The Sun.
London, England, 1826-03-31 00:00:00

'EL LE LONDON JOURNALS.

imiLY
Extracts from thc Morning Pvers,March 31,18/6.

s.J
They manage matters in a way of their own,
on the Irish side.of St. George's Channel. The
public are aware that warm—and we are much
• afraid an angry and acrimonious—contest is about
to take place for the county of Waterford at the
ensuing election. The Roman Catholic, and
therefore popular candidate l is a Mr. Stuart, re.
La
presentative (through the dy Gertrude (Vil-
liers) Stuart, his mother) of the family of the
Earls of Grandisms, in that county. This gen.
tleman's object is to throw out LOrd George
Beresford, a brother of the Marquis of Water-
ford,' who has been county member for several
•.±,ears. That much fury and folly should be ex-
cited by an election contest, having such a clues-
thin as that of emancipation for its watchword,
and such a project as that of unhorsing an ancient
and powerful family for its real cause, will as-
tonish no person who understands what mobs are
made of ; but the fury, unfortunately, has not in
this case been confined to the mob: it has mounted
higher places. Even the Magistracy—the purified
Ishii magistracy—have been seized with the
vul-
gar madness, which it was their bounden duty to
assuage or punisli, and have exhibited themselves
as so many election agents and partisans, to the
,peasantry who looked up to them for an example
of Sobriety and justice. It appears that on some
late occasion, the inhabitants of Kilmacthomas—
an inconsiderable, but, we have heard, rather
disorderly village—bad been guilty of a riot;
hew provoked, or whether originating in the
mere wantonness of whisky, we know not : some
windows are said to have been broken, but little
further mischief was done. This outbreak, how.
ever, was construed pretty generally to have been
connected,.more or less, with election politics-
- the spirit of the people having declared itself
io the cries of " Stuart for ever !" it is no
wonder, then, that the friends of the here
ford party looked at the disturbance with an
unfavourable. eye ; and the more so, if •it be
true, as stated in some of the Dublin papers,
that the very people who thus turned patriots
'on behalf of Mr. Stuart, were actually 'tenants of
the Marquis of Waterfordond had been qualified
by his Lordship as freeholders, to support his
brother'i election. In, passing, we may just re-
mark, that if the priests have been tampering
with these poor forty-shilling wretches, to seduce
them from the banners of their powerful land-
lord, and epgage them in the cause of his oppo.
nent, the reverend gentlemen are chargeable with
having, for a single object of party politics--and
so far us the reverend priests are concerned, an
object of a selfish nature too—involved the mi-
serable voters and their families in the risk of
irretrievable rein. The custom, we might say
the law, of landlord and tenant, throughout ire-
land, more especially where the landlord is
a man of great prudence in the manage-
meta of his fortune, of immense. wealth, and
therefore fearless of inconvenience arising from
;the adoption of peremptory measures with his
inferiors—the law, we say, in such eaves
iitt that ruin follows every political rebel,
lion of the tenant against his lord. If the
priest, then, has preached the poor voters of
macthomas into an lutstility to their landlord's
hitterests, he has, oceordhsx to the Irish system,
gowned them to utter destitution front the mu.
rent In which they tender their votes. Such is
said to be the peroicious and unseemly working
of the Irish 40s. franchise.—ilut this was a di.
e4ssion. The Governor of the County, the
Marquis of Waterford, having the transaction
represented to him, no doubt, In the most offer.
sive colours, called upon the County Magistrates,
U one and all," to meet him at Dungarvan, a
neighbobring town, there to investigate the
" cruises of the riot." There could scarcely have
beep a more irregular step than this, inasmuch
as the papers inform us that informations had
been already sworn against the parties hop&
tuned* on whose trials, at the Sessions, the cir-
comstences and causes of the riot, whether light
or Serious, would of necessity come nut; but could
on the other hand, if discussed previously to
the trials, tend only to prejudice and defeat
the impartiality of justice. When the country
justices assembled accordingly, ' many among
them appear to have been struck by the mbar.
panting actuation they were placed in : they de.
glared that they did not constitute n Court,could
neither receive evith•nce nor hear counsel, and
therefore could, in fact, do nothing. Out this
was not alit tier the most ludicrous part of the
iiroceeding. After two hours spent in arguiren.
'toilet] whether the meeting should be a public
(Me or private, Mr. Power, and some 11 or 12 of
hid brethren forming the opposition or Whig
Oily, seceded front their brethren of the Privy
filtamber, moved off to the CourtAinfese, made a
chairman, a meeting, and resolutions of their
oiti, decline the investigation of the riot, but de.
recite the unlawful carrying agents, the indut.
dSince of electieeeering whisky, and'any increase of
ie military Torre ; and these their sentiment's
they propose submitting to the Lord Lieutenant.
Oat the opposite side of the way, in the•meall time,
another Council sit, not in public, like the " pop
puler" justices, but in secret c;ibitiet, with the
paraphernalia of office.to wit a majority of votes
:-.the Clerk of the Peace, and in prospeet,' we
later presume, a decent supply of the loaves and
tlith'et. These dignitaries proitoonce at once that
the riot was caused by "intoxication and party
cg feeling ;" they, as, well as the Whig Justices,
lay much blame upon the whiskey,. which they
140 licit the candidates to discontinue fUrnishing,
order unqualified persons to, be disermed,but said
this' formidable supplement to their werk--" that
" it is the oploieti of the present meeting that an
tt Lipplicltion should be made to GnePrnment to
tc ijiare ao additional force in the' town of
ee Kilmacthomas, for the more efiectual pre.
"Ateriatiott•Of the public trangaillily.".4 pretty
kture will thus he presented to the King's Co.G
~
vrrtytlen(:....A pretty svecimen, of regard for the
eo.o
rO4 magisterial
justice
peratioil adrnini•
s"kaiginitica WhiCh of them demands
will
toe CuMpliad with, we: would ask? A distracted

