The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-05 00:00:00

THE LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 5. 1844.

THE WRIT OF ERROR.
(From the Times.)

The House of Lords has given its decision in the
case of Mr. O'Connell, and that decision is a reversal
of the judgment of the court below, in opposition to
the opinions of the majority of the judges, delivered
on Monday. The majority in the House of Lords
consisted of Lords Denman, Campbell, and Cotten-
ham, against the Chancellor. and Lord Brougham.
With respect to the legal points at issue, the law is in
such a state that it was, of course, a toss up which
way judgment would be given. It is unusual to go
against the opinion of the judges, and therefore it was
naturally expected that the Douse would agree with
that opinion. As it is, they have disagreed with it.
The matter appears to stand thus :—On the great
merits and substance of the case there was no doubt
and no difference of opinion amongst our judges.
It is quite clear that under one count or another in
the indictment, a true legal offence was described, and
that on the proof of that offence judgment was given
against Mr. O'Connell. This is the common sense
view. On the other hand comes in the legal diffi-
culty. The indictment contained bad and unsound
, matter, as well as good and sound. The judgment
was given upon the indictment; the judgment was
given, therefore, upon bad counts as well as upon good
ones. Here is the point. The bad invalidate the
good, say Mr. Baron Parke and the minority of the
bench ; the good turn the bad out of the field, say Chief
Justice Tindal and the majority. Judgment is given
upon a mixture, says one side; judgment supposes
only the sound ingredients of the mixture, says an-
other. This is one of the main questions; the other
relates to the appointment of the jury, and the vicious
list out of which they were selected. There is legal
remedy in this case, says one side of the judicial
bench ; there is not, says the other. Who shall de-
cide when doctors disagree ? A majority of judges
on one side, and a minority on another, was still a
division of opinion ; and the Lords had a right to de-
cide between the two. So thought Lords Denman,
Cottenham, and Campbell. They conceived also that
they had a perfect right to entertain a coincidence of
opinion on the matter with Mr. Baron Parke, and un-
doubtedly they have. Mr. Baron Parke, as we have
acknowledged already, is a luminary of the law. No
one can dispute the right of the Whig law Lords to
entertain his view; and they have, as we see, not
failed to entertain it. A curious mixture and per-
plexity of justice ensues upon this decision. Going
upon the substantial merits of the case, Mr. O'Con-
nell has confessedly been condemned justly : going
upon the legal question, the majority of the law Lords
say he has been condemned unjustly; and he has al-
ready actually suffered part of his sentence. He can
proclaim the injustice of a now so decided illegal
sentence of imprisonment. On the other hand, an
opponent may tell him that what was prospectively
illegal was not prevented by that circumstance from
being actually at the time legal. The law put Mr.
O'Connell in prison, and the law has taken him out.
The law is his enemy and his friend ; but it is law
in either case. A legal interpretation acts subse-
quently to its promulgation, but cannot antedate
itself. What was done before was done then, and not
now ; and Mr. O'Connell's imprisonment is present
illegality but retrospective law. However, Mr.
O'Connell is now out, and at large, or will be in the
course of a few hours. It remains with him to select
the character that he will play on so important and
triumphant an occasion as the present. Will he be
serene and majestic or indignant and threatening ?
Will he pity, or will he storm? Will he smile, or
shake his fist ? Will he astound all Ireland with
quiet magnanimity, or immediately commence retali-
ation ? We have no doubt he will duly revolve and
debate the part he will play. It is a critical moment;
much may be made of it by good management;
much may be lost, and much gained; he must take
some line that will be striking and impressive. What
a crowd of political moves in posse will cross and
jostle one another in his brain as soon as the triumph-
ant intelligence is communicated. And the choice
must be made immediately; the prison doors are
opening, and the excited mob are waiting outside. Mr.
O'Connell should really have time for deliberation, and
be allowed, as a favour, to stay one week longer in gaol.
Meantime, without undertaking to prophesy what
the immediate effects of the decision of the House of
Lords will be, and fully aware, as we are, of the un-
favourable turn which such successes generally have
taken in Ireland, we must yet suggest one aspect in
which the present one ought to be viewed, and which
should tell anything but unfavourably upon Irish
feelings to England. The Irish cannot at any rate
now complain of the injustice of England : we do not
decide ourselves whether this judgment of the Lords
is a good or a bad one, just or unjust: but the Irish
certainly cannot complain of it. English law cannot
be impugned and accused of Irish antipathies
at any rate in this instance. English law has set ,
Mr. O'Connell free. Ungrateful it would be to an
excess in them to go to any other source than the
unpolluted purity of English law for the favour-
able sentence, or even to whisper the remotest con-
jecture of an obligation to the political partialities
of Lords Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell, for
the issue of this appeal. The Noble and Learned
Lords would disown it with indignation ; and there-
fore, they must acknowledge that it is law, and law
only—English law and justice—which has done this.
Or even supposing a shade of party—a mere touch of
the politician coming in, in the business—we men-
tion it as the barest hypothesis—still the learned
Lords are not the House of Lords. The House is
Conservative, and this is the decision of the House.
And though it may be said that custom prevents any
but law Lords voting, and that therefore this is prac-
tically only the decision of certain law Lords, this
only removes the conclusion one step further. The
fact still remains that the House has committed itself
to this decision, and that the supreme tribunal of
England has given a most gratifying judgment for
Ireland. Whether that judgment is right or wrong,
we do not say ; it must at any rate be a pleasing one
to the Irish ; and they are not, therefore, the persons
now to complain of English injustice and partiality.
(From the Morning Herald.)
" The glorious uncertainty of the law" has had a
new triumph. The judgment of the Irish Court of
Queen's Bench, in the case of O'Connell and others,
though approved of by seven out of the nine judges
free to offer an opinion upon the subject, and by the
Chancellor and Lord Brougham, has been reversed
by the votes of only three Noble and Learned Lords
—two of them ex-Chancellors of Whig promotion,
and the third a nobleman whom we dislike to find in
such company—though fourteen years ago he was a
Whig—Lord Denman. Let us marshal the autho-
rities on each side :
FOR THE JUDGMENT. AGAINST IT.

