The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM Toe DAILY l',kPERp3 cv YVSTERDAY. •
G LO-BE:—The Irish State Prosecutions have at
length advanced to that. stage which commences their
real interest to the public. The traversers have been
given in. charge to the jury. The Attorney-General has
delivered a part—only a part—of his epening speech :
that part occupying more than five hours ! Yet so little
way did the learned functionary make in the narrative
of facts he undertook to establish, and in applying the
law to those facts, that a feeling of weariness imper-
ceptibly crept over the Court and Jury. Utter hopelessness
of a termination, within any imaginable period, of a trial,
the opening the facts of which required so long and
labOured a speech from the prosecutor, was manifestly
the sickening sensation of every person in Court. The
prosiness of, the Attorney-General's exordium seems
to have. thrown a wet blanket over the ardour of the
most sanguine for that result which can alone save
the Government from discomfiture and disgrace.
The Post—a journal which will not be suspected '
of any predilections in favour of O'Connell or
.his projects—in an analysis of the opening proceed-
' trigs, and descriptive of the impression produced on the
auditory by the Attorney-General's speech, says :
" We must confess that though we did not expect. a
very striking speech from the Irish Attorney-General,
five we are rather disappointed at. the hours' oration
of the day before yesterday. It was a heavy titian-,
•and was felt to be so by the auditory. One passage,
indeed, had something in it which excited laughter ;
but the Attorney-General appears to have been
offended when his hearers were amused." The
Attorney-General is manifestly encumbered by
the vastness of the question with which he has to deal.
Seeking to secure his object, he spreads his legal
net so widely as to include every meeting of the
Repealers, and every speech delivered at those meet-
ings, together with newspaper reports of the proceed-
• ings, and even doggrel ditties published in certain
journals, the proprietors and conductors of which are
included in the indictment. This variety and mass of
matter, by which he proposes to connect the several parties
with the alleged conspiracy, will be found too unwieldy
for him to manage with effect. The multitu4e of facts
with which the memories of the jury will be charged
will clog their judgments. Oue juryman will deem
this important ; another will reject the fact so important
in the estimation of his fellow as proving nothing, and
will put forth tl at which he has marked as emphatic ;
while a third will consider those facts as of no im-
portance when compared with others which he thinks
pregnant with suspicion ; but, taken alone, as by
no means amounting to legal proof of that which
requires to be strengthened by concurring circumstances.
'The conspiracy charged by the indictmentis to be made
out, by constructive acts performed by the traversers.
Those acts—whether committed in concert, or apart—
must be shown to have been done in furtherance of a
common purpose ; and that purpose contrary to law.
The part of the Attorney-General's opening speech
(so far as we are in possession of it) which
is most worthy of attention, was that in which
he applied himself to the law as bearing upon
the " conspiracy " charged in the indictment. We
cannot agree with those of our Contemporaries
who would restrict the proof, requisite for establishing
conspiracy, to what is necessary to establish " a common
design ;" and " a common design having been esta-
blished, that then the acts of one of the conspirators
will affeastethe others who are engaged in the same con-
spiracy." We think " the common design," or purpose,
must be first shown to have been an illegal purpose ab
initio. The confederation called " the Loyal Repeal
Association"—meetings of which were held at the
several places alleged, and at which the parties indicted
took active parts in various ways—was formed to obtain
the repeal of an Act of the Legislature. The question
is not, we presume, whether a dissolution of the legis
lative union between the two countries would be bene-
ficial, or detrimental, to Ireland or to the empire ; but
whether—the Union being effected by an Act of Par-
liament—to confederate, and meet, in whatever num-
bers, for the purpose of petitioning the Legislature td
dissolve that Union by a repeal of the statute on which
it rests, can be desmed, ipso facto, an illegal confede-
racy ; and those who constituted the council, Lr chief
actors, of that confederacy, be—in the legal sense
of the term—" conspirators." The language used
by the speakers at those meetings, in their harangues
delivered to the multitudes who attended them, may
have' been, and possibly . was, violent and inflam-
matory. This would constitute sedition in the indivi-
duals using ,the language, but it would not implicate
others. The same reasoniug would apply to the other
overt acts. If the evidence establish the overt acts,
as charged, against one or more of the accused
parties, they are doubtless within the law. Each
must bear his own burden. But the offence will not
amount to "conspiracy." Unless there be proved
to have existed an agreement between the parties to
commit those illegal acts, in concert, for the purpose of
effecting a lawful (however inexpedient) object by such
• unlawful means, the charge of conspiracy must fail.
The overt acts charged in the indictment are spread
over a wide extent of time : they were committed
openly, at sundry dates, and in divers manners : the
Government was constantly invited to take special
notice of what was said and done at the " monster
meetings ;" and yet, those whose special duty it was to
guard the public safety, looked on with indifference, as
though there were no danger ! Is it not rather late to
turn round now, and say—" We allowed you to proceed
eluting an entire year in a course which perilled the
peace of the country, and the security of the
Throne ; and when we saw that no breach of
the' public order resulted from those immense as-
semblages, we will now charge upon you every ima-
ginable mitchief as the purpose for which you confe-
derated and convened ?" Is not the Government fairly
chargeable with having encouraged proceedings of which
it was fully aware, but took no step to suppress ? A
proclamation such as was issued against the intended
Clontarf meeting,.would have prevented the meetings
which preceded it. Was it not, then, a criminal neglect
on the part of the Government to abstain from doing that
in March which they did in October ? Were they not
participators in the acts tor which they now seek to visit
the actors with punishment ?
