The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-13 00:00:00

THE KING OF THE FRENCH.

Marrs, SxrT. 12.—Several regiments passed
through here yesterday, on their way to Eu, but to-
day a messenger arrived to order them back to their
different quarters, as it seems decided that the
King will not come down this year—not even
to Dieppe. This afternoon the Municipal Council
assembled to decide if the files should or should not
take place this year. Their decision has not yet been
known ; I will inform you to-morrow.—From a Cor-
respondent.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM Tllll XVXMING ?APE'S OF THIS DAT.
GLOBE.--The Lord Chief Justice Pennefather
and the Irish Attorney-General are said to be in
London, waiting Sir Robert Peel's return from
Drayton, where the Right Honourable Baronet is de-
tained by the alarming illness of his daughter. The
mortifying position in which the Chief of the
Irish Bench and the Chief of the Irish Bar
are placed by the defeat of the prosecution
in which they respectfully played such pro-
minent parts the extra-judicial zeal of the
Judge forming a fit accompaniment to the daring
duel invitation of the Attorney-General—has led to
the conclusion that the object of these functionaries
in visiting our metropolis, at this dull season, is to
place the resignation of their respective offices in the
Premier's own hands. Mr. Justice Burton, it is un-
derstood, will also retire from the Bench. Advanced
age might have suggested this course to him ere
this. Had the suggestion been adopted, he would
have been spared theggpain, and been exempted from
the depreciating reflections upon his previously
well-sustained judicial reputation, to which he,
in common with the entire Court, has been exposed.
It seems now to be generally admitted that the pro-
secution against O'Connell and the extraordinary cir-
cumstances which marked the different stages of the
proceedings, prescribe but one course to the Judges
of the Court, and the principal law-officers of the
Crown. Retirement from public life has become
a duty which they owe to themselves, and
the performance of which is expected from
them by their country. The question is asked in
every circle where its bearings are understood and
its tendencies perceived. After what has taken place,
can the men who pronounced the judgment, and the
Attorney-General who defended it, and maintained it
to the last as legally valid; who acted upon it, and
consigned O'Connell and his co-defendants to a prison,
in pursuance of a sentence founded upon the indict-
ment and verdict which have been set aside—it
is asked, can thess functionaries continue to fill
the posts for which they have shown themselves
incompetent, by reason of the laek of legal
acumen and learning which they have displayed ?
We do not here dwell on the series of monstrous and
oppressive acts with which they allowed every stage
of the State prosecutions to be accompanied. For
these they ought to answer at the bar of the House
of Lords. The point to which we now allude, and
wish to urge upon their consideration—and especially
upon the serious consideration of the Government—is,
whether, by the decision of the highest lega. authori-
ties in this country, their reputation as mere lawyers
has not been so damaged, that they can no longer con-
tinue in the exercise of their important functions with
satisfaction to themselves, or with safety to the pub-
lic ? Of the eleven counts, of which the monster in-
dictment consisted, six were declared to be invalid
by the unanimous opinion of the English judges. Of
the counts thus condemned, two (the 6th and
7th) were of the highest importance. Yet upon i