IN IRELAND.
Chief Justice Pennefather.
Mr. Justice Burton.
Mr. Justice Crampton.
Mr. Justice Perrin.

IN ENGLAND.
The Chancellor. Lord Cottenham.
Lord Brougham. Lord Denman.
Chief Justice Tindal. Lord Campbell.
Mr. Justice Patteson. Mr. Baron Parke.
Mr. Justice Williams. Mr. Justice Coltman.
Mr. Justice Coleridge.
Mr. Justice Maule.
Mr. Baron Gurney.
Mr. Baron Alderson.

Such is the state of the law that fine judges,
neither higher in judicial rank nor otherwise, have
the power of overturning the judgment of thirteen;
an arrangement, in appearance at least, not very
honourable to the administration of justice in this
country. The question naturally occurs to every one
—why, if the votes of Lords Cottenham, Denman and
Campbell must be paramount in anv case, were the
circuits delayed—the prorogation of 'Parliament post-
poned—and the traversers detained improperly six
weeks in prison ? Why, were the judges consulted at
all if it was predetermined, as manifestly it must
have been, that the opinion of the majority of them
should go for nothing ? Is this the way to make the
administration of justice respectable in the eyes of
the people ? A question, in some measure, connected
with the last, respects tke attendance of the lay Lords. '
If these Lords were to give efficient votes, their at-
tendance is intelligible enough, and the exercise of
their privilege of voting would go some length in
explaining why the opinions of the judges were called
for, even though the law Lords might have resolved
to disregard these opinions ; because, instructed by
the opinions and the learned arguments of the judges,
most educated laymen would be as competent to form
a sound decision as an equity pleader no more con-
versant with Crown law than the ex-Chancellor Cot-
tenham, or than the noble and unsuccessful prosecutor
of Frost, Lord Cardigan, Mr. Feargus O'Connor,
and so many others; but the lay Lords were not
permitted to vote, and one can hardly imagine
a slight passed upon any men more humiliating
than the detaining their Lordships from their
country seats, their relaxations, and the society
of their families, merely to look on, like the guards
at an execution, while Lords Cottenhum, Denman,
and Campbell should snub eleven out of thirteen
Irish and English Judges. As to the consequences
of the decision, the only ill-consequences that we ap-
prehend, in addition to those which must attend every
perversion of law and justice, is the new force that
this decision will give to the too prevalent conviction
that " there is one law for the rich and another for the
poor." The judges, law Lords, and all who have had
the matter before them, unanimously admit the moral
justice of the punishment of the Repealers, though
some on one technical crotchet, some on another, have
concurred in withdrawing the offenders from that
merited punishment. This acknowledgment of the
real substantial guilt of Mr. O'Connell and his aecom•
plices is on one side good, because it reduces the tri-
umph of the liberated convicts to the triumph of suc-
cessful wickedness and fraud, but it 13 on the other

