The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-12 00:00:00

tOtidaft 24111,

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1850.

The trial of ROBERT PATE for the atrocious and
cowardly assault upon our Most Gracious QUEEN
has most justly and properly terminated in a convic-
tion. The jury have faithfully discharged the duty
they owed to society. They have suffered no morbid
sensibility for the highly respectable family of the
criminal to interpose a shield for his protection, to
defraud justice of her right, or to allow the majesty
of the law to remain unvindicated. They accepted the
law from the presiding Judges, and did not venture
to set any crude or hastily formed opinion of their
own in opposition to that of the grave and learned
men who, from their important positions, are the
constitutional interpreters of the criminal code, of the
written and unwritten law of the land.

As had been anticipated, the defence setup was
insanity—that at the time of the commmission of
the outrage the prisoner was of unsound mind,
incapable of distinguishing between right and
wrong, and consequently not responsible for any
acts, however atrocious, of which he might have been
guilty. The eminent and distinguished advocate to
whose hands the interests of the accused were en•
trusted struggled to the utmost, and made the best
use of the materials at his disposal, but, as he was
himself compelled to admit, with no very sanguine
anticipations as to the result. He could not for a
moment deny that the assault had been per-
petrated by the defendant. It would have been
puerile to attempt to struggle against the unimpeach-
able testimony that was brought forward on this
point. But he dwelt on the unaccountable nature of
the offence, the total absence of any motive that
could have influenced a gentleman of respectable
fortune and family—a person who had at one time
held a commission in a service the characteristic of
which is a chivalrous devotion to the fair sex, and
unbounded loyalty to the sovereign—to commit a
wanton and unprovoked assault upon an innocent and
inoffensive lady, surrounded by her blooming children
--upon the Quay, to Whom his allegiance was due—

a Queen who, as the Learned Counsel justly re-
marked, " was revered and loved by all classes of her
subjects—a Sovereign who, perhaps, enjoyed the love
of those subjects more than any other wbo had ever
filled the throne of these realms." Neither did he
rest satisfied with the mere suggestion of mental in-
capacity. A number of highly respectable wit-
nesses were produced, who deposed to great ec-
centricity on the part of the prisoner, and even
as to strange delusions under which he for-
merly laboured, and which led to his removal from
the military service by the sale of his commission, an
indulgence which was only permitted under the pe-
culiar circumstances of his case, by his supposed
weakness of intellect which led to the disobedience of
the orders of his commanding officer and his absence
without leave from his military duties. Two medical
gentlemen of great celebrity in cerebral dis-
eases also gave it as their opinions that
"he was of unsound mind." The evidence
of Dr, CONOLLY, the head physician of
Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, was very important. The
learned gentleman said, "It seems to me that he has
a very small share of mental power, without object
or ambition, and unfit for all the ordinary duties of
life. In conversation, he would undoubtedly know the
distinction between a right and wrong action, but I
should say that he would be subject to sudden im-
pulses of passion." And on cross-examination, the
learned gentleman admitted that "he was not aware
that the prisoner suffered from any particular delusion."
Now this was exactly the state of mind referred to
by the Judges in their answers to the queries sub-
mitted by the House of Lords in 1843. They
stated that, " notwithstanding a party committed a
wrong act when labouring under the idea of redress-
ing a supposed grievance or injury, or under the im-
pression of obtaining some public or private benefit,
he was liable to punishment." And again, in answer
to the question, "If a person under an insane delusion
as to existing facts, commits an offence in conse-
quence thereof, is he thereby excused ?" to which
they replied, that " they were unanimous in opinion
that if the delusion was only partial, the party ac-
cused was equally liable with a person of sane mind.
If the accused killed another in self-defence, he would
be entitled to an acquittal, but if committed for any
supposed injury, he would then be liable to the
punishment awarded by the laws to his crime."
_ _

Tried by these tests, there can be no doubt
that the prisoner was responsible for the offence ; but
still it materially lessens its aggravated character,
It is pleasing to know that the unfortunate victim
was not in the full possession of his faculties, and that
the outrage of which he was guilty was most probably
the result of a sudden impulse, rather than of
any deliberate intention to insult or injure
her Most Gracious MAJESTY. Under these
circum stances, we are quite contented that
the degradation of corporal punishment has been
spared, not on account of the station and respectabi-
lity of his family, for that would, in an ordinary
case, have rendered a disgraceful penalty more es-
sential, but on account of his mental imbecility,
which, although it could not excuse, in some degree
mitigates the crime. The punishment of trans-
portation was most suitable, for every care will be
taken of the unfortunate man, who will be kept in
that seclusion and under that control which he so
much requires. The effect of the verdict will be very
important ; fur not only will it deter persons of
weak mind from venturing on similar outrages, and
afford full protection to our beloved QUEEN, but it
will constitute an important precedent in all cases in
which insanity may be set up as a defence on trivial
or insufficient grounds.

