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

SELL'S speech yesterday, are sufficient proofs of the
interest which independent Englishmen take in the
affairs of the sister country ; and, though Tories,
Conservatives, and renegade Whigs unite to oppress
them, Irishmen may rest satisfied that, without
the repeal of the union, justice will, in the
end, prevail. Another important question ad-
verted to was the dispute between England
and France about "one PRITCHARD." The public
know the strong words used by Sir ROBERT PEEL
relative to the arrest and expulsion of this English
missionary, and they now learn, from his own mouth,
that the dispute has been brought to an " amicable
and satisfactory termination." We shall suspend our
judgment till the Parliamentary documents are pub-
lished, while at the same time we entertain the
belief that the Prime Minister of England would
not have risked his own character, and the
character of his country, by accepting a smaller
reparation than was consistent with his strong
sense of the wrong which had been inflicted
by French 'officers on his countryman. Another
feature of the proceedings yesterday was the retire-
ment of Lord STANLEY from the House of Com-
mons. We will not impute this to any misunder-
standing between him and Sir R. PBEL, though they
seem two of the least cordial men in the Cabinet.
We believe it is a necessary arrangement. The gallant
old Duke, we regret to say, is sinking into the vale
of years ; for his age the duty at the Horse Guards
is sufficient. Lord WHARNCLIFFE is a discreet and
honest statesman, but neither he nor any one of the
party is fitted to be a leader in the Lords, and to
Lord STANLEY, therefore, must be entrusted the task.
We only hope that he and Sir R. PEEL will chime
together, and that when measures of relief for Ire-
land are carried on in the Commons, they will not be
rejected in the Lords by the united voices of Lun-
HURST, STANLEY, BROUGHAM, and the Orange party.
We find little else to notice, if we except a notice of
motion made by Mr. T. DUNCOMBE. He is deter-
mined to stick to the thieves who steal intelligence
from the Post-office, and announced that next session
he would submit a specific measure on the subject.
If the country.support Mr. DUNCOMBE, this abomina-
ble intrusion upon the affairs of private individuals
will soon be utterly abolished.

Lord DEWMAN, in the course of the elaborate
opinion which he delivered on Tuesday in the House
of Peers on the subject of the Irish State Trials—an
opinion which, as Mr. DIJNCOMBE justly observed
yesterday in the House of Commons, ought to be laid
on the table and printed in letters of gold—his Lord-
ship, we say, in the course of this luminous and
straightforward opinion, made the following sensible
observations in reference to the studied ambiguity
of certain legal processes :—" In his opinion there
could not be a greater grievance and oppres-
sion than these endless, unintelligible, un-
wieldy, voluminous indictments. An indict-