• side fraught with immense evil. There is not one of
the miserable creatures, for example, now suffering
under sentences imposed at the late special commis-
sions in South Wales and elsewhere, who, seeing the
escape of Mr. O'Connell and the rest by dint of petti-
' fogging and of party influence, must not feel that if he
had the means of paying for the necessary amount of
pettifogging, he might as confidently bid defiance to law
and justice. We deeply regret to find Lord Denman
mixed up in this discreditable decision, and regret it
scarcely the less because we believe that his Lordship has
been acting upon a misconception unworthy of him.
The noble Chief Justice of England founded his
decision to reverse the judgment of his Irish brethren
chiefly upon the alleged fraud in the construction of
the jury list—in this taking a view different from all
the English judges without exception, and from three
of the four Irish judges. Now, that there was fraud
in the matter we firmly believe, but by whom was
that fraud committed ? Not by the officers of the
Crown, for not one of them ever had access to the
jury lists; not by the officers of the court, for they
had little interest in the affair, and have, besides,
completely purged themselves by affidavits ; but there
were some who had access to the lists who have never
purged themselves by any affidavit; and who had a
a deep interest in stealing the lists, because the
stolen lists contained a majority of Protestants ; and
thus, in the first place, improved the chances of the
traversers, and because, secondly, an exposure of the
fact that lists were stolen might upset the judgment
if the traversers did not get a jury to their mind, as
in fact it has done—for these—the only persons who
had access to the lists, and an interest in stealing the
lists, and who purged themselves by no affidavits—
were the servants of the traversers' attorneys.
(From the Morning Post.)
The country will learn with astonishment the re-
sult of the proceedings, yesterday, in the House of
Lords. The judgment of the Irish Court of Queen's
Bench has been reversed, and Mr. O'Connell is, once
again, virtually a free man. By its course of action,
yesterday, the House of Lords has, voluntarily, re-
nounced some of its most important functions; while
the amiable Lord Wharncliffe and his colleagues have
betrayed the interests of the Queen's loyal subjects in
England as well as in Ireland. Lord Lyndhurst and
Lord Brougham, it will be perceived, concurred in
opinion with the judges of England, as well as with
the Irish Court of Queen's Bench ; while Lords Den-
man,
Campbell, and Cottenham argued in favour of
a reversal of the sentence which has been passed on
O'Connell and his fellow conspirators. The opinions
of these three Learned Whigs would, however, have
availed little with the House, had not Lord Wharn-
cliffe entreated the lay Peers not to vote on a ques-
tion which Lords learned in the law ought to decide.
The doctrine of Lord Wharncliffe in this matter
is not the doctrine of the constitution. Even Lord
Campbell disclaimed, for his order, any such ex-
clusive privileges as Lord Wharncliffe thrust
upon it. The ex-Chancellor of Ireland denied,
in short, that in the House of Lords, sitting as a
court of appeal, the constitution recognises any dis-
tinction between the law Lords and those who have
not received their education in Inns of Court. The
"conciliatory" doctrine of Lord Wharncliffe was, in
fact, treated with infinite contempt by a Noble and
Learned Member of that political party which the
doctrine in question was designed to serve. For once
in his life, Lord Campbell has given utterance to a
great truth. The constitution recognises no distinc-
tion between lay Peers and law Lords when the
Upper House sits as a court of appeal. Lord Wharn-
cliffe has, in fact, lietrayed•his brother Peers into an
abandonment of some of their most important con-
stitutional functions. If his Lordship's doctrines be
sound, the country no longer possesses a court of ap-
peal in the House of Lords. No ; our highest court
of appeal is composed, exclusively, of the lawyers in
the House. Let this fact be known to the country ;
and let the name of the House of Lords be no
longer mixed up with the movements of the
lawyers who belong to that assembly. The
House of Lords has agreed, we repeat, to throw
away some of its most important constitu-
tional privileges; while, almost contemporaneously,
the House of Commons has tried to usurp the func-
tions which the constitution has denied to it. The
House of Lords, assembled as a court of appeal, does
not presume to controvert the opinions of the three
Whig law Lords. The House of Commons, with-
out possessing any right to reverse the proceedings of
any court of law, has attempted, on the other hand,
within these few years, to exercise as large a mea-
sure of control over the judges of the land, as it
might over the door-keepers of St. Stephen's. The
lay members of the House of Lords were, as we have
stated, assured by Lord Wharncliffe that they ought
to leave the matter at issue to be determined by those
of their number who were learned in the law. The
law Lords of the House were never, let it be ob-
served, designed to be other than advisers of the
House, in its character as a court of appeal;
and it may not be forgotten that the House has,
