The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-23 00:00:00

isr••••••..0110....
of Italy, to the balance of power, and the peace
of Europe. To sustain this maxim the road of
reform is abandoned for that of revolUtion.
It certainly is very difficult to understand what
the principle of nationality is worth if the nations,
when their Governments have driven them to re-
pudiate them as unendurable, are not entitled to
bid them abdicate in favour of better men.
Revo-
lution is the reform required, by the Baron's good
leave, when things have come to that point. He
complains that while the Count asks for non-i
in the nter- ,
vention in Italy, he is himself intervening
States of the Church. The worthy Baron does not
seem to comprehend the fact that Italy is now,ans
in
its own judgment, a nation, and that some Itali
helping other Italians is in their view not inter-
vention but brotherhood.
However, things in Italy will now take their
,iwn course. The ambassador of Portugal may be
wii,hdrawn from Turin at the instance of the
COBI3_I4,GS-all the ambassadors may go, if they
like_...l\`Taples will he compensation enough for their
absence. As for tho report from St. Petersburg
that Lord JOjTN has written thither acknowledging
the absolute right ~;f Austria to Venetia, we cannot
believe a word of it: We do not forget his dis-
creditable dispatch to G-m.nt CAVOUR, but that did
his lordship must know
not go such lengths ; and
full well that his place in he Cabinet would soon
4: for London too, if
be vacant, and perhaps his sea.
EOEURGS and to
he dared so to sell himself to the'
Prussia. We shall not believe such a rumour
till we have proof of its truth ; and, simply
because Lord JOHN RUSSELL is not qui-te mad.

.direct

It is with peculiar satisfaction that wC
the notice of the public generally to a fecent
charge made to the local grand jury by one of cm
learned Recorders. The document (given by us
as nearly as possible in its entirety) will be founa
in another part of our impression of this evening ;
and it is one especially entitled to the considera-
tion of all classes of the community—to all classes
we might say without any distinction or exception
whatsoever. It constitutes a carefully elaborated
epitome of the results of the last year's legislation—
giving us an abstract of the most important among
the various public and general acts of this last
session—viz., the 23 and 24 VICTORIA. The learned
Recorder, whose charge we have (and for this
reason) selected for publication in our columns, is
no other thin the late M.P. for Midhurst, himself
consequently but recently among the number of our
legislators, during the last nine years one of her
MAJESTY'S Counsel learned in the law, and one
who,' strange to tell, combines with a brilliant re-
putation in the fields of imaginative literature no
inconsiderable repute among our living English
jurisconsults. Mr. WARREN'S very remarkable
abridgment of Blackstone's Commentaries, care-
fully adapted by him to existing law, and anno-
tated throughout with singular perspicuity, has
long since taken its place among the recognised
text books at our Universities. Reference to this
work being here made by us designedly—(how-
ever apparently apropos des bottes, and no matter
with what abruptness)—because this late charge de-
livered to the grand jury at Hull by Mr. WARREN
as the local Recorder, is of a character so remark-
able in its way as an epitome of the latest additions
to the statute-books of the realm, that it might be not
inappropriately appended to those several compre-
hensive supplementary chapters or divisions closing
the last edition of that well-known, popular, and'
widely-distributed Handbook of the Laws of Eng-
land, WARREN'S BLACKSTONE.
A glance, however casual, down this last really
valuable charge to the grand jury by the Hull Re-
corder can hardly fail to surprise those (and they are
not a few) who have hitherto declared the recent Par-
liamentarysession to have been a mere waste of pub-
lic time in idle and fruitless discussions. That the
Lords and Commons, but especially that the Com-
mons have talked over-much this year, is certainly
a truth, a very melancholy truth, altogether be-
yond the reach of contradiction. And for this
exceeding verbosity and garrulity the popular re-
presentatives have received very recently the well
written reprehension of no less eminent an autho-
rity than Lord BROUGHAM himself, the greatest
law reformer of the age, and (dividing the two
grand divisions of his public life) one of the most
illustrious members of both branches of the Impe-
rial Legislature. Upon the needless prolongation
of the debates in Parliament, more particularly
among the popular representatives, Lord BROUGHAM
has recently pronounced weighty and sternly de-
served words of reprobation. Yet in testimony
that while the Lords and Commons have talked
much, they have also done much in the way of
whblesome legislative improvements, let us con-
tent ourselves with directing the attention of the
general public to Mr. WARREN'S useful and lucid
summary of the salient points in last year's varied
legislation. It will be there seen that the
public acts alone number up a grand total of no
less than 154 altogether—that while 40 of them
relate exclusively to Ireland and Scotland, the re-
maining 114 include among them enactments of the
most vital interest and of the gravest importance.
Foremost among these • are five acts affecting the
safety of the realm—two affecting the organisation
of the Legislature—eleven materially affecting our
fiscal and financial regulations—besides others
affecting the momentous subjects of education,
marriage, pluralities, charitable bequests, tithe
commutations, juvenile labour in mines, female and
juvenile labour in factories, &c., &c. Better, how-
ever, than the presentation here of any dry cata-
logue of these important acts is the terse and lucid
exposition of them, given elsewhere, in the charge
itself'of the learned Recorder of Hull. By the
delivery of that charge Mr. WARREN has unques-
ionably done good service at once to the public at
arge and to the Imperial Legislature.

