The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-16 00:00:00

liirittrZt 72bttton

THE FUNDS-(CLOSING PRICES.)

BRITISH FUNDS.
Bask Stock
3 per Cent. Red I Ditto Bonds
3 per Cent. Cons. ...... ...... 1.,•7:i Ditto Old Annu:Les ... -
336 per Cent. Red IO2N Ditto New Annuities ...
New 3% per Cent. Ex. Bills, 1,0001. 1%d... 73 put.
New 5 per Cent....
Long Annuities to expire Ditto Small 7l pm.
Jan 1860 Bank Stock for Acct.... 203%
Oct. 1859 'Consols for Act.......... 99%s
Jan. 1860 l2 5-16 !India Stock for Acct....
FOREIGN FUNDS.
Austrian, 5 per Cent ...... ... 114:,4 Portuguese, 5 per Cent —
Belgian, 5 per Cent ....... ..... Ditto, New Ditto
Brazilian Bonds
Buenos Ayres, 6 per Cent , Russian, 5 per Cent............
Aillian, i; per Cent
Colombian, 6 per Cent
2.)itto, 1824.... Ditto, 3 per Cent ....... ........ 34 94
Cub:. Bonds, 6 per Cent Ditto, Deferred l39i
Danish,:3 per Cent
Greek, 18,5, 5 per Cent — Exchange .......... ........ —f.
Mexican, 5 per Cent .. ....
Ditto, 6 per Cent., 11137 — Dutch, 2% per Cent.,,,.. 62 La
Peruvian, 1825, 6 per Cent -7_ Ditto, 5 per Cent .......100%

SR A RES.
Birmingham and Gloucester (100 paid) lO
Bristol and Gloucester, 30 paid
Caledonian, 5 paid
Chester and Holyhead ( 5 paid)
Dublin and Cashel, 2% paid
Eastern Counties (23 paid)
Ditto Registered (816 s 8d paid)
Edinburgh and Glasgow, 50 paid ..........
Ditto Quarter Shares (12% paid)
Great North of England, 100 paid
Ditto New Shares ( paid)
Great Western (75 paid
Ditto Half Shares, 50 paid B6
Ditto Fifths, i 2 paid -Ai IA
Hull and Selby, 50 paid 7O
Lancaster and Carlisle, 5 paid 6%
London and Birmingham (Stock) ...........
Ditto, New Thirds, 2 paid
London ,nd Brighton (50 paid)
Ditto Loan Nctes, 10 paid
Lon( on and Greenwich (121. 153. 4d. paid) ......
Diito, Preference or kriv ilege, .ZlB 17s 2d paid '24
London and South Western (411. 6s. 106. paid)
Ditto Eighths (15s. paid)
London and Croydon (Trunk) 1631
London and York, 2% paid 5)4
Manchester and Leeds (70 paid)
Ditto, Half Shares, 30 paid
Midland Counties (100 paid) lOO%
Newcastle and Darlingron Junction, 21 paid 47
Norwich and Brandon, 6 paid
South Eastern and Dover (33 2s 4d paid)
Ditto New shares, 5 paid
York and North Midland (50 paid) —
Ditto Half Shares (25 paid)
York and Scarborough Branch (2% paid)
Rouen and Havre, 10 paid la%