in this case of O'Connell, sought advice at the
hands, not merely of the lawyers whom it
contains, but of all the judges of England.
Nearly all these judges are, it so happens, op-
posed to the opinion expressed by Lords Denman,
Campbell, and Cottenham. It is, indeed, a remark-
able coincidence that all the noble lawyers who voted
for the emancipation of O'Connell happen to belong
to O'Connell's political party. When, therefore, Lord
Wharncliffe counselled the House to leave the matter
to the decision of those learned in the law, he ought
to have qualified his advice, and urged the lay Peers
to leave the matter to the decision—not of all the
judges, nor of those judges who, by position, must
be comparatively free from political bias, but of the
few judges who are involved in all the heats of party
strife. The effect on the country of this renuncia-
tion of their privileges by the lay Peers of England
will be most disastrous. The power of O'Connell
will be incalculably strengthened. Last year he
openly defied the law and Government. This year
her Majesty's " Conservative" Ministers have enabled
him to trample on
the administrators of justice in
Ireland. Lord Wharncliffe and his colleagues have,
in melancholy truth, offered the highest con-
ceivable premium on disaffection of the most deep
and dangerous kind. By disregarding the opinion of
the great majority of the judges of England—by re-
three law Lords, Whose
ferring, in fact, the decision of this great question to
political sentiments do not
differ widely from O'Connell's —Lord Wharncliffe
has contrived to play O'Connell's game better than
he and his colleagues could have done by the ma-
chinery of a Royal visit to Ireland. To pardon
O'Connell would have been, to a certain extent, to
degrade O'Connell. Now O'Connell has no need of
pardon. Compensation is, in fact, due to him. We
trust, therefore, that Lord Wharncliffe will move in
Parliament that compensation shall be tendered to the
loyal gentlemen who have for some months past been
s
compelled to share in the gaieties which have
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yet attempted in the direction of repeal. 'Whatever
increase of force the repeal agitation may hereafter
require, must assuredly be placed to the credit of her
Majesty's Ministers. It is impossible to forget with what
reluctance Ministers proceeded last year to enforce the
law against O'Connell. " Monster meeting" after
" monster meeting" was allowed to be held with im-
punity. For months Ministers resolutely refused to
take any step to vindicate the law, or to protect the
Queen's loyal Irish subjects from the effects of a sys-
tem of intimidation more frightful
than any attempted
since the days of the French revolution. That sys-
tem of intimidation Ministers, we repeat, approved
themselves unwilling to check. That system of inti-
midation Ministers have now virtually re-established.
It is time that those who d • esire to prevent the dis-
memberment of the empire should think seriously of
the present aspect of affairs, The Repeal agitation
will speedily be renewed with tenfold fervour. How
long will that agitation be opposed by Sir Robert
Peel ? To how many of his professed principles has
that Right Honourable Gentleman adhered in defiance
of long continued clamour ? In early life he was the
champion of Protestantism. In 1829 he betrayed the
Protestant cause. He was, in a sense, the founder of
Orange lodges. In 1833, he lent himself to their sup
pression without attempting to defend them. In
1839, he was the champion of British agriculture. In
• 1842 he openly adopted the principles of the Anti-
Corn-law League. Will he always oppose the clamour
for a repeal of the union ?
(From the Morning Advertiser.)
We congratulate the State prisoners—we congra-
tulate the people of Ireland—we congratulate the
lovers of justice throughout the world on the event
which yesterday took place in the House of Lords.
Contrary to all expectation, after what had occurred
in the same place on Monday, the judgment of the
Irish court has been reversed, and this evening O'Con-
nell and his fellow-prisoners will be walking the
streets of Dublin as free as any of her Majesty's sub-
jects. The re l
versal of the sentence . Which doomed
the Irish patriots to twelve months' incarceration, has
excited an extraordinary sensation in London. What
will be the excitement it will cause in Ireland, we
leave to be guessed by those who know the state
of public feeling in that country. In the ex-
cess of the people's joy, in their boundless exul-
tation, we trust that nothing will occur to afford
a handle to the enemies of their country. The
question will now suggest itself to every mind,
what reparation will be made to O'Connell and
his fellow-prisoners for the three months' in-
carceration they have suffered ? Another question
will occur—what adequate reparation can be made
them ? None. The injury which has been inflicted
on them is too deep, the injustice done them too great
to admit of a measure of reparation which could meet
the merits of the case. That, however, is no reason
why some atonement should not be made. In cases
of false imprisonment—even for a few hours—at the
instance of private individuals, the party suffering
the injury can obtain ready redress. It will be very
extrAordiNtry if the constitution, whose excellences

