The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-06 00:00:00

sideffraught with immense evil. There is not one cs
the miserable creatures, for example, now suffering
under sentences imposed at the late special commis.
sions in South Wales and elsewhere, who, seeing the
escape of Mr. O'Connell and the rest by dint of petti.
fogging and of party influence, must not feel that if h(
had the means of paying for the necessary amount o
pettifogging, he might as confidently bid defiance to law
and justice. We deeply regret to find Lord Denman
mixed up in this discreditable decision, and regret it
scarcely the less because we believe that his Lordship has
been acting upon a misconception unworthy of him.
The noble Chief Justice of England founded his
decision to reverse the judgment of his Irish brethren
chiefly upon the alleged fraud in the construction of
the jury list—in this taking a view different from all
the English judges without exception, and from three
of the four Irish judges. Now, that there was fraud
in the matter we firmly believe, but by whom was
that fraud committed ? Not by the officers of the
Crown, for not one of them ever had access to the
jury lists; not by the officers of the court, for they
had little interest in the affair, and have, besides,
completely purged themselves by affidavits ; but there
were some who had access to the lists who have never
purged themselves by any affidavit; and who had a
a deep interest in stealing the lists, because the
stolen lists contained a majority of Protestants; and
thus, in the first place, improved the chances of the
traversers, and because, secondly, an exp4sure of the
fact that lists were stolen might upset the judgment
if the traversers did not get a jury to their mind, as
in fact it has done—for these—the only persons who
had access to the lists, and an interest in stealing the
lists, and who purged themselves by no affidavits—
were the servants of the traversers' attorneys.
(From the Morning Post.)
The country will learn with astonishment the re-
sult of the proceedings, yesterday, in the House of
Lords. The judgment of the Irish Court of Queen's
Bench has been reversed, and Mr. O'Connell is, once
again, virtually a free man. By its course of action,
yesterday, the House of Lords has, voluntarily, re-
nounced some of its most important functions ; while
the amiable Lord Wharncliffe and his colleagues have
betrayed the interests of the Queen's loyal subjects in
England as well as in Ireland. Lord Lyndhurst and
Lord Brougham, it will be perceived, concurred in
opinion with the judges of England, as well as with
the Irish Court of Queen's Bench ; while Lords Den-
man, Campbell, and Cottenham argued in favour of
a reversal of the sentence which has been passed on
O'Connell and his fellow conspirators. The opinions
of these three Learned Whigs would, however, have
availed little with the House, had not Lord Wharn-
cliffe entreated the lay Peers not to vote on a ques-
tion which Lords learned in the law ought to decide.
The doctrine of Lord Wharncliffe in this matter
is not the doctrine of the constitution. Even Lord
Campbell disclaimed, for his order, any such ex-
clusive privileges as Lord Wharncliffe thrust
upon it. The ex-Chancellor of Ireland denied,
in short, that in the House of Lords, sitting as a
court of appeal, the constitution recognises any dis-
tinction between the law Lords and those who have
not received their education in Inns of Court. The
"conciliatory" doctrine of Lord Wharncliffe was, in
fact, treated with infinite contempt by a Noble and
Learned Member of that political party which the
doctrine in question was designed to serve. For once
in his life, Lord Campbell has given utterance to a
great truth. The constitution recognises no distinc-
tion between lay Peers and law Lords when the
Upper House sits as a court of appeal. Lord Wharn-
cliffe has, in fact, betrayed his brother Peers into an
abandonment of some of their most important con-
stitutional functions. If his Lordship's doctrines be
sound, the country no longer possesses a court of ap-
peal in the House of Lords. No ; our highest court
of appeal is composed, exclusively, of the lawyers in
the House. Let this fact be known to the country ;
and let the name of the House of Lords be no
longer mixed up with the movements of the
lawyers who belong to that assembly. The
House of Lords has agreed, we repeat, to throw
away some of its most important constitu-
tional privileges; while, almost contemporaneously,
the House of Commons has tried to usurp the func-
tions which the constitution has denied to it. The
House of Lords, assembled as a court of appeal, does
not presume to controvert the opinions of the three
Whig law Lords. The House of Commons, with-
out possessing any right to reverse the proceedings of 1
any court of law, has attempted, on the other hand,
within these few years, to exercise as large a mea-
sure of control over the judges of the land, as it
might over the door-keepers of St. Stephen's. The
lay members of the House 'of Lords were, as we have
stated, assured by Lord Wharncliffe that they ought
to leave the matter at issue to be determined by those
of their number who were learned in the law. The
law Lords of the House were never, let it be ob-
served, designed to be other than advisers of the
House, in its charaCter as a court of appeal;
and it may not be forgotten that the House has,
in this case of O'Connell, sought advice at the
hands, not merely of the lawyers whom it
contains, but of all ' the judges of England.