merit extending over fifty-seven pages was
in itself a grievance; many prisoners could not af-
ford to pay the clerk of the peace for a copy ; and
when they got it, the most learned persons could
scarcely find out what the prisoners were charged
with. The words were so ambiguous that it might
be that the pleader who drew it up might mean one
thing, the jury another, the Judge a. third, and the
Court of Error a fourth, if they did not overthrow
the whole judgment." the verboseneas the circum-
locution, the obscurity, and the perplexing technical
jargon in which the law too often -wraps up its
meaning, like a silkworm thit:kly vaveloped within
folds of its own web, has long been a subject of
regret with the public, and productive of a world of
embarrassment to judges, jurymen, counsel, and in-
deed to all connected la ith the admi-iistration of jus-
tice, Ve ith the sole exception, perhaps, of pleaders and
solicitors, who have an interest in indulging in a
surplusage of counts and phrases, and making every
indictment as full and circumst an-dal as possible, no
matter how absurd and tautologous one-half the
circumstances set forth in such indictments may
be. Now surely of all professions in the world the
Law is that which should be most remarkable for the
clearness, the straightforwardness,. the simplicity, and
the direct, obvious, common-sense of its proceedings!
Its phraseology should be careft Illy pruned of all
verbal excrescences; its technirdlities—at present so
happily adapted to mislead and. 'bewilder rather than
to convince—should be reduced: within the narrowest
possible limits compatible with propriety; and its
meaning be rendered so trans parent as to be intelli-
gible to the obtusest capacity- Is this the case
with the Law, as it is now Tractised in some of
its most material departure nt.o Far otherwise.
In an infinite number of iastances that we could
enumerate, were it worth w;aile, its language is the
very reverse of simple and co,aci se ; it is, in fact, stu-
diously ambiguous, and elaborately tautological ; the
meaning that might be efficiently expressed in a single
sentence, is spread over a do7kr,t, and necessarily en-
feebled by the diffusion ; wllere one or two counts
would suffice to answer every rational purpose, six or
eight, and frequently as many ruore,:are had recourse
to ; in short, epithet is piled up( m epithet, and repeti-
tion upon repetition, till the mind fairly reels and
staggers beneath the cum:srcrus load of verbiage
remorselessly pressed upon its attention, as if—one
would almost be tempted to s up pose—for the perverse
purpose of confounding and ilaralysing its powers of
judgment ! The Law's delay- has long been a fruitful
subject of complaint among the :people ; but the Law's
enigmatical tautology is quite as legitimate a griev-
ance. We see its results in tthe Irish State Trials,
where all parties concerned set Rn to have been involved
in a labyrinth of perplexities,. :simply in consequence
of the lax, ambiguous, and 'unsatisfactory manner
in which the, pleadings we re, drawn up. Of late
years—thanks to Sir ROUERT PEEL—many excellent,
substantial reforms have be est effected in the Law,
which has been rendered infii aitely more simple and
intelligible- than it wt.! in t Jae glorious days of the
pedantic, adust, black-letter old. lawyers ; but much
yet remains to be done, ere if: can be said to be per-
fectly and harmoniously in ace ordance with common
sense. And here, while glancing at the question of Law
Reform, we cannot refrain from, just briefly alluding to
the exceedingly confused, ver hose, and perplexing
manner in which—in far too r .iany cases—our Acts
of Parliament are drawn up. We have seen some
that were more puzzling.than Ihr a riddle of the Sphynx ;

and 10, when in the extremity of our bewilderment,
we have turned for enlightenns eat to the explanatory
notes in the margin, we have fe and that, so far from
diminishing, they only tenciecl. to increase our per-
plexity, and we have at longth been compelled to
cry out with Puff in the Critic, " Egad,
the interpreter is the be/xi:est to be under-
stood of the two !" Now, if it be worth while
to draw up a Parliamentary I ict, surely it is worth
while to draw it up in such a / nanner as shall render
it generally intelligible ; and m of in the wordy, con-
fused style adopted through c,ut the Inclosure of

Commons Act, whose meani was so studiously
concealed beneath a cloud of vargue phraseology, that
it was worthy only of being tr ansmitted to the Bri.
tish Museum, as a legislative curiosity of the first
water !

The mere rumour—to whac.h we alluded in The
Sun of yesterday—that the A aiti-Corn-law League
have determined, during the P.Erliamentary recess, to
bestow the most vigilant attention on the register,
with a view to give fair play to the constituencies, by
securing the privilege of voting to those who are qua-
lified to vote, and ensuring th e rejection of those
who are disqualified ;—the mere rumour, we say, of
such an intention on the part: of this great popular
confederacy has had the effect a throwing the mono-
polists into fits of alarm and indsl;nation, which they
take the opportunity of venting from time to time
through the convenient medium. •of the Tory portion
of the Press. On Wednesday, So r instance, a letter
vehemently vituperative of the j ,e,ague, its motives,
actions, &c., appeared in the sy rc,pathising columns
of the Herald, and yesterday another letter, filled
with equal, if not worse, abuse, fig ures conspicuously
in the columns of the Post. In ti is last communica-
tion the writer—whose epistollry excellencies by
no means remind us of those of UuNius or HoaAcE
W.ILPOLE-thUS showers down the vials of his wrath
on the head of the injured and I.rno ffending League :
—" The Anti• Corn-law Leaguers .have no notion of
any party being anxious to do gc ocl without the im-
petus of interested and selfish motives. Disinterested
philanthropy is a feeling the na turo of which they
are altogether unable to comprehend.. Being them-
selves a gang of the most notoriously s elfish imposters
that the world has ever produced, zonfa derated toge-
ther fur the purpose of promoting .their own selfish