Speeches are latterly " cropping up" in the pro-
vinces after an unusually prolonged silence, conse-
quent upon the reaction which began immediately
upon the close of Parliament. Mr. Du CANE has
given us his motions as to the hopes of Conserva-
tism. Sir ARCIIIBALD ALISON, as the historian of
Europe, assures us of his conviction of the rapid
approutli of a general collision among the Powers
of the Continent. 51r InuN COLERIDGE, address-
ing a public meeting in the Guildhall, at Exeter,
expatiates at some length upon the educational in-
fluences of the Oxford local examinations. Sir
Jonx PATTESON, talking to an agricultural gather-
ing down at the annual ploughing-match
dinner at Feniton, in Devonshire, comments in his
turn upon the judicial labours that have happily
ceased in his own instance after those labours of
his had been continued by a very unusual prolon-
gation. It is one portion of the purely personal
and almost familiar remarks of this venerable ex-
judge that we would here particularise as being
eminently characteristic of the hard-working, :-
solute, persevering race of which old Sir JOAN
PATTESON may be taken as a very favourable
specimen. It is a fallacy, he reminds the far-
mers awn at Feniton, an absolute fallacy for
the hedgers and ditchers, the mechanics and
day-labourers, to suppose that they are the toilers
par excellence, that no one really works but them-
selves. "We are all workers," says Sir JOHN,

" the man who ploughs the field, and who digs the
hedge, is a worker, but there are other workers in
other stations of life as well. For myself I can
say that I have been a worker ever since I have
been a boy"—the learned ex-Judge still apparently
claiming to be regarded as a boy, "an old boy,"
of course, and still seemingly occupying
his time with self-imposed exertions, though now
seventy 1 Entering a little into
.his own personal
history, Sir JOHN PATTESON adds—" When I ac-
septed the office of judge, I had a salary of a thou-
sand pounds a year below what I was earning by
my own exertions at the bar. True it is that I had
a pension when I retired from the bench, which a
judge is entitled to receive after he has served 15
years, but I had served 22 years. Recollect,
I might have continued at the bar and have
made a larger income and saved more money
even than I have got by the pension.
The office of judge is by no means a sinecure, for
a, judge works as hard as any man in the country.
He has to work at very difficult questions of law
which are brought before him continually, giving
him great anxiety, and sometimes the lives of his
fellow-creatures are placed in his hands, and are
dependent very much upon the manner in which he
places the facts before the jury. That is a matter
of no little anxiety, I can assure you. Let any man
think as he will, there is no man who has been
through the ordeal for the length of time that I
have, but must feel conscious of the importance
and gravity of the duty which is cast upon a
Judge." These remarks, or rather reminders, are
in no way exaggerated. We accept them as
literally accurate, and so accepting them we all of
us exult sympathetically in the thought of men
like Sir JOHN PATTESON and Sir JOHN COLERIDGE
enjoying the otium cum dignitate, which they have
so laboriously earned the right to at the close of
their honourable careers in their high and respon-
profession.