Nearly all these judges are, it so happens, op-
posed to the opinion expressed by Lords Denman,
Campbell, and Cottenham. It is, indeed, a remark-
able coincidence that all the noble lawyers who voted
for the emancipation of O'Connell happen to belong
to O'Connell's political party. When, therefore, Lord
Wharncliffe counselled the House to leave the matter
to the decision of those learned in the law, he ought
to have qualified his advice, and urged the lay Peers
to leave the matter to the decision—not of all the
judges, nor of those judges who, by position, must
be comparatively free fro:n political bias, but of the
few judges who are involved in all the heats of party
strife. The effect on the country of this renuncia-
tion of their privileges by the lay Peers of England
will be most disastrous. The power of O'Connell
will be incalculably strengthened. Last year he
openly defied the law and Government. This year
her Majesty's " Conservative" Ministers have enabled
him to trample on the administrators of justice in
Ireland. Lord Wharncliffe and his colleagues have,
in melancholy truth, offered the highest con-
ceivable premium on disaffection of the most deep
and dangerous kind. By disregarding the opinion of
the great majority of the judges of England—by re-
ferring, in fact, the decision of this great question to
three law Lords, whose political sentiments do not
differ widely from O'Connell's —Lord Wharncliffe
has contrived to play O'Connell's game better than
he and his colleagues could have done by the ma-
chinery of a Royal visit to Ireland. To pardon
O'Connell would have been, to a certain extent, to
degrade O'Connell. Now O'Connell has no need of
pardon. Compensation is, in fact, due to him. We
trust, therefore, that Lord Wharncliffe will move in
Parliament that compensation shall be tendered to the
loyal gentlemen who have for some months past been
compelled to share in the gaieties which have distin-
guished the Richmond Penitentiary. Lord Wham-
cliffe's movement is the most effective that any man has
yet attempted in the direction of repeal. Whatever
increase of force the repeal agitation may hereafter
require, must assuredly be placed to the credit of her
Majesty's Ministers. It is impossible to forget with what
reluctance Ministers proceeded last year to enforce the
law against O'Connell. " Monster meeting " after
" monster meeting" was allowed to be held with im-
punity. For months Ministers resolutely refused to
take any step to vindicate the law, or to protect the
Queen's loyal Irish subjects from the effects of a sys-
tem of intimidation more frightful than any attempted
since the days of the French revolution. That sys-
tem of intimidation Ministers, we repeat, approved
themselves unwilling to check. That system of inti-
midation Ministers have-now virtually re-established.
It is time that those who desire to prevent the dis-
memberment of the empire should think seriously of
the present aspect of affairs. The Repeal agitation
will speedily be renewed with tenfold fervour. How
long will that agitation be opposed by Sir Robert
Peel ? To how many of his professed principles has
that Right Honourable Gentleman adhered in defiance
of long continued clamour ? In early life he was the
champion of Protestantism. In 1829 he betrayed the
Protestant cause. He was, in a sense, the founder of
Orange lodges. In 1836, he lent himself to their sup-
pression without attempting to defend them. In
1839, he was the champion of British agriculture. In
1842 he openly adopted the principles of the Anti-
Corn-law League. Will he always oppose the clamour
for a repeal of the union ?
(From the Morning Advertiser.)
We congratulate the State prisoners—we congra-
tulate the people of Ireland—we congratulate the
lovers of justice throughout the world on the event
which yesterday took place in the House of Lords.
