The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-04 00:00:00

LAW INTELLIGENCE-
COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH, July 2.
(Sittings at Nisi I'rius, at the Guildhall, before Lord
DENMAN, and a London Special Jury.)

CONSPIRACY.-THE QUEEN V. LORD ASHBURTON AND

OTHERS.

This was an indictment against Lord Ashburton, Mr.
F. Baring, and Mr. Mildmay, members of the house of
Baring and Co., for a conspiracy to ruin and destroy the
credit and property of Mr. Kinder, by procuring an Act
of the Legislature of Mexico to nullify a contract in
which he was engaged.
Mr. Erie and Mr. Bodkin conducted the 'case for the
prosecution; and Mr. Kelly and Mr. Clarkson appeared
for the defendants. _

This case, which occupied the aaention of the Court
during the whole-of yesterday, was resumed this morn-
ing, when the case for the prosecution closed. The fol-
lowing are the facts of the case, as we gathered them
from the evidence of Mr. Kinder, and from the very vo-
luminous documentary evidence which was put in and
read, eonsistini, of all the proceedings in a Chancery
suit instituted by' Mr. Kinder against Baring and Co.:—
In the year 182;5 Mr. Francis Baring, who was at that
time travelling in Mexico, agreed, in conjunction with
the representative of the house of Mr. Kinder, in Mexico,
to take a very large tract of land, extending from ocean
to ocean in that country. Information was sent to the
members of the house of Baring in London, and to Mr.
Kinder, by their respective agents, and it-appeared that
both parties were dissatisfied at the purchase. At that
time the house of Baring held dishonoured bills of.
Kinder's to a large amount, and granted him indulgence,
to which Mr. Erie contended he was well entitled, inas-
much as his resources had been stopped by Mr. Francis
Baring in Mexico. Mr. Kinder, it appeared, had sug-
gested to Lord Ashburton the propriety of transferring
the purchase to a joint-stock company, but the firm of
Baring, which had kept itself aloof from all joint-stock
companies, refused to accede to such :a proposition.
Baring and Company sent out to their agents in Mexico,
warning them as to Kinder's credit, and stating that
they held dishonoured bills of his to a large amount, and
desiring their agents to adopt every means in their
power to put an end to the contract. In accordance
with these instructions,. the agents exerted themselves
to procure the passing of an Act through the Mexican
Legislature to nullify the contract. This Act was passed
on the ground that foreigners could not hold land in
Mexico, and it appeared from certain letters from the
Mexican agents of Baring and Co., that one of them,
a foreigner, named. Noulti, had bribed certain mem-
bers of the Legislature to support the Bill.
These transactions took place in 182 S. In 1830 Mr.
Kinder went to Mexico. He returned to England about
the year 1837, and in 1838 he filed a bill in Chancery
against Lord Ashburton and his partners. They put in
their answer, which gave Kinder access to all the
papers. In 1840, and just as Lord Ashburton was on
the point of sailing, for Mexice, Mr. Kinder went before
the grand jury at the Central Criminal Court, and pre-
ferred this indictment, on which Lord Ashburton was
arrested, and gave bail at the Judge's Chambers four
days before he sailed to the United States on a diplo-
matic mission relative to the Boundary Question.
Mr. KELLY, for the defence, commented on the con-
duct. of Mr. Kinder, waiting sixteen years before he
brought forward this indictment, and in bringing it for-
ward in the manner and at the time he did, just as Lord
Ashburton was about to leave England as the represen-
tative of his Sovereign. With regard to the facts of the
case, he contended that if the House of Baring, had been
desirous of ruining Mr. Kinder, they might have done
so most effectually by securing him on his dishonoured
bills, instead of holding them even as they had done.
It appeared that at first Kinder had expressed himself
dissatisfied with the purchase, and there was nothing. to
show that he had even expressed his satisfaction at it, so
that the house of Baring might well believe that he like
• themselves would require to get rid of it, their interests
in the purchase being identical, and as they knew that
Kinder was not possessed of funds sufficient to carry on
the undertaking, it was not surprising that they should
desire to get rid of the connexion with him. There was
nothing illegal in supporting a Bill before the Mexican
Legislature to nullify the contract ; but then it was said
hat Mr. Noulti, the agent, had bribed. True, in his
accounts there was a sum entered for bribes, but
those bribes had been paid without any com-
munication with the Barings, who knew nothing of
Noalti's acts until after the transaction had been con-
cluded, and with regard to those bribes it should be re
collected, that in many foreign countries it was im-
possible to get any great public business, even of a judi-
cial" character, transacted without giving what were
called gratifications to every officer, from the judge down
to the crier. Now, all that had been done had been to
ullow these sums in Noulti's account, and no doubt, if
they had not been so allowed, Mr. Kinder would have
called the attention of the Court to it, as a most
unfair and most unjust transaction. Then, with regard
to the communication to the agents on the subject.of
Kinder's solvency, that was certainly a confidential com-
munication. No action of slander would lie on such a
communication. If .it had been brought, Messrs.
Barings might have justified, and have put in the dis-
honoured bills in evidence, and, therefore, this could not
be given as evidence of a criminal conspiracy to ruin the
prosecutor.
Lord DENMAN summed up. He said that this indict-
ment charged the defendants, in .seven counts, with a
conspiracy to bribe the legislature of Mexico to pre-
vent the prosecutor from holding lands there ; in five
other counts with a conspiracy to turn him out of pos-
session of lands which rightfully belonged to him ; and
in two others to injure his credit. The case to be pre-
sented to the jurors would mainly depend on the letters
