The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-27 00:00:00

721Ittton

SUN OFFICE, Seven o'Cloch.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
GLOBE.—A "demonstration," such as, under
the circumstances, we believe to be unprecedented,
as it was certainly unprovoked by anything in the
conduct of the magistrate against whom it was ha-
zarded, took place yesterday at the Mansion-house
during the examination of the parties accused of the
will forgeries. Mr. Wilkins, who appeared as
counsel for Mrs. Dorey, one of the prisoners, took
occasion to remark upon a decision by the Lord
Mayor, that a portion of evidence, the reception of
which had been opposed by Mr. Chambers, was pro-
perly admissible—
" I do not wonder at the decision, when I know that one
of the magistrates of the City of London has visited that
poor woman (pointing to Mrs. Dorey), who is suffering from
illness, and has been tampering with her.
"The Lord Mayor—You are making, Mr. Wilkins, an
assertion which is grossly false and untrue.
" Mr. Wilkins--My Lord Mayor, I accuse you of that con-
duct. Such are my instructions.
`. The Lord Mayor—Your instructions tell you, then, that
which is false and untrue.
" Mr. Wilkins—My Lord, permit me to say—
" The Lord Mayor—No, Sir, I will not hear you ; attend to
air. The fact is, the woman sent for me ; I went to the
yrison, as it. was my duty, as a magistrate, to go. She told
me she was desitous to make a declaration to me. I declined
to hear her, and desired her to confide her case to her solicitor
and professional advisers, and not to send to or make any
statement to me.—(Loud cheers from the audience.)"
We often hear of the privileges of the Bar. The.
licentiousness of speech in which the Old Bailey bar-
risters have indulge,l from time immemorial, has
passed into a proverb from an experience of its truth.
This licentiousness has been hitherto confined to
squabbles with each other ; bullying of witnesses in
c ross-examination ; outraging decency when addressing
a jury for the defence ; occasionally pressing a point
after the presiding judge has given his decision ; or
cracking coarse jokes with the Common Sergeant at
an after-dinner sitting of the Court. It remained,
however, for Mr. Wilkins—who is, we believe, a new
importation from the provinces—to aspire to pre-
eminence in the worst characteristics of the Bar,
by this bold experiment on magisterial endurance.
There is said to be but one step between the
sublime and the ridiculous. In aiming at the one
it is by no means unusual to sink to the level of
the other. The learned gentleman in question pro-
bably only meant to serve himself by showing his
professional courage. He first created the giant
he undertook to slay. Before he even ventured to
hint that which he asserted of the Lord Mayor, as
a magistrate, he ought to have ascertained, beyond
the possibility of a mistake, that his Lordship had
acted as he described. The time when, and the
manner how, ought to have been stated with pre-
cision. Even then, the allusion" to, or assertion of,
the facts, ought to have been calmly and circum-
stantially set forth. This was demanded by the
relative position of the parties in the Court ; and this
would have been instinctively felt by most men ac-
customed to feel and act as gentlemen. Mr. Wilkins,
however, not only cast the imputation we have de-
scribed upon the Lord Mayor in the most offensive
terms and tone ; but after his Lordship had indig-
nantly and positively contradicted the offensive state-
ment—and this twice—persisted in repeating that such
were his "instructions," he having previously affirmed
the fact of his own knowledge ! " I know," said
Mr. Wilkins, " that one of the magistrates of the
City of London has visited that poor woman, and has
been tampering with her." Nov, giving Mr.
Wilkins the benefit of his subsequently softened
down " I know," into. " such are my instructions,"
is it, we ask, to be endured, that a Magistrate,
sitting on the bench of justice, and administering
the laws of the country with an anxious desire
to further the course of justice, is to be bearded
by a barrister, and accused of perverting his office to
the purposes of private intimidation, and endeavour-
ing to work on the fears of a female, in a state of
sicness, to induce her to make " a declaration" re-
latiVe to the offence of which she stands accused, and
concerning which she is,. in a few days, to be brought
before him in open Court ? This has been affirmed
of the Lord Mayor by Mr. Wilkins, of his own know-
ledge, and emphatically denied by the Chief Magis-
trate, as " grossly false and untrue." The couple of
sheets of paper, stitched together, and indorsed with
the magical words " two guineas," as the price of his
vituperation, and designated his " instructions," were
then opposed to the Chief Magistrate's distinct denial.