Contrary to all expectation, after what had occurred
in the same place on Monday, the judgment of the
Irish court.has been reversed, and this evening O'Con- 2,--,
nell and his fellow-prisoners will be walking the SHOCKING MURDER.—A man named Pont, who
streets of Dublin as free as any of her Majesty's sub- had been Deputy-Mayor of Epinay-sour-Senart (in the
jects. The reversal of the sentence which doomed Seine-et-Oise), was tried on Saturday at Versailles on
the Irish patriots to twelve months' incarceration, has i a charge of having poisoned his wife, and afterwards
excited an extraordinary sensation in London. What murdered a young woman named Louise Montcneau. It
will be the excitement it will cause in Ireland, we '
e appeared from the evidence that the wife of the prisoner
leave to be guessed by those who know the state was much older than himself, but he was induced to
of public feeling in that country. In
the ex_ I I marry her because she was much richer, and that in
cess of the peoplc's •
joy, in their boundless exul- i order to come into the sole enjoyment of her property,
tation, -
see trust that nothing will occur to afford he, in January., Heel administered arsenic to her, and
I deprived her of her life. A short time after her death
a handle to the enemies of their country. The ,he took a fancy to Louise Mon teneau, then only twenty
question will
i now suggest itself to every mind, i years old, and purchased her of her mother as his mis-
-1 what reparation will be made to O'Connell and tress, by settling an annuity upon her. She became
carceration they have suffered ? Another question
his fellow-prisoners for the three months' in- ! pregnant, and, to relieve himself of the embarrassment
reparation. can be made
will occur—what adequatethe child might cause him, he induced her to take means
1 them ? None. The Injury
on them is too deep, the injustice done them too great for procuring an abortion. These failing lie determined
to get rid of his mistress and child at one blow. To
injustice
which has been inflicted
I
to admit of a measure of reparation which coul
the merits of the case. That, however, is no reasonmeet ' effect this purpose, he, in April last, led her into the
1 forest of Senart, and there first shot her with a pistol,
and then set her clothes on fire, in the hope of destroy-
ng looking why some atonement should not be made. In cass 1 ing all traces of his crime. Her body was found litf-•
of Use imprisonment—even for a fe'w hours—at the calcined. The evidence against him was circumstantial,
instance
convincing. Pont,e instance of private individuals, the party sufferi however,throu houathotoisbae mcoanfid
ment of
the injury can obtain ready redress. It will be very escape.g The' juryyedeclared himg guilty, and the presi-
extraozdinary if the constitution, who excellences dent pronounced upon him sentence of death.

we are in the habit of lauding to the skies, does not
' provide the means of reparation for individuals who
have suffered three months' false imprisonment at
the hands of a vindictive Goveinment. The prosecu-
tion of Mr. O'Connell has been a most unfortunate
step from the first. As it began, so it has con-
tinued, and so it has ended. Blunder succeeded
blunder on the part of the Attorney-General, and
even on the seat of justice, until all law and justice
have been made ridiculous. It is impossible for any
man, after what he has witnessed in our courts of
law, and on thb bench of justice for the last six
months, to entertain in future any respect either for
the proceedings of lawyers, or the dicta of judges.
We wish that our observations were applicable only
to the Bench and the Bar on the other side of the
Channel. Unhappily they also apply nearer home.
What a melancholy exhibition was made on Mon-
day, in the House of Lords. Ask any hundred
men you meet in the public streets of any
town in Great Britain, what they conceived to
be the crowning offence which Mr. O'Connell com-
mitted in the eye of the law, and for which he and his
fellow-patriots were incarcerated in Richmond
Bridewell ? Ask them this question, and ninety-nine
out of the hundred, if not the entire hundred,
will answer that the gravamen of the charge
against the prisoners was the circumstance of
their holding the monster meetings, by which they
intimidated her Majesty's subjects, and endangered
the public peace. How will such persons be sur-
prised when they are informed, that though the counts
which the English judges found to have been ille-
gally framed, or on which the jury returned defective
findings, are those very counts which charged Mr.
O'Connell with intimidating her Majesty's subjects,
and endangering the public peace, yet that a large
majority of these judges came to the decision that the
sentence passed on the prisoners ought not to be re-
versed ? Judicial minds may be able to reconcile
such extraordinary anomalies, but we suspect very
few else will. To the public the decision of the Eng-
lish judges, and the affirmation of the sentence of the
Irish court, will for ever appear at irreconcileable vari-
ance. An outrage, as we have already said, has been
offered to the sacredness of justice' from the initiatory
step taken in these prosecutions, down to the closing
act of the judicial drama. The law, too, as far as
unprofessional persons like ourselves can compre-
hend it, has suffered violence in various stages of the
State trials; but we are sure we only speak the una•
nimou.s conviction of men of all parties, when we say
that this last exhibition of judicial inconsistency, legal
absurdity, and injustice, will do more to bring the
English bench of justice into disrepute than any-
thing which has occurred fur many years past. For-
tunately, the more enlightened, more rational, more
constitutional view of the question taken by Lords
Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell, has interposed
between Mr. O'Connell and the effects of the extra-
ordinary law laid down on Monday by the seven
judges, who affirmed the sentence of the court below.
But see how accidental this was. Had one of the
three law Lords whose names we have men-
tioned only happened to take the same view of the
case as the Lord Chancellor and Lord Brougham, or
had not the. Lords, " not learned in the law," ab-
stained from voting, the law of the seven judicial
Solons alluded to would have continued Mr. O'Con-
nell in prison for nine months longer, and subjected
him to the intolerable annoyance of being on, what
in legal phraseology is called, his " good behaviour"
for seven years more. We hope that the progress and
conclusion of these trials will prove a salutary lesson
to Sir Robert Peel. We are much mistaken if he
has not by this time had enough of them. Out of
evil cometh good. Mr. O'Connell and his fellow
prisoners have been sufferers, but the public and the
great principles of constitutional liberty will be incal-
culable gainers by the Irish trials. The result is not
of a nature to inspire future Governments, any more
than the present Administration, with any undue pas-
sion for State prosecutions.