hich had been put in evidence, and on the meaning
which they should put on those letters. This was a
charge of conspiring to injure the prosecutor ; and cer-
tainly at the very outset of the case they must be struck
with the strong observations which had been made on
the conduct of men who, though now charged with
such a conspiracy, hail for so many years allowed the
prosecutor to owe them so many thousand pounds, and
had forborne to put id force against him the legal rights
which they possessed,' and which they could not have
enforced without instantly, and by law, effecting the
very purpose which they were now charged with endea-
vouring to effect by conspiracy. It certainly did seem
strange that such a course should have been pursued
towards the prosecutor, bad the desire to injure him
existed in the way supposed. At the same time, it could
nut but be regretted that there had not been from the
first a more free and unreserved communication between
these parties. The defendant, Mr. A. Baring, would
certainly have avoided all that suspicion which bad
since arisen if he had. freely communicated with the
prosecutor with resp,ce to this purchase. Both Mr.
A. Btringpild Mr. Kinder objected to the purchase when
it w,ae-fiest made; both at that moment desired to cancel
it, and both might well have acted together in the pursuit
of that 'obj'ettYand it really was impossible to midis.-
stand why it' had' been deemed desirable to keel the
prosecutor in ignorance of what was going on in the
mind of Mr. Baring, and what were his resolves on the
subject. Yet the letters showed a, feeling of that sort,
and the desire expressed to the agent in one of them
not to be restrained by over scrupulousness was cer-
tainly liable 'to an equivocal interpretation. Still that
was not sufficient to justify a conviction. To justify
that, the jurors must be satisfied that the defendants
acted in a common scheme to get rid of the contract
egeinst the wig-a thetpitss'ecutor, either with the desire
to Injure or'svith'the)reaution so t 6 act.;? tbeegh
by se acting they knew that. they must inevitably bring
jpjirrY suppose that 'they should think
that the eidenCe!daile out a case against Mr.'Alerander
_taring, and'SloWleci that 'what 'he had done was to be
'attributed' :to---the'tnotives imputed in: The indictment,
still they could not find a verdict against all the defend-
. ants on this charge of conspiracy, without thinking them
all to have been actuated by the same motive, and to
have concurred in one scheme to injure the prosecutor.
liany strong observations had been made on the nature
at' this prosecution, and it was represented that the
jurors must not form their opinions of the offence of
bribery abroad upon the abhorrence in which it was
said to be held in this country. But, happily for the
jury, the question of the enormity of the offence.
of bribery was nets 'one which was to occupy at-
tention to-day. -The question now was, whether
the defendants had con Spired to adopt the
means alleged, and fraudulently to deprive the prose-,
cutor of his property in Mexico, and to injure him in
that country and in this. The transactions to which this
prosecution related extended over many years, but it
seemed that most of these depended on the terms of the
letters which had been put in evidence. These letters
had been obtained from the defendant's house by means
of a bill in Chancery, and the fact that there were so
many letters spreading over a great extent of time, rens
dered it very.difficult for the defendants to give a full
explanation of everything. As to the charge itself, the
jurors must be informed that it was not necessary to
chow in positive terms the existence of a malicious feel-
ing towards the prosecutor; it would be sufficient to
support the indictment, if it was shown that the defen-
dants had taken their course wholly without regard to
the question, whether what they did might not be inju-
rious to the prosecutor for ary such feeling or disregard
to the interests of others, and still more the resolution to
do that which was most likely to produce injury to an-
other, was that to which the law would give the came
of malice. This brought them to the letters, and the
question for the jury would he whether these letters
showed the existence of malice in that qualified
form, and whether' there was evidence of these
defendants conspiring together for the purpose
of injuring the 'prosecutor, or of doing that
which they must have known would inevitably produce
injury to hint. If the jurors should be of that opinion,
they must find the defendants guilty ; if of a different
opinion, they must acquit the defendants. His Lord-
ship here went at . great length thrcugh all the letters,
and then referred to the bill and answer in Chancery,
remarking that in his mind the answer was not, as it
ought to have been, a clear, distinct, and direct answer
to the allegations in the bill. The question he must put
to the jurors was this, whether, before the Act of the
Legislature of Mexico was passed, and with the view of
procuring it to be passed, the defendants had directed
their agent to employ bribes. If their agent had, iu
employing these bribes, acted on his own suggestions,
the mere adoption of his acts afterwards would not ren-
der the defendants liable upon this indictment. But
suppose one of theth to be guilty of that part of the
charge (and the other parts of the charge ought, in his
opinion, to bedismissed by the jury as wholly unsup-
ported by evidence), then the question arose, hew far
these defendants were all guilty of a conspiracy, even
as to the charge of trying, by any means and at any cost
to themselves or others, to get rid of this contract. To
make them guilty, a common purpose and a common
mode of action, with regard to it must be proved-Lcom-
munication must be shown to have existed between
these parties. Nov, what was the proof of concert or
combination ? The letters appeared to have been
written by Lord Ashburton himself, and the only proof
against the other two defendants was, that each
of them had copied some of these letters. That was
she =wait of the proof of combination! ',Ebe jurors