The Sun.
London, England, 1832-11-07 00:00:00

seeds to make some very sensible remarks upon
the principles on which his successor ought to be
selected. It attaches great importance to the pos-
session, by the new Chief, of " profound and
extensive knowledge." "An ignorant Judge,"
quoth the Times, " must bring the law into con-
tempt." What sort of ignorance is it which
seems to the Times so inconsistent with a due
discharge of the judicial office ? Ignorance of
the Sanscrit tongue may be excusable in a Judge.
Ignorance of the properties of the conic sections
is not altogether intolerable. A Judge may be
allowed to he innocent of Porson's Canons, and
is not bound to distinguish at a glance a Raf-
faelle from a Rubens. It is to ignorance of
the law that our contemporary alludes. And
while our eyes were resting upon his assurance
that a Judge ignorant of the law " must bring
the law into contempt," a friend whispered into
our ear that Sir Thomas Denman is henceforth,
by the grace of Lord Grey, the Chief Justice of
the Court of King's Bench. Sir Thomas
Denman is an ignorant Judge. Let him be an
amiable man, although he certainly does not
exhibit in public life that amenity of manners
which is said to make his fireside delightful.
Let him be an honest and consistent politi-
cian, although his honesty has been a sincerity
in error, and his consistency a perseverance in
guilt. But Sir Thomas Denman is, neverthe-
less, an ignorant Judge; and if the Times is
a true prophet he must bring the law into
contempt. Is he not an ignorant Judge ? Ask
of the members of hiS own profession. When
the intended arrangement was announced yester-
day in the Courts, the information was not re-
ceived with much surprise, for the event had
been by many anticipated ; nor with uni-
versal disgust, y for the personal friends of
Sir Thomas are not few. But all united
in the opinion of his utter unfitness for
ibe seat he has been selected to occupy ;
silk gowns and stuff gowns, seniors and juniors.
Whigs and Tories, some regretting, some ridicul-
ing, some reprobating, the appointment, but not
one man so much as suggesting that, by any know-
ledge of the law, Sir Thomas Denman is qua-
lified to administer it in Banco Regis. Is he
not an ignorant Judge ? Ask of his Majesty's
Ministers. They arc party men, and in the
battle they, as party men, have fought, they have
been aided by the late Attorney-General with a
zeal, the excess of which may, in their eyes,
excuse an occasional lack of discretion. That
he might accept the commission they offered him
in their new levies, he made some sacrifices, and
while he held it no soldier in their ranks exposed
himself with a more reckless self-devotion. Per-
haps the Whigs could not do otherwise con-
sistently with their private engagements than
place Sir T. Denman in Lord Tenterden's chair.
But again, we say, ask of his Majesty's Minis-
ters. If one of them shall stand up in his place
in Parliament, and, being questioned, reply
that he deems Sir Thomas I.),runan a lawyer
who will preside in the King's. Bench with
credit to himself, or with advantage to the
country, we will at once admit to that
man the possession of at least one qualification
for forensic success—an impudence which would
astonish the Old Bailey, and ptu Daniel O'Con-
nell to shame. is he not an ignorant JOdge ?
Ask, lastly, Sir William Horne. For upon the
interpretation of a clause in the Reform Act, the
Act upon the concoction of which the toils of
the said Sir William were so affectionately allied
with the toils of the aforesaid Sir Thomas, the
act upon which during its progress through the
House of Commons there was so.little difference
of sentiment that more than three hundred Mem-
bers of that illustrious Assembly may be said to
have had " but one idea between them"—upon
a clause in this elaborated and consequently
simplified act, Sir William Horne has within the

last few days, or weeks, pronounced an opinion
diametrically opposed to that which had previously
been delivered upon the same clause by his late
learned colleague, the new Chief Justice. Under
Tory Governments political partialities have
undoubtedly influenced professional promo-
tions. We,
.do not expect to see any Ministers
placing in positions of high importance and
extensive influence men whose principles they
condemn, and whose character they disapprove.
But under Tory Governments, although poli-
tical friends have been advanced, they have not
been advanced being only political friends. Sir
Arthur Wellesley might be a Tory, but he was
also an officer of some distinction. Sir Charles
Abbott might be a Tory, but that he was a fit
successor to Lord Ellenborough is not denied by
the Times. Sir Thomas Denman has claims on

the preference of a Whig Ministry as their po-
litical friend, but he is only their political friend.
He is no more fit to preside in the King's Bench
than to command a seventy-four off the Dutch
coast, or to officiate as chef de cuisine in my
Lord Sefton's household. Enough ; the Whigs
have done wisely. While Lord Althorp regu-
lates our finances, and Sir James Graham di-
rects our marine, why should not Sir Thomas
Denman be made the expounder of our law ?
Morning Post.

It is a curious fact, that the Journal des
Dehats, a French Ministerial paper, finds (as
will be seen by an extract elsewhere given) the
chief opponents of the recent convention between
France and England, for executing the treaty
of separation between Holland and Belgium,
among the Jacobins and Republicans, as we
on this side the water find its adversaries among
the Tories and Anti-Reformers. These two fac-

tions—which differ in everything else but their
desire of general confusion—are thus combined
to resist the speedy settlement of a question
which they have long cherished as the probable
parent of a revolutionary war. They therefore pro-
fess a common abhorrence (each in their own
way) at the fatal alliance in which their respective
Governments have involved them to preserve
the peace. They instinctively discover a new ob-
ject of patriotic idolatry, in the interested stub-
bornness of the Dutch Government in de-
manding the virtual closing of the Scheldt, because
though it requires the sacrifice of English com-
mercial interests, it offers the means of overturn-
ing their respective Administrations ; and they
utter a hypocritical cry of alarm at the alleged op-
position of the three other Powers of the Con-
ference, while they are conscious that their only
hope lies in the fallacious report of an opposi-
tion which does not exist. The French Repub-
lican party accuse their Government of employ-
ing the army of France merely to accomplish
English objects in securing the freedom of the
English trade with Germany, and in preserving
their Viceroy, Leopold, on the throne of Bel-
gium. Tne English Tories, in imitation of
their French Jacobin fellow-labourers, charge the
A with a wilful sur-
renderdminisoft: all
o
li°ourilnflLuoerldiceGeirtl ythe Netherlands to
the French, by agreeing to the employment of a
Antwerp.
French tun
efxberciaeimforthethicorirneedr,uc„tilownwoi
French inte-
rests are sacrificed to answer English objects.