The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-11 00:00:00

no one can affect to mistake them. Lord Lyni-
hurst and Lord Brougham are common-law law-
yers of great experience—an experience derived not
merely from their judicial situations, but from an
extensive practice at the bar ; both of them have
been much engaged in criminal courts ; one of them
was, as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer
for four years, a criminal judge. Now, these
learned and distinguished persons are wholly of
accord on the subject of the Irish trials, as
well with each other as with a very large ma-
jority of the judges, English as well as Irish.
Lords Denman and Campbell are, it is admitted,
likewise experienced common-law judges, and have
each of them had large practice in criminal pro-
ceedings. They are altogether opposed to Lords
Lyndhurst and Brougham, and to all the other
judges but two. Nay, Lord Denman is at
variance with all the judges on a point, on
which no one beside appears to entertain the
smallest doubt; and what manner of judge is it
that rushes forward with the casting vote ? We
would speak of him with respect, but we shall not,
therefore, be deterred from recording our honest
opinion of his qualifications as the arbiter of a 'case
which demanded and received so much consi-
deration from .other judges. Whatever requi•
sites they may have acquired from practice, it
is clear that Lord Cottenham can have had no
similar opportunity—for he has seen less of crimi-
nal proceedings than any other judge upon the
bench, or indeed than many of the lay Lords;
infinitely less, for example, than Lord Wharncliffe,
chairman for many years of the Yorkshire sessions.
Nay we are inclined to doubt 'if Lord Cottenham
ever saw the inside of a criminal court in his life,
unless as a spectator ; or ever perused an indict-
ment until called upon to consider the one
on which he has so lately decided. Such is
the judge who has been permitted to turn the
balance against not only law Lords as eminent
and as experienced as Lord Lyndhurst and Lord
judges
whose but against five-sixths of the
whose peculiar province it is to expound and decide
the most difficult questions of criminal law. What
reasonable title, we ask, had Lord Cottenham to
vote, which is not shared with him by Lord Wharn-
cliffe? Both are Lords; one knows something of
criminal proceedings, the other knows nothing at
all about them. But from a spurious delicacy,
which has not even precedent to recommend it, Lord
Wharncliffe is deterred from voting, whilst Lord
Cottenham's opinion, opposed as we have seen by
nearly all the learning and experience of the age, is
permitted to decide the question. This would be
anomalous enough under any circumstances, but
when we look at the remarkable coincidence of opi-
nion of the law Lords, so far as their determination to
reverse the judgment was concerned, and remember
that they were all appointed to office by a Ministry,
which made common cause with Mr. O'Con-
nell, and whose members are ready to make com-
mon cause with him again, it cannot be denied
that that coincidence is significant enough, and
one which is well calculated to invite distrust.
The pretext that the lay Lords might not have heard
the arguments in the case is absurd ; but suppose such
to have been the fact. It was because they might
not have understood the legal intricacies of those
arguments that the aid of the common-law judges
was invoked ; because, also, those judges were
believed to be free from party prejudice ;
and because none of them had identified
themselves with the principles of the persons
whose case they were called to consider, that their
opinions were invited. Having recorded, after the
most mature deliberation, those opinions, and accom-
panied them by the most lucid explanations of the
grounds on which they were founded, all ordinary
practice was disregarded, and their judgment was set
at naught because that very luminous expositor of cri-
minal law, Lord Cottenham, appears to have con-
sidered his learning and experience superior to theirs.