The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-07 00:00:00

THE MANCHESTER POLICE.

We advert to a scene which is said to have occur-
red in the Borough Court at Manchester, before the
stipendiary Magistrate, Mr. Maude. We fear that it
carries too much verisimilitude upon the face of it,
not to be substantially correct; and, presuming the
case to be as it is represented, we will give Mr.
Maude the benefit of our opinion upon it.
A man named Turner is charged with having
printed a seditious placard ; and if he is found
guilty of having done so by the proper tribunal,
we trust that he will have to smart for it : for we
are not inclined to the liberal opinion that a printer
has a right, in the mere way of trade, to print all
the pernicious stuff by the circulation of which the
evilly-disposed seek to disturb the peace, malign
the characters, and endanger the property of their
neighbours. Him we should have been content to
leave to the due course of law ; but this man, it ap-
pears, had two apprentices, who were also seized by
the police, not as particeps criminis with their mas-
ter, but as witnesses against him. They are seized,
and secluded under lock and key, without any
charge whatever against them, and for the avowed
purpose of torturing them by imprisonment into
a proper frame of mind for disclosing the sup-
posed secrets of their master's business. Let it be
observed that there was no Magistrate's warrant for
this, and that Sir Charles Shaw, the chief Police Com-
missioner of the district, denies all knowledge of it ;
and yet by one of the subaltern officers under the
control of himself and Mr. Maude, has this gross out-
rage been committed.
Now one would have thought that Mr. Maude would
have stepped a little out of the line of his strict duty,
if it was necessary, to have brought that kid-napping
policeman to his senses; for the fool in his over-anx-
iety to secure, has taken the surest means to thwart the
ends ofpublic justice. He is poisoning the very evidenee
he is so anxious to preserve immaculate; for no jury-
man, with a grain of sense, would convict a master
upon revelations extorted from his apprentices by ar-
bitrary imprisonment. No juryman, who under-
stands his duty to well and truly try, would hang a
dog upon evidence so procured. The excuse is, that
if the apprentices were allowed to be at large, they
might be " tampered with ;" but is there any tamper-
ing like that of the lock and key ? We care not whe-
ther these youths are being dieted into the truth upon
prison fare, or whether they are being fattened into
confession upon roast beef and strong beer. Any way
and every way in which the casemay be turned, it
has a bad aspect; and Mr. Maude must he judicially
blind not to have seen what an
ugly look it must have
in the eves of every Englishman.
No doubt this precious specimen of stipendiary ma-
gistracy thinks that he is acting forthe best, when
he winks at a " little wrong" in order that good may
come of it. But a " little wrong" of this kind is the
grain of mustard which, if not at once checked,
would in due season overshadow the earth. All tyran-
nies have had their seed in some small violation of law
and liberty at first, and a " little wrong" permitted
upon the weakest to-day, would quickly becnme a cord
to bind the strongest, until the giantpeople by a convul-
sive effort would burst it asunder—and then comes a
generation of anarchy and misery! The Star Chamber
had no larger beginning than this—the arbitrary im-
prisonment of a few poor people without the warrant
of the civil Magistrate. And yet there sits Mr.
Maude in the Borough Court of Manchester, sad