The explanation which the Lord Mayor conde-
scended to give, not merely exonerated his Lord-
ship from the unjustifiable and utterly unfounded
assertion of the barrister. It did more. It proved
the extreme delicacy in which the Lord Mayor acted
toward the unfortunate woman. He had been sent
for by a prisoner confined within his special jurisdic-
tion, without knowing the object for which she sought
his presence. Had he not gone to her at her request,
it might have been said that she wished to complain of
some of the prison authorities in their treatment of
her, and had no opportunity of doing so. He, there-
fore, went. But no sooner did his Lordship find that
she was desirous of making some communication re-
specting the offence with which she stands charged,
than he refused to receive her statement; and most
considerately referred her to the professional gen-
tleman employed in her defence, as to the pro-
priety of her making such communications. The
Lord Mayor could only receive her communications
as a magistrate ; and would not receive them until he
was satisfied that the woman's attorney concurred in
the expediency of her making the proferred disclosures.
Had the Lord Mayor acted with less caution—had he
encouraged the prisoner's disposition to make a "clean
breast"—there might have been a suspicion of "tam-
pering" with the weakness of the unfortunate woman,
confined in a felon's jail on a charge of felony, and
suffering from illness ; but, as it was, the whole
matter, both in its spirit and form, was a pure inven-
tion; a gratuitous outrage upon decency, perpetrated
by a barrister, and therefore holding the rank of a gen-
tleman, such as we never before witnessed in a court of
justice, and hope never to behold again. If
Mr. Wilkins should be tempted to repeat his
experiment of yesterday in one of the higher Courts,
we have little doubt that he would speedily find him-
self in a situation in which he would have time and
opportunity for reflection. At the termination of the
cause, in which a Judge had been so grossly insulted
by a barrister, a committal for contempt would most
certainly have ensued. As to the paltry excuse re-
specting his "instructions," on which the meagre
apology Mr. Wilkins subsequently tendered was made
to rest, it was far from bring:commensurate with the
gravity of his offence against propriety.
STANDARD.—There is so much to gratify in
the meetings of agriculturists now following each
other in such rapid succession all over the country,
that we hardsy know how to object to any incident
of their proceedings. The congregation of good men
for the promotion cf a good object always tends to
make the men themselves wiser and better, and in
this way, and in many other ways, always reflects a
benefit upon the country. The purpose of the as-
semblies of which we are speaking may be but to
protect a great and important interest, but their
effect must be to promote political and statistical
knowledge, to advance agricultural science, now
already so rapidly advancing, and to give to the
pursuits of agriculture that activity and that vigour
which are always the result of security and confi-
dence. But the active and vigorous advances of
agriculture are the greatest blessings to that country
which is the scene of them—for they are, in fact,
additions made to the strength and resources of a
people, so much more valuable than territorial ac-
quisition, that tlis.y are subject to no external influ-
ence, cause no extension of exposed frontier, and need
neither fleets nor garrisons for their preservation.
In forty years the population of the United
Kingdom, and the means of supporting that popula-
lation from the produce of agriculture, have doubled.
Who does not see that the absolute power of the United
Kingdom has doubled also? And though the con-
temporaneous increase of population in other
countries has rendered the relative power of the
British empire less than double at the end of the
40 years, it will scarcely be pretended that Great
Britain has not greatly outrun every other State
of the world. But that this is the effect of the
mighty improvements that have been made in
agriculture, the work of the British farmer, is plain,
from the consideration that an increase of population,
without a corresponding increase of the independent
Fans of supporting that population, is a movement
towards weakness and not towards strength.
With these views, we shall not, as we hope, be
suspected of carping ill- naturedly at anything con-
nected with the agricultural meetings in progress ;
but, as the truth is always best to be told, we
must say that in our opinion they are making a great
deal too much of the Anti-Corn-law
League. We
know that many persons
induced. to join the
agricultural meetings by a fear of the conspiracy;
and that representing that conspiracy
sk as J ontemp-
tibia as it really is, we run a
retard-
ing the agricultural organisation at which we
joice as much as any one ; but an experience, n
ot
of the shortest, has convinced us that thoula it
way not be always most profitable to the speaker
to tell the truth, it is always most profitable to the
hearer to have the truth told ; and the truth is that
the League is utterly despicable—altogether unworthy
of the tears of the farmers of Great Britain. The
Leaguers say that they have subscribed money. We
doubt that they have subscribed more than a mere
trifle—enough to print a few tracts, hire a few lecturers,
and pay a year's rent for a few plaistered houses. The
principle of their union is to cheat, and why should
we doubt that they cheat in the details by which they
try to establish that principle ? But suppose that they
have collected as much money as they pretend, what
then ? Money may be, and no doubt it is, their deity;