The Sun.
London, England, 1832-05-05 00:00:00

nind, although every lawyer in Court may have
doubt, it is quite legal for him to send the
1 irisoner to be executed against law. This
ounds paradoxical, but it is nevertheless the
,fact. It does not always happen, even in Eng-
'land, that a Judge is always correct in his first
impression on a point of criminal law. What
we contend for is, that where a Judge refuses,
iin a capital case, to submit a point of law
for the consideration of the other Judges, the
prisoner, or his Counsel, should have a right to
have it submitted to that learned body, through
the Secretary of State, who, on receiving an appli-
cation of the sort, should be bound to submit it,
and to stay execution in the mean time. Counsel
would not often, for their own sakes, submit fri-
volous and groundles points to so high a tribunal.
At all events, it is a less evil that points not
capable of being sustained should be sometimes
brought before the Judges, than that men should
suffer death contrary to law. In Russell's case
not only was the indictment bad, but the verdict
did not sustain the indictment. In regard to
matters of fact, we think it still more necessary
to have a Court of Criminal Revision, to which
the convict, on saying " I appeal," might have
his case referred ; and the business of this Court
would be to correct the errors that in the Court
below might have resulted from passion, haste,
prejudice, or excitement, and to see that the ver-
dict was such as was sustained by the evidence.
We would have, in fact, an intelligent, competent,
and judicial tribunal, substituted for the secret,
extra-judicial, and inquisitorial authority exer-
cised in the cases of convicted criminals by the
Secretary for the Home Department. Imme-
diately after our argument appeared on Henry
Russell's case, and while it was yet doubtful
whether Baron Vaughan would respite the
man or not, a Mr. Alfred S. Taylor,
" Professor of Medical Jurisprudence and Police
in Guy's Hospital," published a letter in the
English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening
Post, in which he undertook to prove our
positions wrong, and consequently to establish
the rectitude of the conviction. As our object
was to induce the Learned Baron to reserve the
case for the consideration of the other Judges,
we thought it only decorous to leave it in the
hands in which it was, confident that there would
be a right decision. We now tell the " Profes-
sor of Medical Jurisprudence and Police" that
his argument showed he had no conception of the
real question. Our argument was not whether
the man had committed murder or not, but whether
he was rightly convicted under an indictment
which charged him as an accessary to the crime
offelo de se. We came to the conclusion that ,
this particular indictment was bad—so have the I,
fifteen judges. We would recommend to this
gentleman to be less precipitate fbr the future to
engage in legal controversy in a way that betrays
more of impulse than discretion, and to be sure,
before he opposes an argument, that he under-
stands it.—Morning Herald.

Convinced as we arc that it is not in the
nature of Lord Grey, or of almost any others of
his Majesty's Ministers, either to play foully to-
wards the public, on the one hand, in the matter
of the Reform Bill, or falsely towards themselves,
on the other, by allowing a faction, which they
possess the means of grinding into dust, to beat
and disgrace them—satisfied as we are that the
Bill will either pass with all its disfranchising,
enfranchising, and ten-pound qualification clauses
entire and unmutilated, or be a second time re-
jected—we still cannot but approve and applaud
the persevering energy, unsubdued courage, and
pertinacious determination of the people, in meet-
ing to adopt such means as appear to them to be
most conducive to the promotiou of the great object
which alt have in view—the speedy and peaceable
settlemer t of the question. Such meetings
furnish the:most decisive proofs of their steadfast
adherence to the cause of Reform—of the in-
terest which they take in their country's welfare—
of their love of peace and good order—of their
ample capacity to exercise the important rights
with which they crave to be intrusted—of their
respect towards, and confidence in, his Majesty's
Government—and of their undeviating loyalty
to our gracious and honest-hearted Sovereign.
On all these accounts do we approve of and
applaud the objects of the numerous meetings
which have been, and are about to be, held ; but •
still more are we called upon to commend them,
when we reflect that, on the one had, no apparent
step has been taken to secure them against anxiety
respecting the fate of the Reform Bill, and, on
the other, that those against whom their advocates
in the House of Lords have to contend, are
not only crafty and cunning to a degree which is
scarcely to be credited—but that they are, in
their little arena, provided with ample means both
of attack and defence—and that, in their use of
them, they are by no means inclined to be ten-
derly scrupulous. The object of the Ministers
and their supporters, is unquestionably to fulfil
the anxious desires of the country, by carrying
the Bill successfully through all its remaining
stages. But then they are, in their endeavours
to accomplish this object, encompassed by so
many difficulties—beset by so much heartlessness
and indifference on the part of some of their
ostensible supporters, and checked by so many
forms to which they are bound to attend,
—that their course of action, as com-
pared with that of their opponents, is as the
zig-zag path which leads to the mountain
top, to the level road which crosses the plain
below. With the latter, the Anti-Reformers,
none of these difficulties are to be met. They
have but one object in view—the defeat of the
Bill, or of as much of it as they can possibly
accomplish ; and to the consummation of this end
not only are all their powers and faculties bent,
with an energy which would be praiseworthy in a
nobler cause, but all their differences of opinion
on minor points sacrificed, and all their plans ren-
dered subservient. They feel that the result of the
contest must be to them victory or death ; and
they have girded up their loins, and prepared their
armour, and mustered their battalions accordingly.
Fromtleir ranks:forthe cause
alusedesfberrtin need
‘ovhicht be
hey appre-
hendedfight is
not the cause of the whole body only, but of
every individual of which it is composed. With
the Reformers and their advocates in the House
of Lords, the case, as we have already observed,
is somewhat and disadvantageously different.
Their bond of union is not so strict—their dis-
cipline far from being so perfect--and their stake
in the game far less important and pressing in a
personal point of view ; and hence arises the
necessity of stimulating, on the one hand, the
energies of the advocates of Reform by conti-
nued meetings, and of proving to the Anti-
Reformers, on the other, that even if they should,
in the wantonness of their power, again resist
the passing of the Bill, or so mutilate it in the
Committee, as to render it valueless for all the
purposes which it was intended to accomplish,
they will not thereby have conquered, but in-
creased the desire for Reform.—lVlOrning
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