these very counts—notwithstanding the objec-
tions taken to them at the time, by the defendants'
counsel, and which objections have since been
proved• to be well taken and valid—did the
court mainly rely, when pronouncing judgment,
and apportioning punishment on the parties. After
such a flagrant mistake as this, so clearly pointed out
to them, and yet pertinaciously persisted in ; and
after the damnatory decision of all the English judges
upon these clauses ; can the judges of the Irish Court
of Queen's Bench remain where they are ? Can the
Irish Attorney-General continue in the post of prin-
cipal law adviser of the Government ? Will not the
slur that has been cast upon them indnce them
to relinquish situations for which their positive
ignorance shows them to be unqualified ? In
every other profession but that of the law so
serious a mistake would be ruinous to the parties.
No naval or military officer could retain his com-
mission an hour after so direct a censure had been
passed upon his proceedings. No man of high-
toned feeling, even in a civil capacity, could endure
so direct a condemnation of his conduct from
his :superiors ; even though the consequences in-
volved were far more trifling than those which
must result from the failure of the State prosecu-
tion. Mr. Attorney-General Smith, after the breach
of the peace which he committed by challeng-
ing one of the defendant's counsel in open Court,
and. while the trial was proceeding thought him-
self called upon to tender his resignation, does
he not consider a due knowledge of the law, with
all its niceties and technicalities, as essential in an
Attorney-General as a little coolness of head, the
occasional want of which in an Irish barrister is, per-
haps, excusable ? Will not Mr. Attorney-General
Smith retire at once into a private—a very private—
station ; where he may devote his leisure to the
improvement both of his law and his temper ;
and to anxious consideration of his future prospects ?
All hope of elevation to the bench is now, we presume,
extinct, even in his own bosom. With the excep
tion of Mr. Justice Perrin, who declared himself in
favour of a new trial for Mr. O'Connell and another
of the defendants, we do hope and expect that a new
batch of judges will be created for the Irish Court
of Queen's Bench, and a new Attorney-General be
appointed, before the commencement of the ensuing
term. The legal functionaries who have so signally
failed in the discharge of their duties will, we trust,
take the hint, and tender their resignations. Relieved
from duties for which they have shown themselves in-
competent, they may, in the more appropriate stations
of private life, have their legal errors forgiven, if not
forgotten, by their country, and their equanimity of
mind restored.

