The Sun.
London, England, 1829-09-03 00:00:00

taken from any filmsy policy, engendered in the
brain of a diplomatist, or for the maintenance of
some vain and frivolous point of national honour.
—Morning Cironide.
We find that a statement in our Paper of yes-
terday, relative to the amount of emolument
lately attached to the office of Solicitor of the
Excise in Ireland, has been doubted, on the
ground that it is too monstrous to have existed
even in that country of jobs and abuses. The
fact we stated is simply and strictly true ; and
'here are some circumstances which we now
with the same direct knowledge of their
existence for many years, still more curious, and
more illustrative of the Irish Revenue system.
The different prosecutions for offences against
the Excise Laws were wholly discretionary with
the Solicitor for the Board ; and from the mode
of payment by bills of cost, it was naturally to
he expected that few cases, however trivial,
escaped the notice of an attorney, to whom each.
whether prosecuted to conviction or not, was a

certain source of profit. This, one would think,
was bad enough in all conscience; but the evil
by no means rested there—the invariable usage
was, in every cause, however trumpery, to lay
a case before the Law Officers of the Crown,
a; well as before the two regularly retained Bar-
risters, known as the Counsel to the Com-
missioners. In -process-of-time, the frequency
of these appeals to the sages of the law ren-
dered the old plan of the fee accompanying
the brief too troublesome, and a regular
pass-book actually existed, to note the num-
be) and amount of fees; which, when
they had accumulated to a sum of a certain
magnitude, were paid of in the usual trades-

manlike manner: Where the mutual advan

tage of the Banister and the Solicitor were thus
conveniently adjusted, the consequence may be
readily guessed. Another enormous waste of
public money arose from the system established
by the late Lord Oriel, when Chancellor of the
_ _

Irish Exchequer, of fining the town-lands

wherever a conviction was had for illicit distilla-
tion. The clear profit to the Excise Solicitor

upon each conviction was something more that

five pounds ; and the aggregate amount may be
supposed tolerably great, when we assert, which
we do upon a perfectly competent authority, that
the number of convictions upon a single Ci►cuit
actually exceeded tw•elce hundred. Well might
the Irish Secretary of that day, who now holds a
still higher employment here, call the Excise
Solicitor the Child of Fortune. We are not
sufficiently in possession of the nature of the
changes since made in this branch of the Reve-

nue Department to pronounce an opinion ; but
w•e hope and trust that a system ►vhich left a man
confidentially employed no alternative but that of
acting the pact either of a knave or a fool, is
utterly and irrevocably abolished.—Aid.
We find that our anticipations on the subject
of the Court Martial sitting at Portsmouth, as
to the imperative necessity of entering more fully

into the nature of the instructions under which
Sir E. Codrington acted, are gaining additional
consistence from the course of the proceedings.
This is no more than we expected, as our opinion
rested upon the judgment of an able and dis-
tinguished naval character. It will be observed
that the prosecutor upon every occasion com-
plains of the suppression, or, at least, the non-

production, of documents which he conceives es-
sential to the ends of justice ; and it is confi-
dently asserted by well-informed persons, that
the propriety of furnishing or withholding them
is at this moment a subject of rather acrimonious
discussion at the Admiralty. The Secretary of
the Admiralty, whether deservedly or not, has
long been extremely unpopular, both within
doors and without ; and it is whispered that the
pending Court Martial is likely, in some way or
other, to accelerate a retirement which, we be-
lieve, has been for some time contemplated, and
to which we apprehend the great majority of all
parties concerned look forward with anxious ex-
' pect ation.—Eid.
The Dublin Evening Post has the following
remarks relative to the result of the trials of the
police-men arising out of the riots at Borriso-
keene :—" Homicides were certainly commit-
ted in Borrisokeene ; and notwithstanding the
acquittals—eery needlessly, we think—not to
use a stronger phrase. But there was no miti-
gated verdict—There was no conviction for even
justifiable manslaughter; no verdict that would
send the homicides out of the country." In
this short passage there are two strange blunders
—the one is, that there could be such a verdict
as " justifiable manslaughter"—such a verdict
was surely never heard of except by the Editor
of the paper in question. In the law of Eng-
land " manslaughter" means the specific crime
of feloniously killing, and it only differs from
wilpd murder in wanting the ingredient of
malice aforethought. It, therefore, never can
be a justifiable act. The other blunder consists
in supposing that an act which is justifiable in
law would be the subject of trawpoilation or of
any punishment whatever. Thus, though a
verdict of " justifiable manslaughter" would be a
gross absurdity, a verilict of "justifiable homicide"
would be tantamount to 8n acquittal ;_ and the

Jury, in the cases we allude to, returned verdicts
of " not guilty," precisely because they con-
sidered the acta Df homicide justifiable—not
because they did not believe that acts of homi-
cide had been committed.—Morning Herald.
We have no wish to prejudice the result of

the trial, at present pending, of Captain Dicken-
son, for alleged misconduct in the battle of
Navarin, which, through the treacherous con-
duct of Russia, :;i3s led to results very different
indeed from those which ;,-;:re anticipated at the
time it was fought ; but we cannot withhold the
following observations from our readers oa the
subject, which appear to be fully justified by the
incidents and progress of the trial. We fear
dist there has been attempts to sacrifice the hero
of Navarin to political feelings of a very different
character from those under which he was ordered
to fight. "It is cle4r from the progress of
Captain Dickenson's Court kTartial, ' says the
Hampshire Telegraph, " that it L s2ught to
try what th.; lawyers call a collateral .issoe,
namely, something wL,ich does not immediately
of necessity belong to Lilo o;iginal case. Sir
Edward Codrington has appeared twicz,u thrice
as a witness. On each occasion he has !nada
strong and puog;3nt allusions to something which
the Adm;ralty have either kept back on the
one side, or unnecessarily pressesd forward on the
other. Be has never appeared at the table of
the Court, In;t he has alluded to papers of Mr.
Croker, or the Admiralty, which either do not
belong to this case, and are pertinaciously pressed
into it, or do belong to it, and are improperly
withheld. This must be settled between the
Admiralty, Sir Edward Codrington, and the
Court Martial, the last being only involved by
listening to the mysterious allusions. The re-