The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-31 00:00:00

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SUN OFFICE, Seven o' Clock.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—The proceedings were resumed on
Monday morning. On the Judges taking their seats,
and the members of the .jury answering to their
names, Mr. John O'Connell requested to make an ob-
servation on a remark of Mr. Sheil, in his address to
the jury, which, if not explained, might compromise
his reputation, by seeming to impugn his consistency.
That considerable " sensation" should be caused
among those who heard the declaration—made in such
a place, and under circumstances such as those in which
the declarant stood;—can' be easily imagined. As an
abstract question, the repeal of the legislative union
may be held, and even discussed, without exposing
the person who holds and asserts it to the penalties of
the law. The point in issue between the Crown
and the traversers is, whether the means by which
they have sought to effect their object have been such
as the law allows, or such as bring them within its
penalties. This is the question to which the attention
of the jury must be confined ; because it is the ques-
tion on which they are sworn to return a ver-
dict of "guilty," or " not -guilty," respecting each
of the traversers. Mr. John O'Connell might, there-
fore, safely make the declaration which he did with-
out perilling his individual case ; and, if he considered
that declaration due to his consistency, he did right to
repudiate the idea which his counsel suggested, as a
mode by which the Repeal question might be compro-
mised, but in which he (the defendant) could not concur.
The adjournment of the Court on Saturday at the
close of Mr. Shell's speech, was an act of considerate
justice on the part of the Judges to Mr. Moore, who
would otherwise have had to address the jury far his
client (the Rev. Mr. Tierney) under manifest disad-
vantages. During the protracted trial of Warren
Hastings, a similar testimony was borne to the
powers of Sheridan, then in the meridian of his fame.
At the close of Mr. Sheridan's mightiest effort within
the walls of Parliament—the speech with which he
opened the fourth charge against the impeached
party—Mr. Pitt moved an adjournment ; observ-
ino• " The wand of the enchanter is upon us ;
it is in vain to attempt an application of the judgment
to the charge before us, while under the imme-
diate influence of the fascinating power to which
we have been subject Al." Read in connexion with
Mr. Sheil's speech, that of Mr. Moore, as an orato-
rical effusion, will fail to excite the same feelings of
delight. As the close reasoning of a lawyer, whose
duty it was to examine each count of the indict-
ment, and to show how futile had been the efforts of
the Crown lawyers to sustain those counts by the
evidence they had adduced, Mr. Moore's speech is
deserving of no ordinary praise, and will, we
doubt not, be highly appreciated by the bar, and
be carefully scanned by the jury. It cannot
be too frequently brought before the mind of the
public, in order to show how utterly the evidence
brought forward has failed to sustain the indictment,
that the indictment charges " conspiracy," and this
alone, against the parties. Failing to establish " con-
spiracy,' the indictment is at an end. There is no
count for attending unlawful assemblies. The
Attorney-General has not ventured to take issue
on the question, whether the meetings of the Asso-
ciation were, in the legal sense of the term, unlaw-
ful assemblies. There is no count for sedition. But
extracts from speeches are set forth which are
by and
which
,hich forcible
constructive exposure
alleged to be seditious, in order to sustain the charge
of conspiracy.
thefbrmof
the
Mr.Moores
prosecution, clear
evidence on such a charge i§ sought to be substituted
for direct testimony, deserves the careful considt-ra-
tion of every man capable of understanding a legal
argument expressed in popular language; as we hope
and believe it will have from the jury, on whose
verdict the case will be decided. Mr. Hatchell's
address to the jury in behalf of Mr. Ray, the
Secretary of the Repeal Association, was short,
considering the length of the speeches which had
preceded it. It occupied only two hours. The skill
with which Mr. Hatchell dissected the testimony of
certain of the Crown witnesses, and exposed the
crepancy of their respective statements—the susias;
cion which he cast over the whole case for the proso-
- by the refusal, on the part of the Crown,-Jo•
adduce evidence which was within their contrdl,
and essential to their case, from a"fear lest the ad-
missions of facts, or contradictions of the witnesses
they did call in, in certain statements they had made,
were fine specimens of forensic power, and opened
up a new difficulty to the Solicitor-General in his
reply. The copious reference made to State trials in
this country at different periods, and his application
of the doctrine held by English Judges on those
occasions to the case then under trial, showed how
laboriously Mr. Hatchell had prepared himself for
his undertaking, and will, doubtless, convince even
the exclusive jury which the Attorney-General has
obtained, that they must be more determined to con-
vict the Repeal leaders than to return a verdict in
consistency with the Constitution, if they bring in a
verdict of guilty, on the indictment before the Court.
