The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-03 00:00:00

triental .Ant*

LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 3, 1844.

Future historians, when alluding to the reign of
Queen VICTORII—which GOD grant may be a long
and;hgcpy one not fail to notice,',withbecoming
exultation, the fact that it was a reign distinguished
far beyond any of the preceding ones by the frank,
unhesitating confidence, and generous spirit of cor.
diality evinced by the Sovereign towards all her
European allies ; that then, for the first time in the
annals of modern English history, an attempt was
made by a young and beautiful woman to do away
with that stiff, unsocial reserve which had hitherto
kept the monarchs of Great Britain apart from all
contemporary Royalties, and to introduce a more
Amiable, enlightened, and—we may add—politie
system of fraternization with her allies through-
out the continent of Europe. To this praise—
and when Tightly considered, it is praise of a very
high order—Queen VICTORIA. is most justly entitled;
and it may be accorded to her by the moat ultra-
Radical journal, even by the Northern Star .itsele,
without incurring that suspicion of hollow flattery
which so often taints any reference that may be
made to the sayings and doings of crowned heads.
By her visit last year, first to France,
le
eof frank-
ness and then to
Belgium, her MAJESTY has set anexmp
andsociability that cannot failatob attended
with the happiest remits. It is a proof of her

benevolent desire to consult the best interests of her
subjects by drawing tha bonds of union still closer
between England and the Continental Powers, and to
maintain the general tranquillity undisturbed, by
encouraging the spread of a more intimate and
friendly acquaintance with her immediate neighbours
—with France, more especially, which for the last
four or five years has entertained towards us few
other feelings than those of distrust and jealousy.
Since the QUEEN'S well-timed visit last year to Loris
PHILLIPPE at the Chateau D'Eu—these feelings have
greatly diminished in intensity, if they have not alto-
gether disappeared, except amongi the republican war
party in France, whom nothing short of a system of
general licentious Propagandism will ever satisfy ;
and should the King of the Barricades reciprocate
her MAJESTY'S frank and liberal confidence and
courtesy tby returning her visit—which it is
suspected he will do before long—we may
reasonably enough anticipate that a better
spirit will be engendered between France and
England than has ever yet existed between these two
influential rival kingdoms. Doubtless it is to the
social example set by her MAJESTY, and her known
wish to make, as far as it is possible to do so, one vast,
harmonious brotherhood of Europe, that we owe the
recent visit of the King of PRUSSIA, and the present
still more remarkable visits of the King of SAXONY
and the Emperor of RUSSIA. From the presence of
this last potentate among us we may augur
the most auspicious results to the future des-
tinies both of England and Russia. His Im-
perial MAJESTY, now in the full meridian
of his intellectual powers, will have an op-
portunity of personally witnessing the immense
wealth, the inexhaustible resources, the indomitable
energy and enterprise of this country ; the active
habits of its population, their bold yet orderly bearing,
and their prodigious masses, " thick as autumnal leaves
that strew the brooks of Vallombrosa," will strike
him with astonishment and admiration every hour of
the day, in every city, town, or even village, through
which he may happen to pass, and he will necessarily
infer the expediency of keeping on the closest terms
of amity with a nation possessed of such resources,
and wielding such mighty power; while, as regards
our English institutions, when he attentively consi-
ders their character, marks their liberal tendency, and
their excellent practical working in the frank, fear-
less, and active demeanour of the people, and bears
in mind to what an unprecedented height of power
and prosperity they have raised Great Britain ;
when his Imperial MAJESTY directs his attention,
and he can scarcely fail to do otherwise, to these im-
portant matters, it may, we think, be reasonably in-
ferred that many an anxious thought will pass through
his mind as to the expediency of remodelling,
so far as is compatible with prudence, the public
institutions of his own kingdom, of softening
their present harsh, despotic nature, and giving
them a chance, at least, of producing some of those
comprehensive national benefits whichfree institutions
have produced in this country. Russiahas within her-
self all the elements of greatness and prosperity;
she possesses an infinite variety of soil and climate ;
a hardy and industrious population is hers, well
fitted to draw forth the riches of her mines, many
of which are yet but imperfectly explored,
and to increase tenfold the value and extent of her
agricultural produce ; and nothing more is needed
to make her tite wealthiest, most independent, and
most influential kingdom in Europe, with the sole
exception of England, but such a tolerant and en-
larged system of government as shall regard the wel-
fare of the Many instead of the Few, and give the
vast masses of her people a direct, heart-felt interest
in supporting it.

