a pecuniary interest in the death
of her off4pring. The delicacy and good taste of
ca,
cesNirli,ll,ceraaete
c's1?() shall we tep:ioors a4thyioi,,f
stoh
(le
utiami
net
this appeal, under the peculiar circumstances of the
h
golfi lyt
the other 'cause celebre of
otlfiattheitnreeTeintscy7
otor
to the earlier h is• oristtes of the C turf .of good King
Charles 11. It mty be stated in very few words.
A dowager lady of rank occupies her leisure in
writing scandalous anonymous letters of, to; and
about her nephew, and when he expostulstes
sends her brother, a fighting Colonel, who has
already "had the misfortune" t kill his man, to
demand satisfaction ; which we must suppose means
to shoot the nephew through the body, or at least
to break an arm or leg. This new phase of nepotism
was submitted to the double lights of the police-
court and the Court of Queen's Bench. The un-
happy nephew, to avoid fighting the brother of his
uncle's wife, was compelled to come into court and