STAN D.A.RD.-1 he speeches of Mr. Moore and
Mr. Hatchell, at the Dublin State trials, do not call
for any particular observation. We do not say this
in any. disrespectful sense, for both the addresses were
able and lawyer-like; but, unlike Mr. Sheil's, they
adhered so closely to the subject matter of the
charge, that to pronounce an opinion of the
degree of success of either would be to
trespass beyond those limits to which a considera-
tion of what is "due to the administration of justice
confines us, until the verdict shall have been de-
livered. The not inopportune illness of Mr. Fitz-
gibbon on Monday, abridged that day's proceedings
to the extent of enabling Mr. O'Connell to take his
place at the meeting of the Repeal AsssoCiation,
where he suggested a badge or uniform, to be worn
by Repealers. This is, perhaps, to be a practical proof
of the defence mainly relied upon by. Mr. Moore and
Mr. Hatchell, within a few hours before, namely, the
absence of union and concert among the Re-
pealers. In regard to the trials the Whig journals
in England go to lengths far beyond what even
the retained advocates of the traversers have as yet
ventured. If we understand them rightly, there
can he no such thing as a political conspiracy, no
such crime as sedition—a line of defence which,
perhaps, they may safely take, because they are
not responsible to courts, or juries, or to any
authority save common sense ; but which it
would be desperate folly to offer upon an
actual trial. Every book on Crown law tells us that
there is such an offence as political conspiracy, and
reason demonstrates that it may be the highest public
offence short of high treason, and separated from that
highest of all crimes by a very narrow and uncertain
boundary. . The practice of the late Government
abundantly proved their sense of the existence of
such a crime ; and we find the very first of Whig
law authorities, the late Lord Erskine, thus de-
scribing it, and showing the perfect compatibility
of the punishment of the offence with even his
most liberal notions of the sovereignty of the people;
we quote from his Lordship's celebrated speech upon
Hardy's trial, where he- recites the law, as
laid down by the Lord Chief Baron Macdonald.
" The question is not what the people have a
right to do—for the people are undoubtedly the
foundation and origin of all governments—but the
charge is for seditiously calling upon the people,
without cause or reason, to exercise a right which
would be sedition, supposing the right to be in them.
For though the people might have a right to do the
thing suggested, and though they are not excited to
the doing it by force and rebellion, yet as the sugges-
tion goes to unsettle the State, the propagation of such
doctrines is seditious. There is no. other way un-
doubtedly of describing that charge." This quota-
tion meets the whole case of sedition and of sedi-
tious conspiracy, and it derives additional force
from the liberal opinions of Lord .Erskine, and
from the occasion on which it was delivered.
We sifts:mit it to the serious attention of our Con-
temporaries, who deny the possible existence of
political conspiracy as an illegal offence, and affect
to treat the punishment of such conspiracy as
an invasion of the primary right of freemen.
Lord Erskine plainly thought that .there is such
an offence as political conspiracy, and that it may be
prosecuted and punished, leaving altogether unim-
paired " the sovereignty of the people," of which he
was the ardent votary. In other respects the de-
fence set up by the Whig journals is foolish ;
for while they admit what, indeed, it -would
be absurd to deny, the convergence of the whole
repeal agitation to one object—namely, the repeal
of ' the union and to one central authority, the
organised Repeal Association, they affect to exa-
mine the practical proofs of a concerted design " to
unsettle the State," by a combined movement, as if
each•of these practical proofs ended as it were in
itself : just as if, upon on indictment for riot,
to which three persons are necessary to constitute
the offence, John should insist upon being tried
without reference to the acts of James and Peter,
indicted with him, or even "without reference to the
existence of such persons in rerum naturee. In all
cases, however, of riot, riotous assembly, conspi-
racy, &c., it is the number and the community of
purpose which makes the gravamen of the charge;
these proved, the acts of each individul become the
acts of all. After all that we have written for the
last three or four years, it would be a ridiculous
prudery on our part to affect to conceal our con-
viction that the repeal agitation has been carried
on by an all but treasonable conspiracy, if, indeed,
the conspiracy has not been absolutely an act of high
treason. The only question which we are not at
liberty to touch, because the only question upon
which thz: to,
have to decia, i.; the:conne.aioii and
the degree of connexion of the several traversers'
with that conspiracy, the character and extent of