Perhaps the greatest anomaly existing in the whole
administrative system of our law is—that denial of
the benefit of an appeal from the sentence of the
judge, in criminal cases, which the jurisprudence
of the most enlightened continental States so care-
fully reserves to the convicted offender. It is a bar-
barous deficiency—the more striking and deplorable
because of the general perfection, the combined huma-
nity and wisdom, of that scheme of administrative
justice which is one of our proudest titles to superior
civilisation. We give the accused criminal, indeed,
every advantage which he can derive from
being guaranteed a dispassionate and unprejudiced
demeanour, and statement of the charge, on the
part of the prosecuting counsel ; and a merciful
readiness, on the part of the presiding judge, to
suggest to the jury any topics for favourable con-
struction of motives and actions, where these—
although arising out of circumstances in evidence—
might otherwise be overlooked or undervalued by
minds less logically disciplined, or technically acute,
than his (the judge's) own. 'We have (very
recently, however,) at length got rid of another
anomaly, which had for centuries disgraced the same
branch of our jurisprudence—by allowing counsel to
be heard for the accused in criminal, as for the de-
fendant in civil, cases ;—" a great and mighty im-
provement," Mr. KELLY justly styled it. Let us
add that, with it, the names of the Hon. Member for
Dumfries (Mr. EWART), of the Hon. and Learned
Member for Ipswich himself (Mr. KELLY), and of
a distinguished law Lord in the House of Peers,
will always be most honourably associated. But that,
for so many hundreds of years, we should have denied
this right of appeal to a superior tribunal, in criminal
cases—whilst in all cases and proceedings of a civil
character, " where lands, houses, merchandise, money,
or property of any kind, or the rights of succession,"
are in question, we have always conceded it to that
party, to such suits, " who has felt himself aggrieved
by the verdict of a jury, or the decision of a judge ;"
—this distinction does seem to be as unaccountable
and capricious as it is certainly inequitable. We
cannot remember to have read a speech in which the
invidious and dangerous character of this distinction
has been so ably handled, or so powerfully enforced, as
in that of Mr. KELLY on Thursday evening. It ex-
hausted the subject of the hardship, the cruelty, the
judicial murders (may we not call it ?), to which the
deficiency of such an appeal has not merely a ten-
dency to work, but which, alas, it has actually and
very lately perpetrated ! It refused the expediency,
the humanity, the justice of supplying suck a defi-
ciency upon arguments absolutely unassailable. We
are reminded upon a careful perusal of Mr. KELLY'S
remarkable address (which we warmly commend to
the best attention of our readers), of those dark and
scandalous passages in our judicial history, tha still
preserve, in the records of " State Trials," in the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, the
memory of wicked and sycophantic judges ; of timid
and overawed juries; and of unhappy victims to re-
ligious or political persecution, whom the right of the
appeal now contended for, might have snatched from
the scaffold or the stake, and spared to the cause of
those holy principles of moral and of civil freedom
which to have advocated was the real offence that
many of them suffered martyrdom for.
We have said that in civil actions, the party deem-
ing himself aggrieved by the verdict
" Of one jury, or by the decision of a point of law by one
judge, had an appeal against the verdict of that jury—he had
an appeal to the court, and through the court to another
jury—he had an appeal against the decision of a single judge
to the court, and from one court to another, until he could
carry his case to the highest tribunal in the land—the
House of Lords, for decision."
Now let us see how Mr. KELLY contrasts the case
of a man tried under a criminal indictment :
" But if," says the Hon. and Learned Gentleman, "a man
were indicted for a crime affecting his character, his property,
his liberty, nay, even his life, he might be indicted, he might
have the verdict of one jury against him, or the decision
of a point of law against him by a single judge; but from
that verdict of one jury, from that decision of one judge, he
had no appeal. lie might suffer in his character—he might
suffer in his property—he might suffer in his person—he
might be imprisoned, transported, or suffer death—the de-
cision of the jury might be wrong, the verdict might be
erroneous, either in consequence of the jury having proceeded
upon wrong evidence, or having drawn a wrong inference
from the facts given in evidence—the judgment of a single
judge might be erroneous on some point of law or practice—
yet froni'Lhat verdict and from that judgment there was no
appeal, and an inaocent man's life might be sacrificed."
Why this is all au; ully true. And if the import-
ance of providing a remedy for such an enormous evil
can be enhanced, after such a statement, in the
opinion of Parliament, let us call upon it to consider
how grave an inference of selfishness is raised in the
following
passage against the spirit of that legislation
which can so long have tolerated the absence of so
appeal. Mr.. KELLY observed—
believe that
ifsuch a state of things
cfoarmteh withint
House of Parliament had been liable to indictment for crimes
wriolu‘hlldti‘ehaaLU;cvoeulbdnetsnearlolwYed to coi4innethe Members of either
the reach of the criminal law w ere
instead of being parties to actions.
u n thosed
ou t d whoy
munity."
part, among the poorer and humbler classes of the com-
We have no ;091/1 here to go into the particulars of