STANDARD.—The late Proces-Monstre, and the
decision of Lords against Lawyers, and of Politicians
against Judges, cannot be too gravely canvassed or
too carefully considered. It is calculated to affect all
rights, excepting on questions unconnected with
party. These are safe enough ; witness the proceed-
ings of the law Lords last week, when they disposed
of no fewer than nineteen questions without a dis-
sentient voice. On one case some difference of opi-
nion arose, but it was, on being put to the vote,
decided in the affirmative by a large majority.
Now we are justified in believing that when politics
excite, and party feeling interposes its baneful influ-
ence, the law is not so sacred, the judges, its oracles,
are not so much respected, and the subject's rights
are not so perfectly safe as they ought to be. This is
a serious consideration ; but the more it is contemp-
lated the more likely we shall be to discover some re-
medy, and obtain some protection against party and
political judgments. In referring to the recent
deci-
sion of Lords Penman, Cottenhani, and Campbell, it is
impossible to overlook the part taken by one of
these learned persons in a recent proceeding of
a kind very nearly judicial. Private Bills are always
regarded as questions of a judiciary character, with
which party has nothing whatever to do. Yet, on an
occasion on which a road Bill came before the House, in
which Lord Brougham had an interest, as it affected
the value of that portion of his property through which
the road was to pass, the Whigs, hounded on by one of
the law Lords whose judgment has excited such deep
and deserved attention, voted almost avowedly as
party men, against their party's adversary, and defeated
him by a majority of one. Those who may remember
the case cannot fail to have been struck with the total
negation of justice by which the decision was charac-
terised, because so undisguisedly the result of party
arrangement. After this experiment, and the still
more instructive one of last week, Lord Brougham
would hardly act so inconsiderately as to contest a
question of private right again befbre a tribunal of
which his noble and learned Whig friends were to be
the judges. The Lords at large are, by the law
of the land, all judges, and Lord Wharncliffe may
have been correct in affirming that their inter-
ference is not called for in ordinary cases. Where
no party prejudice is likely to create a bias (some-
times involuntary), which is calculated to interfere
with the calm deliberation of the question, !ay
Lords should leave the decision of the case to the
law Lords. It is equally clear, however, that where
the case is one purely political, as was that of
O'Connell and his fellow-conspirators, the lay Lords
ought to take part in the proceedings ; or else
why submit a series of questions on the law of the
case to the judges ? Such a reference could not
have been intended for the guidance of the law
Lords. For whose benefit, then, were the judges of
the inferior courts consulted ? Their opinion ought
to have been considered as tantamount to the charge
of a common law judge to a jury empannelled to try
an issue in an ordinary court. Are the lay Lords less
intelligent than an ordinary jury ? Were they, in a
case, the law of which had been so explicitly de-
fined, less eligible to decide honestly and justly
than twelve men selected from a jury panel ? The
very notion is preposterous ; and by their tacit
abandonment of their prerogative on this occasion,
the lay Lords have given a fresh impulse to a wicked
and dangerous agitation. They had seen the judges
called in by the Lord Chancellor, because the case
was to all intents and purposes a political one. They
were aware that those judges had almost unanimously
decided in favour of the validity of the judgment ;
and that the opinions of so large a majority of
those learned personages were deserving of
all respect. They, however, abandoned the
final decision of the case to three law Lords,
one of them wholly ignorant of criminal
law; another compromised by having expressed a
decided opinion on the case long before it came ju-
dicially before him ; and a third, to say the least,
not excepted from that fallibility of judgment to
which all men, however eminent, are occasionally
subject. The judges of this Court of Cessation
were notoriously all members, and two of them
active ones, of the Whig party, the Lichfield
House contractors ! They rejected the opinions
of eleven out of fourteen of the common law
judges, the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Brougham,
all intimately acquainted with the common and
criminal law. If such a course was the correct one,
why keep the traversers in prison ? Why detain
nine or ten of the judges from their respective cir-
cuits ? Why consent to the farce of calling them
together, some of them leaving causes only half
heard, inlorder to obey the mandate ? If the law Lords
were alone competent to decide the question, why
bring justice into contempt by asking for and obtaining
honest opinions, by which they are not only never in-
tended to profit, but which they have treated with the
most contumelious disregard ? The remedy for such
an evil as the late decision is not easy, bat it is,
nevertheless, attainable. Judges who, like Lord
Campbell, are engaged almost daily during the session
in debating political questions in Parliament ; men
whose political violence and rancour have rendered them
notorious as party agitators ; are certainly not the sort
of authorities to decide unaided, not to say in the teeth
of the other judges of the land, questions which
are reserved for the highest tribunal in the country;
and it is, therefore, time that a controlling power,
supported as on the late occasion by the most
eminent judicial opinions, should be exercised over
them, lest, " dressed in a little brief authority," they
play " such fantastic tricks before high heaven " as
may make " even the angels weep." If it
shall be affirmed that the House of Lords will
incur a loss of dignity by allowing its privi-
leges to be something more than a fiction, as the late
decision would leave them, it is even more clear that
it will suffer a great deal more if it persists in per-
mitting three political Lords to overbear the judg-
ment, not only of a court of law, but of the great ma-
jority of the judges. We have elsewhere transcribed
from the Morning- Herald of this day a triumphant
answer to the apologies which have been offered for the
conduct of the " illustrious three," by whose dictum
this disgrace has been brought upon the country;
from which it will be seen that in spite of the absurd
vaunting of Mr. O'Connell and his friends, the verdict
itself (bating Lord Denman's solitary condemnation of
the challenge) remains wholly undisturbed on the sth,
Bth, 9th, 10th, and 11th counts, which embody every
part of the charge; and that he therefore remains, to
allintents and purposes "a convicted conspirator."
The sentence when pronounced was legal ; the
objection applies to the mode in which it was entered
upon the record, although it differed in no respect
from the ordinary precedent on such occasions. To
the ovation, arising from the interposition of the
quirks and technicalities of the law, Mr. O'Connell
is perfectly welcome ; and we trust that the prosecu-
tion, however terminated, will have taught him the
propriety of enjoying it with moderation.

T
aiE TARIFF.-IMPORTATION OF DUTCH OXEN,
&c.—The importation of live oxen from Holland appears
to be on the increase. Yesterday forenoon the Dutch
steamer Batavier, Captain David Dunlop, arrived at the
St. Katherine's Steam-packet Wharf, from Rotterdam,
with several passengers and a full cargo, consisting of
no fewer than forty-nine live oxen, eleven cows, and
nine calves, being the largest quantity imported by any
one vessel from Holland since the passing of the tariff.
She also brought a quantity of live ducks and geese, and
some walnuts.