Although subjects of more national importance are
now lying under the consideration of the Imperial
Legislature, we are most earnestly solicitous that the
Parliament may not evince any further indifference
in regard to the architectural embellishment and im-
provement of Westminster. The enormous sums
squandered on the erection of their own palace afford
us very powerful arguments in demanding the atten-
tion of the popular representatives to projects affect-
ing the propriety or impropriety of that extravagant
expenditure. We might appeal, of course,
to divers classical authorities in justification
of our thus beseeching the regard of ourlaw-givers to
the requirements of the metropolis in reference to its
general embellishment. We might remind them
that TRAJAN was not idly lavishing his imperial re-
sources when raising at Rome those gorgeous edi-
fices which even now, in their ruins and decay,
attest the pride of a military despotism, and the
pomps of a civilised though pagan antiquity. 'We
might aver with equal truth, that the moral and
social elevation of the Greeks was, in no small degree
dependent on that superb munificence of PERICLES,
which encrusted the Acropolis with palaces of marble,
with statues fashioned by the chisel of PHIDIA s, and with
figures of gold and ivory moulded under the hand of
eRAXITILES. We prefer, however, appealing in this
instance only to the right reason and common sense
of the Legislature. Upon the merest economical
considerations, we conceive that the matter referred
to demands the most serious scrutiny and the most
careful calculation. After expending many millions
of pounds sterling upon the public structures of West-
minster, it would be deplorable to reflect that the
whole scheme must be marred by au unexpected
and mistaken parsimony. Such a course would be
alike disgraceful to the wealthiest nation of Christen-
dom, and injurious to a locality invested with his-
torical interest by its many noble and stirring asso-
ciations. Unfortunately, we have had too frequent
reason to lament the fickleness of the popular enthu-
siasm in regard to enterprises of this particular cha-
racter. It will not be forgotten, for example, that a
similar proposal to the one now being carried into
operation under the auspices of the Hon. Gentleman
the Member for Montrose, and of the Noble Lord the
Prime Minister of England—the proposal for the
erection of a memorial statue of Sir ROBERT PEEL, by
penny subscriptions to a poor man's testimonial—
was made as far back as 1847, and abandoned through
the want of the necessary contributions. Again, it
cannot have escaped the recoll?ction of many with
what ardour the project of raising a monument to
WILLIAM CARTON was undertaken, or with what
disgraceful levity it was thrown aside soon after-
wards. The remembrance of these facts, while de-
rogating largely from the stability of the national
character, only incites us the more energetically to
force upon the attention of the multitude at large, and
more especially upon that of the Parliament, the ne-
cessity of preventing the display of similar fickleness
in this particular instance on the part of the
Legislature.
Already we have observed that considerable credit
is due to the Hon. Baronet the Member for the Uni-
versity of Oxford, through whose instrumentality the
absurd project of building a temporary bridge across
the Thames at Westminster was happily referred to
the examination of a Select Committee. That
project we then characterised as most pre-
posterous, for a multitude of considerations.
The necessity of building any
such bridge is solely
dependent on the selection for the permanent one of
the site at present occupied on the river. That site
we have surely by this time found to our cost to be
about the very worst that could possibly have been
chosen from the source of the Thames, at Seven-
Springs near Cheltenham, down to its union with the
waters of the Channel, near the Isle of Thanet. Again
and again we have had to bolster up the old struc-
ture, insomuch that no less than 70,0001,
sterling have been squandered upon ineffectual re-
pairs. Yet it is this very spot that is still
clung to with such exasperating tenacity by men
who might assuredly, by this time, have discovered
the insecurity of the foundation. A moment's re-
flection, one would imagine, might have proved
enough to demonstrate the folly of devoting 100,0001.
to a bridge of a merely temporary character, just
one-third of the amount calculated as necessary for a
new and permanent bridge at Westminster. Any-
thing more idle than this was never, we are bold to
say, propounded by any set of wiseacres, much less
seriously submitted for the acceptance of the British
Parliament. We are rejoiced, however, to observe
that not only is the whole project referred to a Select
Committee, in accordance with the very judicious
suggestion of Sir ROBERT HARRY INGLIS, but that the
report of the Committee of 1846 will be again brought
under investigation. That report, now lying before
us, is accompanied by a map of the metropolis, re-
vealing in glaring colours the blunders hitherto made
in attempts to improve the cities of London and

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