The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-16 00:00:00

NA
parishes and of course were given in
it promiscuously, without . to alphabetical
arrangement, so as to render applicable the test
which we applied on Friday. Mr. Justice Perrin
intimated pretty broadly a suspicion that the paper
was dishonestly abstracted. Wss; are wholly at a
loss to comprehend the grous4, of Mr. Perrin's
suspicion, in which it is quite 'plain none of his
brother judges participated. The paper, according
to the Dublin Freeman's Journal, must have been
mislaid so long ago as last November. It was mis-
laid by a party unconnected with the Crown, and in
a place to which the officers of the Crown had no ac-
cess. And what possible effect could be anticipated
from the omission of sixty-three names (taken in
mass from one parish), from a list, as we have said,
of five or six thousand special and common jurors ?
The proportion of special jurors to common jurors
in Dublin appears to be but one in eight;
eight, therefore, would be the number of special
jurors excluded by the omission. But the proportion
of Protestants to Roman Catholics—special jurors—
upon the list of all the other parishes taken together
—is about three-and•a-half to one—so that the
omission has merely caused the exclusion of two
Roman Catholics, and it must surely be compen-
sated by the exclusion of six Protestants. Let us,
however, indulge Mr. Justice Perrin, by supposing
that all the 63 omitted were special jurors ; we have
Mr; Pierce Mahoney's oath that 14 or 15 of them
were Roman Catholics—somebody else, it is true,
says that there were 12 other nameless Roman Ca-
tholics--but it is nearly certain that these 12 are 12 of
the named made to appear again as anonymous. Take,
however, the whole number of 27. Here we have 27
Roman Catholics and 36 Protestants excluded together.
How would the addition of these two numbers have,
in the slightest degree, disturbed the proportions
existing upon the list of 717 ? 'What motive, then,
can possibly have prompted the doing of that which
Mr. Justice Perrin insinuates ought not to have
been done without a motive ? It would be

well if judges would remember that their position
gives to what they say a weight which the
sayings of some of them might not otherwise
possess, and that they would, in consideration of
this, guard their language a little. There has
been a blunder in Mr. Shaw's office—nobody
disputes that—nor do we defend it, further
than by saying that in every office blunders
now and then occur very innocently, and
that this has on the face of it all the cha-
racteristics of a most innocent blunder. Officials
at this side of the water may exult in their exemp-
tion from exposure like that to which the Dublin
Recorder's register has been subjected, but they
probably owe the immunity rather to their good for-
tune than to their extraordinary skill or vigilance
—we doubt that ever a jury list has ever been made
up for Middlesex, not subject to as many and as
grave objections as have been alleged against the
Dublin list ; but here pettifogging objections are dis-
graceful, very few solicitors, no barristers of reputa-
tion, would lend themselves to such objections, least
of all would a judge condescend to help one of them
out by an insinuation for which he could offer no
sufficient ground.
TIMES.—The Greek Kalends have arrived. The
day which the most sanguine never hoped to see—
the day the indefinite remoteness of which rendered
it an almost impossible unit of time—has dawned
upon the inhabitants of St. Stephen and St. Benet
Sherehog. Alderman Gibbs has published his ac•
counts ; and when the world has recovered from its first
surprise at this announcement, it will be prepared to
hear the startling news that the vestry has audited
them and passed them. There is—according to the
most celebrated metaphysicians—a feeling of pleasure
produced by astonishment. Whether it be that the
excitement caused by an unexpected event acts upon
the system by stimulating the languid circulation of
the blood, and dispelling the heaviness which a
monotony of occupation causes to weigh upon the
human frame, we cannot undertake to say; but we
believe it to be an admitted fact that the sensation
of pleasure invariably results from the excitement
of surprise. If so, what happy fellows the inha-
bitants of St. Stephen, Walbrook, and St. Benet
Sherehog, must be ! For it has been their plea-
surable diversion to ascertain not only that Alderman
Gibbs has given an account of his official receipts and
expenditure, but also that the vestry has audited
them ; and not only this, but that the Alderman
makes out the parish to be his debtor to the tune of
eighteen hundred and two pounds three shillings and
sixpence; and, more than all else, that the auditors of
the vestry have authorised the aforesaid balance to be
paid over to their calumniated and dilatory creditor.