SPIRIT of tho PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
GLOBE.—Burke said he did not know how to
draw an indictment against a whole people. Sir
Robert Peel, or his Irish purveyor's of judge-made
law, thought they did know how to do this. Ac-
cordingly, they stuffed out a monster indictment,
by way of being commensurate with its object.
They seem to have thought that, if it were but
big enough, it could not fail to overlay the
whole bulk of Irish discontent. They made a
mistake ; a single bullet, well aimed, may prostrate
the king of beasts ; but the most capacious net
that can be thrown round him may be gnawed in
pieces by well-filed teeth. Plain coercion might have
obtained over O'Connell the only sort of victory that
can well be obtained over a man who is the organ of
multitudinous aspirations and antipathies. But lawyer-
craft, when it knots its meshes with such exceeding
complexity and subtlety, lays itself open, at every part
of its texture of technicalities, to the operation of pre-
cisely the same faculty in undoing the whole of its
work. The party exasperated by the LOrds' recent
reversal of judgment make a mighty point of assert-
ing that reversal to have turned on mere technical
points. Why, what did the judgment turn upon ?
. If it was lawful to lavish technical constructions, for
the purpose of accumulating a series of acts not singly
criminal into crime, surely the same skill may equally
be employed in unravelling the process. Nothing, in-
deed, can render legal refinements endurable, but their
imeartial application. If the whole penetrating in-
genuity of the legal profession were devoted to rearing
the fabric of constructive crimes at the bidding of a
Government, and if no independent minds of legal
training were exerted in the opposite di: estion, the
Cusack Smith race would be even more useless tools
of power than in this case they have proved. Men
might not be able to unravel the web of legal sophistry,
but they would burst through it. It is only the con-
fidence. that the rules of fence are available for both
sides, that makes them respected on either. There is
something absolutely ludicrous in the clamour °foyer-
refinement against the law Lords considering all the
refinements relied on to eke out the case on trial. It
is a maxim with architects to make the principal parts
of their structure stronger than strong enough. It is
a practice also of Parliamentary logicians to rely on a
dozen bad arguments, rather than trust to a single
good one. The conductors of the case against O'Con-
nell seem to have proceeded upon some such analogy.
They.wanted to swell the slippery frog of repeal meet-
ings to the stalled ox of conspiracy. They caught the
subject of their experiment, and inflated it at their
leisure. We see the result ; instead of keeping their
ox impounded, they have burst even their frog. The
party in power received Ireland with nothing more
than her chronic complaints. They were greeted, in
the autumn of 1841, with the same Repeal cry, with
which they had been greeted in the autumn of
1830. There was nothing new in the case; arid
they had full time to study its symptoms. Indeed
their first demonstrations appeared aimed at
eclipsing the Whigs in laisse: Aire magnanimity.
Sir Robert Peel has since made a merit of
having begun by reducing the amount of force
which the late Government had stationed in Ireland.
Like Lord Ellenborough in India, though not with
the open-mouthed absurdity of that delegate of his,
he meant to demonstrate his peculiar mission for paci-
fying all that his predecessors had studiously been
charged with disturbing. And like Lord Ellenbo-
rough's, his peace-making mission has ended its courses
considerably different. The country has had to pay for
setting Sir Robert Peel up in a new character. Ile
was resolved to have matter to twit the Whigs with,
in the administration of Ireland as of other things. If
they had kept so many troops in Ireland, he was re-
solved to keep so many less; and ended as might have
been expected, in bristling at all paints with horse,
foot, and artillery. If they had once on a time pasaed
Coercion Acts, he was resolved to " ask no ex-
traordinary power, though at a period of admitted
danger, appealing to the law alone for a remedy to
the evils with which we had to contend." Appeals
to the law ngsinst individuals can only he success-
ful in a country where these individuals are in a
minority in their sentiments and their conduct. To
convict some half-duzei, men of conspiracy, for &s-
-plays dangerous by their immense publicity, was a
- sort of practical Irish bull, however the lawyers
might cook up the case. It the repeated and avowedly
systematic array of numbers was dangerous, then Sir
R. Peel was a fellow conspirator with O'Connell in
bringing that danger to a head. Sir Robert had his
new character to support, as a Liberal Minister;
• O'Connell his old one, as a Catholic and popular
agitator. It was necessary to each to " play
out the play." Then why was only one brought
to answer for it? Sir Robert Peel had the public
force at command at first, as lie had at last. Why did
he not stop the first meeting ? Or the next ?—Or the
:next ? Or, if it was only the last one or two that
threatened the public peace (and it appears to us ne-
cessary to Sir Robert Peel's exculpation to assume that
this was so), why then the elaborate accumulation of
charges deduced from the whole series ? All was
equally public throughout. Either the procedure de-
served the reversal it has received—as swelled out
with overcharges—or else Sir R,44,ert Peel conspired
with Ir. O'Connell, and abetted the progress of a
ov,n ptnposes—as Mr. O'Con-
nell
STANDARD.--But for the dearth of other topics
of interest, we should feel some reluctance to prolong
• a discussion like tla:t which the result of the monstre
proces has forced upon us ; but the impudent asser-
tion of the arch-conspirator and his friends, that the
decision of the three law Lords in his favour was
" not folifided on technicalities" (we quote the lan-
guage of Mr. O'Connell's late speech), for that his
"success had been achieved upon the merits," leaves
us no alternative. The Morning- Chronicle repeats
this audacious falsehood, but with some slight
modification ; averring that the verdict which
the jury originally proposed to return " con-
tained no finding upon any valid imputation in
respect to the multitudinous meetings, although it
was in reference to those meetings that the whole
prosecution was originally instituted, and the whole
punishment ultimately inflicted." There is some-
thing novel, at least,t in an argument on the hypo-
thesis of a verdict which the jury might have
found, a verdicte whichno British court of
judicature could have received, which overlooks
the verdict which really w'a's returned, and
on which all the
our subsequent
Contemporary
have
been founded. But
no doubt, remembered the adage,
arta3:'
gwuitmheiait, neces-
sity has DO law We m joingnt issue
r !"
with him even on this hypothetical at._
were worth while to occupy our space
ifit
repub-
lication of a part of the proceedings which is in
everybody's hands; but we deny the statement of
our Contemporary most emphatically. The original
finding of the jury, although technically invalid, con-
victed the traversers of the substantial charges which
were brought against them ; enough and more than
sufficient to have warranted an even severer sentence
than that which was inflicted upon them. But
to turn from the Oro/tick's hypothetical ver-
dict to that which was really recorded. It insists
that the sth, Bth, 9th, 10th, and 11th counts of the
indictment, which embody every part of the charge,
amount to the imputation of nothing that ought
to be considered criminal; quotes the opinions
of the Irish judges, that the " exhibition of great
physical force; for the purpose of overawing the
Government, at the monster meetings," was the
gravest of the charges the jury had to try; and
eee :Koceeds to assume that the entire penalty inflicted on
ae; '. - SU. O'Connell,was imposed upon him on the suppo-