The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

?ROM TEE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAT.
GLOBE.—The proceedings in the case of Barber,
Fletcher, and their less guilty accomplices in the Wills
Forgeries being closed, and sentence passed upon the
criminals, the restraint under which, peudente lite, the
public journals properly regard themselves as placed by
the respect which is due to the administration of justice,
is removed. The case was marked with incidents so re-
aarkable, that public attention has been excited is
aso o'tdinery 6gree by its detection and development.
The property obtained by the conspirators was large:
the plane by which they effected their objects were at
once skilfully devised and boldly executed. The annals
of 06018 have furnished few instances of criminal adroit-
ness more extraordinary. The closing of the scene was
in keeping with the superior cunning of the chief crimi-
nal, Barber, who must be considered the master-mind in
the nefarious schemes of extensive fraud and forgery.
Barber's address to the Court, yesterday, on being
'called up for judgment, was remarkable for plausibility.
It was delivered with an earnestness well calculated
to impress persons who were but imperfectly acquainted
with the facts, as they were established upon the trial in
unquestionable evidence against him. Those who had
-watched and weighed that evidence will remain un-
changed in judgment as to the justice of the verdict
which has involved bins in the consequences of the
crimes to the commission of which he had been
acoesaory. such persons only see in his efforts
to clear himself from the imputation of guilt, a
confirmation of the evidence on which he has been
convicted. A man so shrewd—so capable of ad-
justing and ingeniously reconciling apparent contradic-
tions, and suggesting doubts—whose self-possession,
under circumstances so calculated to unnerve and
overwhelm men of ordinary minds, was almost unpre-
cedented—that such a men should have alloyed himself
to be entrapped into such a scheme, and to become the
principal agent in a series of transactions, almost every
step in which, from the concoction to the completion,
was pregnant with suspicion—is en assumption so
rannstrous, that no men, and especially no twelve men,
acquainted with the rules which direct and govern the
ordinary transactions of society could bo expected to
adopt it. Assume that Mr. Barber was an innocent
agent in the extraordinary series of crimes, in which he
was charged with having a guilty knowledge and parti-
cipation, then it must also be aisumed that he—an
attorney, celebrated for professional tact, and possessed
of intellectual discernment and vigour surpassed by few
—acted throughout a protracted period, and in a con-
siderable number of transactions, with a blind credulity
which could only be the associate of inexperience the most
absolute, and of weakness the most pitiable. Nay, more:
he, an innocent agent, acting (he would have it believed)
as an honourable solicitor, strictly adhering to profes-
sional rules, and having no further interest in the trans-
actions than that which is derived from the ordinary
management of such business—is positively found so
acting, against numerous warnings, as to accumulate
against himself a mass of circumstantial evidence of a
character so strong, that in each individual case it
amounts to grave presumption—in the case on which
the verdict of guilty was pronounced, to satisfactory
proof) and. taken as a whole, to absolute demonstra-
tion. If Mr. Barber be the innocent man he asserts
himself to be, then is there no force in evidence. No
jury would be henceforth safe in pronouncing a verdict
of guilty. Because, as the facts on which an indictment
is founded can only be known to a jury by the ordinary
medium of oral testimony, on which they are called
upon to decide by the application of reason, and on
the solemn responsibilities of the oath under which
they deliver their verdict—if sueb an accumulation of
evidence as that by which Mr. Barber's guilty knowledge
was established in the Slack case, be regarded as defective
in bringing the case home to an accused party, under
such circumstances, np indictment for conspiracy can
ever be successfully prosecuted. Society would be pe-
tilled by the impunity which would be afforded to
adroitly-executed frauds and forgeries. No case would
be henceforth established, if the evidence against Barber
were to be held inconclusive of a guilty participation. No
convicted person, in our opinion, ever passed from
the bar of justice to suffer the punishment which
the law affixes to his crime, more righteously and satis-
factorily convicted than the criminal whose case has
called forth these remarks. In this opinion, we have
reason to knew there is a very general concurrence. The
profession most competent to appreciate the force of evi-
dence, and the merits of the defence set up on behalf of
Mr. Barber—that he took no share in the transactions
but what was in perfect consistency with his position
as a professional man, acting with integrity for the in-
terests of his client—repudiates the defence, and approves
of the verdict. The class from which London juries
are selected—so far es we have opportunity of hearing
—is equally unanimous in this opinion. By affirming
the verdict of the jury which convicted Mr. Barber,
they declare that they also must have arrived at the
same conclusion, had they been called upon, as jury-
men, to pronounce a verdict on the evidence. Mr.