we are in the habit of lauding to the skies, does not
provide the means of reparation for individuals who
have suffered three months' false imprisonment at
the hands of a vindictive Government. The prosecu-
tion of Mr. O'Connell has been a most unfortunate
step from the first. As it began, so it has con-
tinued, and so it has ended. Blunder succeeded
blunder on the part of the Attorney-General, and
even on the seat of justice, until all law and justice
have been made ridiculous. It is impossible for any
man, after what he has witnessed in our courts of
law, and on the bench of justice for the last six
months, to entertain in future any respect either for
the proceedings of lawyers, or the dicta of judges.
We wish that our observations were applicable only
to the Bench and the Bar on the other side of the

Channel. Unhappily they also apply nearer home.
What a melancholy exhibition was made on Mon-
day, in the House of Lords. Ask any hundred
men you meet in the public streets of any
town in Great Britain, what they conceived to
be the crowning offence which Mr. O'Connell com-
mitted in the eye of the law, and for which he and his
fellow-patriots were incarcerated in Richmond
Bridewell ? Ask them this question, and ninety-nine
out of the hundred, if not the entire hundred,
will answer that the gravamen of the charge
against the prisoners was the circumstance of
their holding the monster meetings, by which they
intimidated her Majesty's subjects, and endangered
the public peace. How will such persons be sur-
prised when they are informed, that though the counts
which the English judges found to have been ille-
gally framed, or on which the jury returned defective
findings, are those very counts which charged Mr.
O'Connell with intimidating her Majesty's subjects,
and endangering the public peace, yet that a large
majority of these judges came to the decision that the
sentence passed on the prisoners ought not to be re-
versed ? Judicial minds may be able to reconcile
such extraordinary anomalies, but we suspect very
few else will. To the public the decision of the Eng-
lish judges, and the affirmation of the sentence of the
Irish court, will for ever appear at irreconcileable vari-
ance. An outrage, as we have already said, has been
offered to the sacredness of justice, from the initiatory
step taken in these prosecutions, down to the closing
act of the judicial drama. The law, too, as far as
unprofessional persons like ourselves can compre-
hend it, has suffered violence in various stages of the
State trials; but we are sure we only speak the una-
nimous conviction of men of all parties, when we say
that this last exhibition of judicial inconsistency, legal
absurdity, and injustice, will do more to bring the
English bench of justice into disrepute than any-
thing which has occurred for many years past. For-
tunately, the more enlightened, more rational, more
constitutional view of the question taken by Lords
Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell, has interposed
between Mr. O'Connell and the effects of the extra-
ordinary law laid down on Monday by the seven
judges, who affirmed the sentence of the court below.
But see how accidental this was. Had one of the
three law Lords whose names we have men-

tioned only happened to take the same view of the
case as the Lord Chancellor and Lord Brougham, or
had not the Lords, " not learned in the law," ab-
stained from voting, the law of the seven judicial
Solons alluded to would have continued Mr. O'Con-
nell in prison for nine months longer, and subjected
him to the intolerable annoyance of being on, what
in legal phraseology is called, his " good behaviour"
for seven years more. We hope that the progress and
conclusion of these trials will prove a salutary lesson
to Sir Robert Peel. We are much mistaken if he
has not by this time had enough of them. Out of
evil cometh good. Mr. O'Connell and his fellow
prisoner's have been sufferers, but the public and the
great principles of constitutional liberty will be incal-
culable gainers by the Irish trials. The result is not
of a nature to inspire future Governments, any more
than the present Administration, with any undue pas='
sion for State prosecutions.