magistracy make opposite appeals to a divided
Government, Vihith'can be'no othenvise settled
but by Messrs. Plunkett and Goulburn posting
specioliter to lead their respective forces' into the
field. ft is Irish from top to toe: in its design
a slovenly absurdity---a factious extravagance in
the execution. We have alluded, in the fore.
going remarks, to the mischievous and un-
dignified disagreements of the Irish Magi-
stracy among themselves. We have now to re.
fer to an extract from the newspapers, which

- -
we insert below ; and which illustrates ra-
ther forcibly the points in which those per-
sonages do take pains to agree—we mean
in their general treatment of the King's sub-
jects. Judge Moore finds it necessary to re-
proach the Grand Juries of Tipperary and Clots-
mel, with a grievance which we have often be-
fore adverted to—the horrible indifference to.
wards personal liberty, manifested by that class
of Irish gentlemen to whom notwithstanding the
46 purgation" of their bench, it is still by law in-
trusted. Forty-eight individuals discharged by
proclamation at one Assizes, because no charge
had been preferred against them, although
some of the number had been pining for
six months in prison I One.fourth, accord.
lag to the declaration of the Learned Judge
himself—one-fourth of the wretched prisoners
throughout Ireland dismissed from gaol for want
of any charge against them! We but state the
fact : we defy the most eloquent man alive to
make a commentary on it more impressive than
the fact itself. We shall merely say, that such
a tyranny is equal to that of the Spanish Inquisi•
lion at the worst of times, and the country where
it exists is unfit for any British subject to inhabit.
" Cr.oxstEr. A as tz es. —On Tuesday evening at five o'clock,
Mr. Justice. Moore arrived in town front Kilkenny, escorted by
a detachment of police and the Sheriff's javelin-men, and shortly
after opened the commission in the Crown-court, in the üb.
sense of the Lord Chief Justice (who had been. detained by
press of business in Kilkenny), when the following respecta-
ble Grand Jury was sworn :—Hon. F. A. Prittie, NI.P., fore-
man ; Hon. George t.PCallaghan ; Sir Henry R. Carden ;
Wm. Fennefather ; Richard B. H. Lowe; Matthew Jacob ;
Richard Creagh ; Wm. Perry ; Charles Win. Wall• John
Trent ; Nathaniel Taylor , Ambrose Going ; Samuel IV. Bar-
ton ; James Scully ; Maurice Crosble ; Richard tong; Rich-
ard S. Mansergh Wm. Purefoy ; John 111aher ; John Bagwell ;
Stephen O'Meagher; Richard Millet; Hugh Linker, Emirs.—
" The Learned Judge addressed the Grand Jury, and, after
some preliminary observations, said, there was one subject to
which he could not avoid alluding. 11'hile he was happy to
hear from all sides of the peace of time county, on looking to time
calendar, he found that the number of prisoners for trial had con-
siderably exceeded that on a late occasion, there being now 216
In custody. This appeared to him a paradox ; It was what he
could not account for, unless it arose out of a number of persona
having been committed on light charges, and suffered to remain
in gaol, whose cases might have been investigated and otherwise
disposed of. However it happened, the subject was worthy of their
consideration, and he wished particularly to call their attention to
it. The observation which be conceived necessary to make on
this topic, his Imrdship staid, wereintended to operate by way of
suggestion. When he last presided in that Court (twelve
months ago), he had, according to the notes which he had
taken in a book kept for the purpose, discharged 40 prisoners
by proclamation, against whom no harge was preferred, and,
from the state of the calendar at present, lie wait inclined to sup.
pose, that at the termination of the assize, the number to be
discharged by proclamatimin would not be less. Any unnecessary
infringement on the liberty of the subject was a grievance in it.
self; but the pecuniary burden it entailed on the county was a'so
to be taken into account. The learned Justice said, he had men-
tioned at Kilkenny, and he was prepared to repeat the fact here,
that alba entire number of permonscommitted to jail throttAtout
Ireland, one-tifth—he believed he might any .one-fourth—were
discharged, without any crime whatever having been preferred
against them. ' He had frequently met, and on this present cir.
cult, prisoners in custody six months, discharged under rind.
lar circumstances. To remedy this, his Lordship impressed
on the minds of the Grand Jury, the necessity of uniting the
functions of grand jurors and magistrates, to cause justice
in this respect to be carried into effect in the county, and to ex-
amine minutely every case which might come under their ob.
serration, whether at petit Sessions or other places. The Court
was then adjourned to two o'clock in time afternoon on Good
Friday, when, after divine service, Judge Moore took his seat
nn the Bench. There were no trials of any public interest."