Wilkins, in his conduct of Barber's defence, displayed
much more courage than discretion. The difficul-
ties of his position will go far to plead in extenua-
tion of any ebullitions of temper into which he was
betrayed ; and we would be unwilling to press them
to the injury of his professional reputation. But,
whoever heard, or has read, the attack which, in the
exercise of his forensic privilege, the Learned Gentle-
man made upon Mr. Freshfield, the highly respect-
able and justly esteemed Bank solicitor, must have
regretted the facility with which Mr. Wilkins can
sin the gentleman in the advocate. As a matter of
taste, it was villanous, and could only reflect upon the
source whence the coarse and unmerited aspersions
emanated. As a matter of tact, it was calculated to
injure the accused, in whose cause he employed the
vituperation. Instead of propitiating, it manifestly
tended to prejudice the jury. What must be thought
of a cause, in the defence of which the counsel deemed
it r.ocessary to travel out of the facts, to attack the
motives, and impugn the veracity, of one of the most
honourable and high-minded men in the City of Lon-
don ? As Mr. Wilkins is, we presume, a lawyer, he
will, perhaps, take some mode of explaining the mean-
ing of the following passage in his short speech of
yesterday :—" In order that my Learned Friends on
the other side might not be taken by surprise, I
now inform them that it is our intention to avail
ourselves of every constitutional means of ren-
dering the verdict in the last case nugatory,
by appealing to the highest legal authorities
of the land." The jury have decided on the facts.
No attempt was made by the Learned Counsel to arrest
the judgment by any objections to the framing of the
indictment. If any doubt existed as to the justice of
the verdict, the whole proceedings would be revised at
the Home-office. But as to " the highest legal authori-
ties in the land" being appealed to, where no legal ob-''
lection 10 the conviction is alleged, we are disposed to
regard the intimation as an outburst of Mr. Wilkins'
impetuosity, rather than as an emanation of deliberate
judgment.

STANDARD.—Mr. Thomas Slingsby Duncombe last
night manifested a very strong disposition to take the
short-time question out of the hands of Lord Ashley,
ard repeated, with very little alteration, the attack
made in the Times a few days ago upon the Noble
Lord's proposed plan of action. Lord Ashley con-
tented himself with showing that his proposed
line had the cordial approbation of the par-
ties most deeply interested and most competent
to form a correct judgment. Little information, however,
would be necessary to satisfy one whether a public
cause, or anything else, would be more safe in the hands
or Lord Ashley or Mr. Thomas Slingsby Duncombe—or
of the two whose name would be most satisfactory
upon the back of " a bill," every one will under-
stand us as speaking of " bills "—in Parliament, not
of those bills, the sale of uhich at a reduced price
has been now and then placarded in Palace-yard.
The introduction of the ten hours question led to a long
and painful altereation, in which the parties were Mr.
Ferranti, Sir J. Graham, and Mr. Hogg. It is but jus-
tice to those parties, however, to say that they very re-
luctantly squandered the public time upon disputes chiefly
of a personal character, but they were in a mariner driven
per force into a wrangle by the make-bate zeal of
Messrs. Roebuck, Hume, and (appropriation) Ward, who
having fairly set them by the ears, rubbed their hands,
grinned, chuckled, and crooked their hams like " dog-
fighters ;" illustrating a remark that we have all had
occasion to make at school, that quarrels and boxing
matches are rarely made for themselves by boys of
strength and spirit, but made for them by
feeble, fearful, ill-conditioned little wretches, who
like a fight, but like only to be specta-
tors. This painful and useless altercation is, it
appears, to be revived to-night, if the make-bates can
manage it ; but we trust that the gentlemen
expected to act the principal parts will feel too
sensibly and too justly what is due to the public,
to be accessory to the wasting of the time
or Parliament in unprofitable squabbles. Each, no
doubt, thinks himself right, for all three are men
of
h"nour but each
may
be wrong, for they are
fallible like the rest of us ; but, whoever may be
fall bark upht or wron , happily
gon t
each has a character to
00 pure and too firmly established to
render necessary any Vindication of it upon the present
oecasion. The most serious charge-is that against Mr.
Hogg, in respect to his vc.te upon the Nottingham Elec-
tion Committee. It seemed to us at the time that the
vote was wrong, and the more we have considered it, the
more thoroughly are we satisfied that it was a vote against
law and evidence; but though, undoubtedly, such a vote
is, prima Jade, a just ground of suspicion against the
integrity of an unknown man, Mr. Hogg's uprightness
and honour were too well known to ns, to allow that we
could ascribe his error to anything but an ex-
cess of self-distrust, or to one of those crotchets
which are very, populous in the heads of old
lawyers. We will not, however, pursue the
subject further than to say that Mr. Hogg pays the
penalty which every man,
just
just and honourable
—aid there is no :wire rs or honourable man than the
Learned Member for Beverley—must pay for having
given a wrong vote, the penalty of being suspected of
unworthy motives by those who knew nothing more of
him.