(Prom the Morning Chronicle).
The great case of the Queen against O'Connell,
which has interested and agitated the British empire
for several months back, and which has excited so
many hopes, fears, and conjectures, has been brought
to a final termination at last. The House of Lords,
after a discussion of surpassing interest, have decided
that the judgment which had been given against Mr.
O'Connell should be reversed, annulled, and holden
for nought, and that the said Daniel O'Connell should
be restored to all things which he had lost by the
said judgment. The debate—if such it may be called
—was commenced by Lord Lyndhurst, whose speech
was clever, but general ; not entering minutely into
either the facts or authorities, entering not at all into
the principles of a larger kind which ought to regulate
such a decision, but contenting himself with appealing to
a general usage, and with criticising the judgment of
Baron Parke. Warmly insisting upon the propriety
of acting upon the opinions of the majority of the
judges, who thought that the judgment ought to be
affirmed, he moved that it be affirmed accordingly. Lord
Brougham, of course, followed on the same side, and
in very much the same strain. Lord Cottenham, Lord
Campbell, and Lord Denman, voted for the reversal
of the judgment. The first of these Noble Lords con-
fined himself entirely to the subject upon which the
difference of opinion existed between the judges, but
went most elaborately over the limited space which
he occupied. Lord Campbell addressed the House
at greater length, and expressed his opinions
upon every part of the case. With regard to Lord
Denman, we want language to express the feelings
of admiration with which he was listened to by
ourselves, as well as the whole of the assembled
audience. The large and elevated expansion of his
views beyond the technical boundaries of his mere
profession, the heart-warm sincerity with which he
vindicated the right of every subject of the realm to a
fair and impartial trial, the noble indignation with
which he denounced the fraudulent and illegal prac-
tices which, if sanctioned by authority, would convert
trial by jury into a "delusion, a mockery, and a
snare"—the general purity and elevation of his senti-
ments, expressed with an eloquence which was
heightened by the graceful dignity of his presence
and demeanour, and receiving utterance in a voice of
extraordinary beauty—all this presented in our judg-
ment one of the noblest exhibitions that ever adorned
a legislature or a tribunal. And thus the monster
sentence of the monster trial is reversed. The league-
long indictment, the more interminable pleadings,
the insinuation of treason under a mere accusation of
misdemeanour, the plainest objections and claims
of right over-ruled, the straining of law and the
perversion of justice—all have come to nought.
What use will he make of the new and tremendous
power which this unhappy prosecution has bestowed
upon Mr. O'Connell ? This question, which now
flies from mouth to mouth, is the best comment upon
the policy recently pursued. After all our vigorous
government of Ireland, are we to hang on Mr.
O'Connell's lips to learn the fate of that country?
Is this the triumph of a Government too firm to
truckle to agitation ? We must confess we see little
reason to hope that the reparation, necessarily tardy
and imperfect, which the law now makes to Mr.
O'Connell for the wrong done to him, will check the
activity of the repeal movement. On the contrary,
the agitation is likely to go on with increased force
under the stimulus of events, which will add to the
pungency of every popular exhortation. The difficul-
ties in tl►e way of governing Ireland, will be found
as formindable as ever, and to remove them
some new scheme must be tried. In the pre-
sent state of Ireland, Ministers cannot stand
still. Conciliation or coercion they must try, on
some new and great scale. They have paltered
too long with the integrity of the empire. The
evil was felt vividly ten days ago, and no one can
say how soon or how long it may be before the cloud
now disappearing darkens the horizon again. A
heavy responsibility lies upon that Minister who ex-
poses the country to a concurrence so menacing as
that of foreign war with intestine dissension. Every
consideration of prudence, as well as of justice, now
urges us to consolidate the union with Ireland. Is
the session really to close without contributing any-
thing to this end ? That it will so close is but too
probable. The commission to prorogue has been ap-
pointed for one o'clock this day, almost the very hour
at which the House of Commons is to meet, as if for

the purpose of preventing even the slightest expres-
sion of opinion on the seriousness of the present exi-
gency. Ministers, we fear, know not what to do,
and will do nothing more than let events take their
course. They have neither the courage nor the com-
prehension requisite to grapple with the difficulties of
Irish government, and they are equal to nothing
better than looking idly on while the connexion be-
tween the two countries is exposed to the shock of a
new agitation.

SHOCKING MURDER.—A man named Pont, who
had been Deputy-Mayor of Epinay-sour-Senart (in the
Seine-et-Oise), was tried on Saturday at Versailles on
a charge of having poisoned his wife, and afterwards
murdered a young woman named Louise Montcneau. It
appeared from the evidence that the wife of the prisoner
was much older than himself, but he was induced to
marry her because she was much richer, and that in
order to come into the sole enjoyment of her property,
he, in January, 1843, administered arsenic to her, and
deprived her of her life. A short time after her death
he took a fancy to Louise Monteneau, then only twenty
years old, and purchased her of her mother as his mis-
tress, by settling an annuity upon her. She became
pregnant, and, to relieve himself of the embarrassment ,
the child might cause him, he induced her to take means
for procuring an abortion. These failing he determined
to get rid of his mistress and child at one blow. To
effect this purpose, he, in April last, led her into the
forest of Senart, and there first shot her witk a pistol,
and then set her clothes on fire, in the hope of destroy-
ing all traces of his crime. Her body was found half-
calcined. The evidence against him was circumstantial,
but convincing. Pont, however, who is a small, mean-
looking man, appeared throughout to be confident of
escape. The jury declared him guilty, and the presi-
dent pronounced upon bun N,entenee of death,

THE STATE TRIALS.