--••••••-
[MORNING lIE

Mr. Peel's first Bill for the consolidation co

the Criminal Law is before the public, received,
of course, with one voice of approval ; yet it can-
not escape observation that the new statute will
run to a formidable length, considering the oar-

rowness of its object, and that a main-purpose of
its author is to condense and abridge the Statute
Book. In the French Penal Code the law of

robbery, burglary, and larceny, treated under a
single class or genus, is comprised, with the
utmost clearness and minuteness of detail, in five
pages of very small duodecimo. Much of this
lies in the difference of style, that of the French
Code being short and peremptory, whilst the
language of our Acts of Parliament is, from
its techuical, at least its habitual construc-
tion, prolix. At the same time those who
know any thing about the matter will hardly
desire to see Mr. Peel an admirer of the cri•
minal law of France, or of Scotland, or any
other country, whose criminal procedure is de.
rived from the Roman law. lie has shown a bias
towards a particular part of the Scotch procedure
whiCh. is calculated to excite some prejudice
against the general excellence of Ws design. The
idle -voice of those who would substitute a public
prosecutor for a Grand Jury, and put the ac.
cooed In the torture of a forced examination,
would be a trifling counterpoise to the prejudice
and alarm which this bias, if at all brought into
action, would excite elfewhere. There are mere
accessories in the instituting and conducting of
trials in Scotland which may be adopted with all,
vantage—such as the giving a copy of the indict..
ment, previously, to the accused, and allowing
full defence by Counsel, both of which are al-
ready the practice by law, in cases of trettsoit.—
Dot the creation of a public prosecutor is an
essential and most alarming invasion of the
English criminal procedure a substitution
of the despotic spirit of the annum Im.
penal law, for the free, popular spirit and forms
of the old English COIIIIIIOII law. The interven.
(ion of the Grand Jury is the great safeguard of
the accused. The utmost that can be urged
agaiost it is, that it may send perions to trial
whom the closer investigation of a public pro.
secutor would have discharged. Even so, the
confinement is scarcely longer than it would be
under the machinery of a public prosecutor—
considering the frequency of sessions and assizes.
Rut what is the utmost inconvenience or abuse
that could result, compared with, the astonishing
supposition of an officer of the Crown, having in
his hands the whole administsation of the crimi.
oal law of the country ? It may be said that
politics could have no share in. the great mass
of 'criminal'. proseeettons ; but nothing is more
nugatory "I'rY charge against a Political
person is a political change—and is this, and