the cases adduced by Mr. KELLY, in exemplification
of the frightful injustice—the "judicial murder," we
repeat—to which the denial of an appeal from crimi-
nal convictions may lead ; but we doubt not that our
readers will be strongly moved by the remarkable
story of CHAUCER, tried, convicted, and executed
nine years since, for the murder of a gamekeeper in
Suffolk, of which another man has since acknow-
ledged the guilt to be his, distinctly exonerating
CHALICES. from all participation in it. Again—the par-
ticulars of the ease tried at the Huntingdon Assizes,
together with Mr. KELLY'S own honest, benevo-
lent, and intrepid efforts, six times renewed, to prove
to the judge who had tried it his misdirection to the
'jury as to the nature of the offence charged, we may
''safely leave to speak for themselves. But bere is an
incidental remark, introduced, apparently, in the most
casual manner, into another portion of the same
speech, in illustration of his general argument, the
application of which irresistibly suggests itself in
connexion with a case that a few weeks ago excited
such intense interest in the public mind. That in-
terest has given way to a feeling of almo,t unmiti-
gated astonishment and pain, at the tardy exercise
and stern ungracious qualification of the royal pre-
rogative of mercy announced by the Home Secretary.
" If a verdict of guilty should be returned, however
erroneous it might be, and if the learned judge who
tried the case should be satisfied with the verdict, there
was no human remedy; he would pass sentence, whether
of imprisonment, transportation for a term of years or
for life, or even of death itself; there was no power of
appeal, and sentence would be executed."
Might not this have been most accurately said of
the strange sentence passed by Mr. Justice MAULE
on the unfortunate Mertz FIIRLEY ; and the stranger
humanity, which, removing that wretched woman
from the scaffold whence the indignant demand of
public feeling had rescued her, condemned her to
seven years' transportation ?
We congratulate Mr. KELLY on his noble effort on
Thursday; and wish him all imaginable suocess in
the conduct of his " Bill to provide an Appeal in
Criminal Cases."

Madrid journals of the 25th ult. have been received.
The Queen, her Mother, and the Infanta reached Va-
lencia on the evening of the 23d, and were enthusias-
tically received by almost the entire population.
Their Majesties were delayed on the road by heavy
rains, which rendered the road from Quintanar to
Almansa almost impassable. On arriving at the latter
place, the young Queen found herself very unwell,
and immediately went to bed. During the journey
from Quintanar, which took place during the night,
the carriage of her Majesty was twice nearly upset,
and several men and horses belonging to the escort
received several bruises by falling into and over the
deep ruts and huge stones scattered along the road.
The Royal party were to pass Whitsuntide at Valen-
cia, and are not expected at Barcelona until the 29th.
The Three per Cents. were done at 28i at 60 days,
and the Five per Cents. at 20 5-16 20 for cash, and
20 at 60 days.