WRIT OF ERROR.

HOUSE OF LORDS.-(THIS DAY.)
JUDGMENT IN THE CASE OF O'CONNELL

AND OTHER'3.

(Continued from our Afternoon Edition of yesterday.
Lord DENMAN then proceeded to deliver his opi
nion. He would first advert to the judgment given
in the court below allowing the demurrer to the
challenge of the array. If such practices as had
taken place in the present instance in Ireland should
continue, the trial by jury would become a mockery,
a delusion, and a snare. To the traversers' challenge
of the array, on account of sixty jurors being
omitted, the Attorney-General for Ireland had de-
murred, and by so doing had admitted that such a
fact had taken place. One of the learned judges was
of opinion that the challenge should have been allowed,
and with that opinion he entirely concurred. He felt
bound to disagree, therefore, with the opinion given by
the Learned Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He
thought the principles he had laid down in his judg-
ment were erroneous. The question was whether the
party had had a lawful jury to try him, and on
that point he regretted, but at the same time he felt
bound to differ from his learned brethren. He had
no doubt that their Lordships were aware that when
the judges were consulted, it was competent for any
judge, who was a member of that House,
to attend that consultation, but he had
been so struck with the proceedings
that had taken place in Dublin that he had written to
Mr. Justice Coleridge, who had been prevented from
illness from attending their Lordships, or even
leaving his room. Now there were many
circumstances in the present case, to which
it was necessary to advert. He would, how-
ever, first call their Lordships' atten-
tion to the letter he had received from Mr. Justice
Coleridge. He said, speaking of the question of the
challenge of the array, I answer this question with
muck doubt, being unable to look to the authorities
on the subject. All questions touching the formation
of j cries, must be examined by the judges with cri-
eal care. It must be admitted that the Recorder sent
10 general list to the sheriff, but that some spuri-
cus list had been made out by some person.
Trutt this has been done fraudulently, and with in-
ten: to prejudice him on his trial ; that from that
spu 'ions list the jurors' book and special jury list
ha been made, and the present array selected, and
that the traverser himself was wholly unparticipant
in this fraud, and protested against the array being
constituted from the list so framed?' Here, he said,
is a confessed and serious wrong, and the only ques-
tion is, whether a challenge to the array be the proper
remedy. It is said, first, that the sheriff is not in default,
and secondly, that if the challenge be allowed, there
is no book from which any other jury can be selected.
With great deference, I submit that neither of these
is an answer. He then put a particular case, in
which the sheriff might have made an imperfect array,
and there might be no default, and yet the challenge
must prevail. He then said, in answer to the second
objection, that the only consequence was that
the trial might remain untaken, and he ex-
pressed in strong language his own opinion
that it were far better that no trial should be taken
under those circumstances, than that it should be
taken subject to the heavy suspicion which these facts
must bring upon it. Now, on Monday, when the
Lord Chief Justice stated to the House the entire
agreement of all the judges upon this point, he did not
feel himself justified in alluding to that letter, because
he had concluded that the Lord Chief Justice had
had some subsequent communication with his brother
Coleridge, in consequence of which he might pos-
sibly have seen ground for altering his opinion.
But when he left their Lordships' House, he found
on his table another letter from his brother Cole-
ridge, written the day before. He had before said,
that he thought the argument in favour of the over-
ruling of the demurrer was too technical for the
decision of a great constitutional question ;
and stating, upon the view which he took
of the balance of inconveniences, in his note
of Monday, he was much struck by what
he (Lord Denman) had written on the question of
challenge, and at present, like himself, awaited the
better arguments that were to be adduced on the
other side. He did not, therefore, stand alone in
thinking that the jury should not be selected out of
any list, and that there should be a remedy for
any injury which might be done. He would briefly
state what opinion appeared to prevail in the court
below on this subject. There was originally, perhaps,
some notion that that the challenge to the array was
taken away altogether; but that was clearly not the
case, because there was a particular provision which
preserved the right. It was also questioned whether a
challenge laid to the array where a special jury had
been struck out. That difficulty having been got
over in the Queen's Bench in England, he
did not think that there could be any diffi-
culty in settling it in the same manner. His
Noble and Learned Friend said that the prin-
ciple of challenge to the array rested solely on