(From the Morning Chronicle).
The great case of the Queen against O'Connell,
which has interested and agitated the British empire
for several months back, and which has excited so
many hopes, fears, and conjectures, has been brought
to a final termination at last. The House of Lords,
after a discussion of surpassing interest, have decided
that the judgment which had been given against Mr.
O'Connell should be reversed, annulled, and holden
for nought, and that the said Daniel O'Connell should
be restored to all things which he had lost by the
said judgment. The debate—if such it may be called
—was commenced by Lord Lyndhurst, whose speech
was clever, but general ; not entering minutely into
either the facts or authorities, entering not at all into
the principles of a larger kind which ought to regulate
such a decision, but contenting himself with appealing to
a general usage, and with criticising the judgment of
Baron Parke. Warmly insisting upon the propriety
of acting upon the opinions of the majority of the
judges, who thought that the judgment ought to be
affirmed, he moved that it be affirmed accordingly. Lord
Brougham, of course, followed on the same side, and
in very much the same strain. Lord Cottenham, Lord
Campbell, and Lord Dentnan, voted for the reversal
of the judgment. The first of these Noble Lords con-
fined himself entirely to the subject upon which the
difference of opinion existed between the judges, but
went most elaborately over the limited space which
he occupied. Lord Campbell addressed the House
at greater length, and expressed his opinions
upon every part of the case. With regard to Lord
Denman, we want language to express the feelings
of admiration with which he was listened to by
ourselves, as well as the whole of the assembled
audience. The large and elevated expansion of his
views beyond the technical boundaries of his mere
profession, the heart-warm sincerity with which he
vindicated the right of every subject of the realm to a
fair and impartial trial, the noble indignation with
which he denounced the fraudulent and illegal prac-
tices which, if sanctioned by authority, would convert
trial by jury into a " delusion, a mockery, and a
snare"—the general purity and elevation of his senti-
ments, expressed with an eloquence which was
heightened by the graceful dignity of his presence
and demeanour, and receiving utterance in a voice of
extraordinary beauty—all this presented in our judg-
ment one of the noblest exhibitions that ever adorned
a legislature or a tribunal. And thus the monster
sentence of the monster trial is reversed. The h ague-
long indictment, the more interminable pleadings,
the insinuation of treason under a mere accusation of
misdemeanour, the plainest objections and claims
of right over-ruled, the straining of law and the
perversion of justice—all have come to nought.
What use will he make of the new and tremendous
power which this unhappy prosecution has bestowed
upon Mr. O'Connell ? This question, which now
flies from mouth to mouth, is the best comment upon
the policy recently pursued. After all our vigorous
government of Ireland, are we to hang on Mr.
O'Connell's lips to learn the fate of that country ?
Is this the triumph of a Government too firm to
truckle to agitation ? We must confess we see little
reason to hope that the reparation, necessarily tardy
and imperfect, which the law now makes to Mr.
O'Connell for the wrong done to him, will check the
activity of the repeal movement. On the contrary,
the agitation is likely to go on with increased force
under the stimulus of events, which will add to the
pungency of every popular exhortation. The difficul-
ties in Jae way of governing Ireland, will be found
as formindable as ever, and to remove them
some new scheme must be tried. In the pre-
sent state of Ireland, Ministers cannot stand
still. Conciliation or coercion they must try, on
some new and great scale. They have paltered
too long with the integrity of the empire. The
evil was felt vividly ten days ago, and no one can
say how soon or how long it may be before the cloud
now disappearing darkens the horizon again. A
heavy responsibility lies upon that Minister who ex-
poses the country to a concurrence so menacing as
that of foreign war with intestine dissension. Every
consideration of prudence, as well as of justice, now
urges us to consolidate the union with Ireland. Is
the session really to close without contributing any-
thing to this end ? That it will so close is but too
probable. The commission to prorogue has been ap-
pointed for one o'clock this day, almost the very hour
at which the House of Commons is to meet, as if for
the purpose of preventing even the slightest expres-
sion of opinion on the seriousness of the present exi-
gency. Ministers, we fear, know not what to do,
and will do nothing more than let events take their
course. They have neither the courage nor the com-
prehension requisite to grapple with the difficulties of
Irish government, and they are equal to nothing
better than looking idly on while the connexion be-
tween the two countries is exposed to the shock of a
new agitation,