The French Chamber of Deputies brought the
discussion on the foreign relations of the country to a
close on Friday. M. GUIZOT delivered a masterly
speech on the occasion, and so completely refuted the
arguments of M. MIENS that the Opposition had not
the courage to go to a division on the question. The
Minister reprobated that restless, meddling spirit dis-
played by some statesmen, which led them constantly
to interfere with the affairs of foreigners and make
Frenchmen take part in their quarrels. If such were
to be the policy of France she could not remain at
peace for six months. " Besides (he said), there was
one that should always be respected, and that was
that the KING alone enjoyed the right of making
peace or declaring war, and that no one but the lima
could exercise this right : if such were not the case,
France would be exposed to the danger of being com-
promised at every moment, and in every quarter of
the globe. Look at what was passing at this moment
in America; there was war carrying on in different
points : there were Frenchmen at all these places, and
if they interfered in these disputes France would soon
be engaged in them. But this was contrary to com-
mon sense—absolutely absurd."
In reference to the war between Buenos Ayres and
Monte Video, M. TRIERS said he wished to say n word
on the position of the question_ He should not presc
the subject to a vote, because he was unwilling to
make the safety of the French subjects at Monte
Video depend on so uncertain a thing as a vote of
the Chamber. He, however, should make a last
appeal to the humanity of the Chamber in favour of
their countrymen. " The Government," said M.
GUIZOT, " would take all the measures necessary for
the protection of the persons, property, and rights of
the French subjects at Monte Video ; remembering,
at the same time, that there were Frenchmen also in
France, and that the interests of all must be conciliated
without sacrificing one to the other."

The Presse thus adverts to the defeat of M. TIHERS
and the eloquence of his antagonist :

" We may, therefore, be relied upon explicitly when we say
that never was the incontestible superiority of M. Guizot over
M. Thiers shown in so clear and brilliant a light. What a
wide distance between the talent of the one and the talent of
the other ! What a contrast between their speeches! One so
perfectly master of himself, always reaching his object with-
out going beyond it ; at once dignified and disdainful, never
descending to fronybut rising to it by an imperturbable and
marked courtesy full and unrestrained ; the other not retaining
his self-possession, incessantly repeating hitown words, dwell-
ing upon minute details, falling into personalities and offensive
language, and coming out of them onl7 by the common-
place exaggeration of his sentiments which, when sincere,
are expressed by phrases which even the Constitutionnel
itself no longer makes use of. Has M. Thiers no friends near
him who will warn him that he is misled by spite and is lost
in resentment ? It was impossible for an ex-Minister, one
who has been President of the Council, to forget himself, all
right principles, and all decency to a greater extent. We do
not exaggerate when we say that M. Thiers sank yesterday
far beneath those men of the Opposition whom we have
heard him attack between 1834 and 1837, with so much viru-
lent acrimony and treat with so much contempt."
The funeral of M. LAFFITTE passed off without
any popular commotion, though some of the orations
delivered over the grave were of a most stirring cha-
racter, and evidently directed against the KING. We
give the following as a specimen from the speech de-
livered by M. GARNIER PAGES
" One day, afflicted by the sight of the evils which pressed
upon your country, you begged pardon of God and man for
the results of your own work. Whilst lam speaking you
are in the presence of God, and God has absolved you; for
the error of a great mind which cannot foresee evil is never
a crime. And, besides, were you not made to expiate, by
cowardly persecutions and the most detestable calumnies, the
imprudence of having raised those to power who subsequently
persecuted and calumniated you ? No ! No ! Laffitte ; you
were not the guilty party. The guilty are those who, de-
spising the sacred obligation of an oath, have forgotten the
promises of July, who have trampled under foot the people
who set them up, and who, raised to power in the name of
the great principles of liberty, immediately became rene-
gades. Shame be upon them for ever ! Shame be upon those
who have forgotten their origin, and have violated the most
sacred engagements! The justice of God, like that of man,
is sometimes tardy, but a day will arrive when it will
fall upon them.' After N. Garnier Pages, M. Philippe
Dupin, at the request of the Prince de la Moskowa,
made a short but affecting speech, which he con-
cluded as follows :•-•--‘ We shall retain the remembrance of
the virtues and services of Jacques Laffitte. In his private
life he merited universal confidence. No man was ever more
kind and liberal, in the finest and rarest acceptation of the
word ; in his public life he always gave proofs of the most
pure and disinterested patriotism. He carries with him to
the grave the love of his friends and of all who were acquainted
with him, and the esteem of his country. Unanimous regret
will be felt at his loss among all classes and all opinions.' A
young student made an oration in the name of the deputation
of the schools. The persons who had followed the remains of
the deceased then left the cemetery, and the crowd generally
dispersed in the greatest order. Nothing occurred to bring
discredit upon the populace, or interrupt the solemn harmony
of the day. An attempt to disturb this harmony was, how-
ever, made at the last moment by a proposal for an ovation
in honour of M. Beranger. That gentleman being in one of
the carriages of the procession which were returning from the
cemetery, some young men were desirous of taking off the
horses, and harnessing themselves to the carriage, but the
horse municipal guards came up, and prevented the accom-
plishment of this object. The horses were then put to a
gallop, and set off under an escort of municipal guards. It was
nearly half-past six when this occurred, and the Boulevards
were still crowded with spectators."
On Saturday the Three per Cents. closed at
84f. 55c.