unindifferency in this conduct on the part of the
sheriff. The judgment which he had formed on that
point was like that of his brother Coleridge, who, in
the letter which he had written to him, stated what he
considered to be the state of the law at present. The
substantial duties of the sheriff in former times were to
collect the names of those who were fit to be on the
jury, and enter them in a panel, and these duties
belonged to the sheriff alone; but, by the late Act of
Parliament, those duties were divided between the tax
collectors in the first place, the Recorder of Dublin in
the second place, and the sheriff in the third place.
The tax collectors performed a duty merely ministe-
rial; the Recorder, in the first instance, performed a
duty which was judicial—decided upon claims and
objections. It was then his duty to sign and settle
the list which was to be the jury list for the year.
The complaint in this case was, that after the Re-
corder had exercised his functions • after he
had determined what should be the list for the
ensuing year, somebody else said " It shall not be the
list." The handing over of a perfect list to the
Recorder by the sheriff was a ministerial act, and
that act had been incorrectly performed. The chal-
lengers said, " the judicial act has been improperly
performed, but you have deprived your own judicial
act of the weight and authority to which it is entitled."
He could not help believing that, if that view of the
case, which his brother Coleridge had stated much
more clearly than he had done, had been presented
to the learned judges at their consultation, they
would have thought it worthy at least of con-
sideration. His Noble and Learned Friend had
truly stated that that objection was to the con-
duct of the returning officer. Who was the re-
turning officer? Why the Recorder was the return-
ing officer for the purpose of this trial, and in his
opinion the Recorder—though without the slightest
imputation on his motives, which was disclaimed by
all—had been guilty of a default, when he had
handed over to the sheriff, as a list of the jurors,
that book which was not the list which the law
required, and which the Recorder himself had
declared should not be the list. lie had written a
great deal more than he he was desirous of troubling
their Lordships by reading. Not only did he differ
from his Learned Brother the Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas, as to the principle on which the
challenge to the array was to be allowed, but also as
to the consequences which were likely to ensue. The
Lord Chief Justice said no object or advantage could
here be gained if the challenge had been allowed, for
if the challenge had been allowed the jury process
would have been directed to some other officer. Now,
there he ventured to think, there was a mistake. The
default was not that of the sheriff, but of the Recorder,
or clerk of the peace, who made out an incorrect list.
The Act of Parliament expressly provided for the
want of the jurors' book being returned. his Noble
and Learned Friend said " Here is a book returned."
But what book ? The Act required that that book
should be returned which was correctly made up from
the list ; but this book was incorrectly made up. It
.
was asked whether a single defect would vitiate
the whole list. The Lord Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas said that, according to the
argument used, if the cess collectors omitted
a single name, the list would be altogether
vitiated. He begged to differ on that point from the
Learned Judge. All that had been done previous to
the decision of the Court of Sessions would not be
affected. This reductio ad absurd am was met at the
bar by an opposite case of much greater extent. It
was asked what would be the effect of omitting 60 or
600 names ? He thought the inconvenience would be
very great if the party were not tried out of the
book ; but it should he remembered, that the decision
in the case of the " Queen v. O'Connell" was
not a decision in any other case. The Lord Chief
Justice said there must be some mode of relief from
the inconvenience occasioned by such an omission.
So said all the learned judges—so said his Learned
Friend on the Woolsack, and also his Learned Friend
who had just addressed their Lordships. His Noble
and Learned Friend on the Woolsack had raised his
expectation indeed in one part of his argument. His
Noble and Learned Friend said, " is the party without
remedy ? No, he is not." He (Lord Denman) had
waited to hear what that remedy was. Where was
that redress? What was there to prevent any one of
the Queen's subjects accused from being tried by
such a jury as the law never approved of? "Oh,"
said his Noble and Learned Friend, "excuse me ;
I will tell you what the remedy is on a
future occasion." Now, if the Learned Lord
Chief Justice of England and the' judges of
Ireland could not point out any remedy, what secu-
rity was there to the Queen's subjects ? He would go
a step further, and he would say that he would never
believe but that there was a remedy, unless the wen-
t known constitutional principle of challenging the