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

THE STATE TRIALS.

FROM THII MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
TIMES.—A most graphic and imposing account is given
by all reporters of the last day but one of term in the Irish
Court of Queen's Bench. The public was on the tiptoe of ex-
pectation—well-dressed ladies in a state of moderate excite-
ment were visible in large numbers, the doors were crowded
with ill-dressed gentlemen, all come to hear "what was to
be stated by the Judges with reference to the new trial in
the great case of ' The Queen v. Daniel O'Connell and others."'
The gentry of tile bar indeed shook their heads, and Main-
tained a state of impassibility. But in vain. Public lute-
rest continued to increase, and would not be pooh-poohed.
The public would not believe that the judgment of the Court
could be any longer delayed. Their Lordships had come
down to the Court at an unusually early hour and fer what
but to concoct their judgment? At ten o'clock they plunged
into their chambers. At half-past eleven o'clock Mr. Justice
Burton emerged, and took his seat- on the bench ; Judges
Crampton and Perrin shortly followed, " wearing the appear-
ance (it was remarked) of men who had been recently en-
gaged in warm discussion ;" or, as we may more colloquially
express it in England, hot and fussy. The Court was very full ;
all the Crown lawyers, some of the counsel for the traversers,
Messrs. Kemmis, Steele, and Tierney were in their places. The
Lord Chief Justice entered, fraught with the great secret.
An ordinary motion had possession of the Court, which
did not stop, but ran on to its conclusion with importunate
pertinacity. History records it all with that deliberate
minuteness with which she is wont to dwell on the prelimi-
naries to a great crisis. At last an opportunity offered, and
the Lord Chief Justice spoke. "Mr. Attorney, lam sorry to
tell you that the Court find they cannot give judgment in
the case until next term." Ibi omnis effuses labor. The in-
terest vanished—the Court was cleared—and the only re-
maining excitement was transferred to the "Iron Duke"
steamer, and the extraordinary express which conveyed to
our own office this important intelligence in nineteen hours
from the moment when the Lord Chief Justice was delivered
of his announcement. And so ends Easter Term where it
began. Mr. Smith has spoken his speech, Messrs. White-
side and Fitzgibbon have spoken theirs. We suppose we
are nearer the conclusion of the great cause—for, after all,
human timings are finite, and all finite things—even the cause
of "the Queen v. O'Connell"—must have an end somewhere.
Nothing on this side eternity is as far from us now as it was
at the beginning of Easter Term. But what, or
whether any, appreciable progress has been made in ad-
vancing or retarding that practical conclusion in which
the world in general, and the Home Secretary in par-
ticular, are so deeply interested—whether any one obstacle
has been surmounted, any one position secured, any one ar-
gument, finally answered, by the logomachy of the last two
months, is a matter which, " till next term," we can only
darkly guess with our correspondent. Meanwhile, we really
have to thank the Irish lawyers for exhibiting to the world
in its plenitude a phenomenon not commonly seen—a fully
developed criminal prosecution. Foreign naturalists, it is
said, have ascertained that by a well-managed local applica-
tion of heat to an embryo animal, you may determine its fu-
ture proportions inlhe most capricious and unnatural fashion
—that a properly directed stream of caloric will induce your
chicken to break its shell all foot, all beak, or all tail, as the
operator may have devised. An ordinary lawsuit is apt to
be such a mishapen animal. The fostering care of counsel
has swollen taf'a disproportionate magnitude some single
member of the great question at issue, whether A shall be
hanged or B transported. The cause comes forth to trial in
the shape of one voluminous objection to a point of evidence—
one impassioned appeal to the prejudices of a jury—one knotty
demurrer to a point of law. "Non omniapossumus omnes." The
same case does not ordinarily furnish material for every sepa-
rate form of opposition. The gist of the battle lies some-
where, and there is the clatter of lawyers—the rest flows on as
a matter of form, unopposed and unimportant—or, if no-
ticed at all by the contending parties, receives only the com-
pliment of a cursory notice and a summary dismissal. Not
so the Irish case. This comes before " omnibus numeris abso-
lute." Everything is developed to the utmost. No member
has been overlooked—no appurtenance allowed to remain in
neglected insignificance—all the capabilities of the law have
been taxed to its full extent. There is no disproportionate
protuberance, no prominent limb. All is gigantic. A mon-
ster indictment—a monster defence—a monster appeal—a
monstrous body, with its monstrous appendages (not ex-
cluding a monstrous offender and monstrous attorneys),
have combined to show what law could do when it set it-
self in earnest to stand in the way of justice. Scientifically
speaking, the exhibition is hitherto creditable. Mr. Pierce
Mahone and his friends are earning a praise higher than
that of originality; they are distancing all predecessors in
a beaten track. That great and elaborate system by
which justice is so successfully delayed in this country has.
employed in its construction the subtlety and labour of cen-
turies. The most far-seeing intellects, the most untiring
energies, the most fertile inventions, have been tasked to
imagine and to bequeath to us, their children, that compli-
cated mass of contrivances which it is our happiness to possess
for evading, perverting, disguising, and obstructing the judg•
ment of the law. It is against a venerable array of legal
worthies that the Irish lawyers contend for the palm of ob-
structiveness. It is a noble and complete system of instruc-
tion which they are engaged in bettering. But we think
they are really in the way to be unprecedented. They have
shown what can be done by the law in the teeth of judges,
jury, and the law itself, with a completeness which is, to us at
least, unparalleled. They are likely, we hear, to be met by
an adverse judgment next term, so soon as the judges can
make up their minds to pronounce it. But to them over-
throw is not defeat. It is in receiving a series of overthrows
that their tactics consist ; and we shall expect with curiosity
the fresh expedient to which the coming judgments will
doubtless give birth.
HERALD.—The public are throughly sick of the Irish
State Trials, and of the Irish Court of Queen's Bench. No-
body, for the last three months, has anticipated the possible
termination of " the monster process," while the traversers
can find a quibble and the Court a pretext for entertaining
it ; and, in consequence, nobody will be disappointed at
learning that the somnolent tribunal has postponed to next
term (the fourth that the case will have been in court) its
judgment upon the motion for anew trial. The ready facility
of the judges has had the natural effect of inviting further
dilatory experiments ; a variance, it appears, has been dis-
covered between the verdict as returned by the jury and the
entry of it upon the postea. This is a matter which, in
Westminster Hall, would not occupy five minutes. The
error, if error there be, is the error of the officer of the Court.
(We mention this, that the Times may not leave it at the
door of the Attorney-General.) The record is still in the
power of the Court, and it is the right and duty of the Court
to cause to be amended any error in it, committed by its
officer. This Lord Denman would order, as a matter of
course, upon a simple suggestion ; but Heaven only knows to
how many months' delay, and to how many thick octavo
volumes of speeches, the crotchet may give occasion in Dublin.