The French Government have received the follow-
ing telegraphic dispatch :
STRASBURG, MAY 31, 2 o'CLOCK.
" Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent arrived at
Strasburg from Basle at half-past twelve. Her Royal High-
ness is proceeding to Germany, and is to take her departure
at six o'clock."

THE COURT.—Her Majesty and Prince Albert, and
their illustrious visitors, the Emperor of Russia and
the King of Saxony, are expected to leave town this
afternoon, soon after three o'clock, by a special train,
on the Great Western Railway, for Windsor Castle.
The Royal party will remain. at the Castle during
Ascot races.

Her Majesty the Queen Dowager left town this
morning for the Continent. Her Majesty took her
departure by the London and Dover Railway, for
Dover, there to embark for France.

Her Majesty, accompanied by his Royal Highness
Prince Albert, her illustrious visitors, the Emperor
of Russia and the King of Saxony, will be present
at the Ascot-heath Races to-morrow, On Wednesday

there will be a grand review at Windsor of the
household brigade, and on Thursday the races will
again be honoured with the presence of the royal party

THIS DAY'S NEWS.

FIRE AT GRAVESEND.

About eleven o'clock last night a fire commenced at
Gravesend, which caused a far more extensive destruction
of property than any similar event in that town for the last
half-century. It commenced at a small house in West-street,
from the flue of a chimney belonging to a shrimp boiler, and
quickly communicated to the building, which, as well as the
adjoining ones, was constructed principally of wood. The
fire spread with great rapidity, and the wind fanned the
flames from house to house. The town engines were speedily
got into play, as was the engine from the fort, and assisted
in a very short time by engines from Rochester, Dartford,
and other places, which, on seeing the brilliant blaze caused
by the fire, had at once started for the scene of conflagration.
The detachments of soldiers lying at Tilbury and at Graves-
end, rendered every assistance in their power, and were of
the greatest service in keeping order and working the engines.
After burning for several hours, and destroying about twenty-
five houses, several wharfs, and consuming a vast quantity of
materials connected with shipping, the fire was fortunately
got under. At four o'clock all further danger had ceased.
An entire square of building between West-street and the
River was consumed, and some houses on the upper side of
that street were burnt, and others damaged. Considering
the nature of the fire, and the place where it occurred, it is
almost surprising that the whole of that part of the town of
Gravesend was not consumed. We have not heard in what
offices the property was Insured.