One thing is clear—either that the Alderman is
one man picked out of ten thousand; of admirable
self-denial, exalted contempt of gain, and un-
bounded generosity, or else—but we will not state
the alternative. But there in another thing which
is equally clear, viz., that to men of less self-
denial and less virtue than the Alderman, this
system of giving 18 years' tick for parish disburse-
ments presents innumerable opportunities for some-
thing very like fraud. Only fancy a private gentle-
man authorising his steward to receive his rents and
pay away money without ever asking, or, if he did
ask, without enforcing, an account of the respective)
receipts and expenditure ; and this indifferent manage-
ment to be continued, not for one, or two, or three,
but for nearly twenty years. Or, imagine the
trustees of a charity appointing a secretary to col-
lect subscriptions and to lay them out for certain
definite objects, and yet never extracting information
as to the mode of expending the money until twenty
years had elapsed. Would not such a man be thought
' an idiot, and such trustees unfaithful to their trust ?
Alderman Gibbs' accounts run over a period of
eighteen years. As might be supposed, they include
items of the most heterogeneous kind. Coals, can-
dles, organ-blowers, funerals, carpenters, plumbers,
lecturers, vergers, sextonesses, and parish-clerks.
Here are draughts for a costive Jones, there are pills
for a dyspeptic Scroggins ; Mrs. Tibbs' midwife and
Mrs. Brag's casual nurse; shoes for small boys, and
stuff gowns for charity girls, jostle Dr. Waters
yearly salary of 401, as parish lecturer, and Mr.
Chappell's bill for the firecock in Bond-court. And
whenever there has been the most incongruous assort-
ment of parochial necessities iu one page, the next
page illuminates the inquiring mind with a long suc-
cession of ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, &c., &c., &C.
All this may be quite right and correct. There
may have been so many shoes bought in one week,
so many petticoats in another, and so many midwives
in a third, and black draughts in a fourth. The organ
tuner, the organ-blower, the sextoness, and the glazier,
may all have been punctually paid, and paid out of
Alderman Gibbs' pocket too. Still we maintain
that it would be a much more business-like proceed-
ing to audit the accounts every year, and spare both
the purse and the feelings of the payer, as well as
preserve the parish from the continued visitation of
intestine disputes. Of course the auditors never
dreamed of passing the Alderman's accounts, without
having seen the vouchers for them. What a collec-
tion of precious autographs Alderman Gibbs must
have possessed! Now that he has no further use for
them, we fear he will commit them to the flames.
When we think of their number and their value, our
memories recur to the fire which consumed the Alex-
andrian library. We dread a second fire of London,
which shall avenge the Gibbsian etetongs, and extin-
guish the river 'Thames.
ADVERTISER.—Our Dublin correspondence of
this day merits a most attentive perusal, and cannot
fail to excite a deep interest. It contains not only an
account of the aggregate meeting of the Roman Ca-
tholics, in reference to the recent exclusion of their
members from the jury panel, but also an account of
the proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench, on a
motion on the part of the traversers to have the trial
postponed till the jury list were corrected, as well as
on another motion, on the part of the Crown, to have
the trials continued—in case of their not being pre-
viously concluded—through the vacation after the
close of the present term, of which it was moved
that said vacation shall be regarded as part.
The latter motion, made by the Attorney-General,
was acceded to by the Court, Judge Perrin only
being dissentient, as to the propriety of granting
it at that stage of the proceedings, when there were
no less than fifteen days of the term unexpired.
The motion on the part of the traversers to postpone
the trials till the extraordinary omission, to which we
have already alluded, of certain names from the jury-
list were supplied, was refused on the grounds that
there was no party directly charged with the omis-
sion, and that the Crown appeared before the Court in
the light of an ordinary prosecutor. In concurring in
the view of his brothers on the bench, however, Judge
Perrin remarked, " I cannot but think that there was
great negligence and gross want of care in the way in
which authentie:documents have been treated, and I
arn- not prepared to say that the Thole was the result of
accident." Mr. Moore, in applying for the postpone-
ment of the trials, stated that the names of twenty-
seven persons, of wiiom twenty-three were Roman Ca-
tholics,
in duly recognised by the Recorder himself as
qualified to be on the jury-list, were omitted, either by
" mistake or fraud," and subsequently, upwards of
h
sixty individuals were excluded, in a manner of whtic_.
no satisfactory explanation has yet been attemped
Such is the present phase of the State prosecutions
in Ireland. 'What is to be expected ti
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paitisan judges may condemn ; but happily the time
is past for general integrity to submit to such foul
desecrations of com!hafa justice._ ae State prosecu-
tions in Ireland, after wliat'litli=aiready taken place,
can have no other effect than to sink their promoters
deeper and deeper in public ignominy and execration.