STANDARD.—The last shaft in Mr. O'Connell's
quiver having been expended, the State trials are at
length proceeding with little chance of further interrup-
tion. The number, and frivolousness of the objec-
timis -which have been urged brhim sand his ac-
complices show clearly how -little dependence they
can place on the merits of their respective cases.
After 'an exhibition of audacity on the pert
'of tvi o of the Repeal conspiratOrS such as
• has rarely been attenipted under.sitnilar circumstances,
- the non-appearance in Court at the proper hour of Duffy
and Barrett, and the' reception of excuses from one
or two members of the panel, on the ground of ill-
health, the Clerk of the Crown gave the traversers in
charge, and the Attorney-General commenced his
address, and continued speaking until half-past four,
when the Court adjourned; and the jury were permitted,
under certain restrictions, to return to their respective
homes; At that hour the Attorneys General had not only
not conclude •t his address, but had not, it was understood,
arrived at the most important part of his revelations. It
has been objected to thetearned G entlemen's spec ch by one
o our Contemporaries, that it is‘.licavy"and uninteresti g;
but when we remember that the public of England and
Ireland have been familiar, for the last three months,
with nearly the whole of the facts it details, and
that it is necessarily encumbered by numerous ex-
tracts from the seditious harangues and writings of the
traversers, it is not singular that the Attorney-General
should have been unable to render his address as inte-
resting to his auditory as he might have done under dif-
feren!, circumstances. It displays, however, the more sub-
stantial recommendation of being a clear and lucid narra-
tive of the facts he proposes to give in evidence, preceded
by. n able exposition of the law as applicable to the
offences charged against the traversers ; referring to
numerous precedents in support of his opinion. Having
explained that a confederacy becomes a criminal
conspiracy when two or more persons combine to
do an unlawful act, or accomplish a lawful ob-
ject by unlawful means, and referred to the case
of dill' Cato-street conspirators in support of his
assertion that a 'party joining in the design
adopts and renders himself responsible for the
acts of his accomplices, both before and after
he has joined them, the Attorney-General alluded to the
indictment against Frost and other Chartists on which
was not: tried, 'bemuse he had been previously ton-
aided Of treason ; Vincent and Edwards having been
found guilty upon it ; and he proceeded to show diet
the. overt acts charged on that occasion were en-
tirely similar to those alleged against the Irish
traversers ; illustrating his argument by an im-
portanim-
portant.extract from nudge ltayley's judgment in
an action brought by Hunt against the Captain of the
Manchester Yeoinenryein which his Lordship nut only
defined'all meetings of pnrsons assembled to so* sedition,
end bring into contempt the Constitution as unlawful,
but also the extent to which the leaders or chairmen
of such meetings are responsible. This opinion was af-
terwards confirmed by Lord Tenterden, whose judgment
Mr. smith has pressed into his service. Ile exposed
with great ability the fallacy of the pretext, that because
the various " monster meeting," called' together by Mr.
O'Connell dispersed peaceably at his bidding, they were
not. formidable, or dangerous to the public peace, their
object being clearly to- overawe the Executive, and hold
o a
menace of prospective mischief should their de-
mands not be complied with. The pacific demeanour
of O'Connell's mobs loss been simulated for the
express purpose of enabling him to complete their
organisation with imputiitn' and it is impossible not
to recognise the correctness of
men with rebellionslanJudge Bayley's con-
viction that "
in their hearts
will occasionally employ
recommending
peace, order, tranquillity, and obedience d.bielhce to the
laws." After a careful precis of in
fevents
Ireland from the concession of tfieu
to the present time, the Attorney-General pssedoi" Bill
in
review the varioue associations which hada
been
organised fur political purposes since that periuJ,
having for their object the repeal of the
their denunciation by the Governments of Lord Greg
and Lord Melbourne, as well as in the speech from
Throne, and the coercive measures which were
finally adopted to repress them. He then laid bare
the whole machinery of the Repeal Association, its pro-
vincial inspectors, wardens, collectors, and police, the
cards which are circulated, the devices they bear, and
the arrangements by which journals of the most
inflammatory character were circulated throughout
the body. Among the foremost of these incendiary
publications he referred to the _Vit;en and the Miot,*and
selected articles in prose and verse from their
columns, including extracts from various speeches
of O'Connell, Steele, and rther.i, at Repeal meetings,
which had been reported in their columns. To in-
vest such details with novelty, in an address re-
stricted to the simplest and closest narrative of;
events, would exceed the powers of any Attorney
General, and we are accordingly not surprised that I
Mr. ;iinich should have failed to imbue them with