The Sun.
London, England, 1827-10-04 00:00:00

trons land. allies, possess power in .the. State; to
expose to the people of England their artifices,
however shallow they may seem to us, and to
den-ounce their objects, however desperate and
hopeless we ourselves may consider them.
We have erroneously said the shallow artifices.
We should have .employed the singular number,
for the artifice of the faction is eternally one and
the same. The number of Magistrates in Eng-
land amounts to many thousands. There is no
county in England in which the faction has not
a myrmidOn in the shape of the conductor of a
provincial journal, who is eagerly upon the watch
,for an instance of Magisterial misconduct, or for
any thing which, by any kind of suppression or
addition, or falsification; 'can be made for the
space of a few days to wear the appearance of
misconduct. We think we overstate the fact
when we say, that about once a month, or twelve
times in the year, these watchful and zealous
myrmidons of the faction get hold of a story,
which, in their way. of telling it, does not read
quite well. This is enough. Here is matter
upon which the daily 'metropolitan journals of
the faction can expatiate for a week, and by
which its monthly and quarterly auxiliaries may
more folly dilate in their ponderous lucubrations.
Candour and common sense, to be sure, would
say that as the exception does but prove
the rule, so one instance of individual mis-
conduct, culled from the proceedings of five
hundred Men perpetually and separately acting,
proves nothing but the general excellence and
purity of the body. To reason thus does not,
however, suit the purposes of faction. The
settled intention being to discredit the whole
Magistracy of England, no allowance is made for
the diversities of human character, and every
single charge of individual delinquency, whether
well or ill founded, is taken as a decisive proof
of universal vice. The " Great Unpaid," as the
faction has, in derision, designated the Magis-
tracy of the land, is represented to the people as
the proper object of hatred and contempt, and
the (Ixpediency of new-modelling our municipal
institutions, and superseding the old constitu-
tional jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace
by the authority of hired Officers of the Crown,
strenously urged. It would, we are persuaded,
be a great and dangerous error to treat
this as sheer virulence and stupidity. Apart
from some strong motives of self-interest,
so great a degree of virulence and stupi-
dity is not in human nature. To what motive
then of self-interest on the part of the Whig and
Radical Faction is its preternatural exhibition of
virulence and' stupidity upon this subject to be
referred ? It cannot have escaped the observa-
tion of any max who has paid the least attention
to the progress
,of events and' opinions, that
`these systematic attacks upon the Magistracy
commenced very soon after the cant of liberality
began to be generally prevalent in Parliament and
throughout the country ; or, in other words,
very soon after the Whigs and Radicals were
cheered by the first glimpse of hope that the
patronage of the Crown would . ere long be in
their hands. The substitution of a stipendiary,
in the place of an unpaid Magistracy throughout
the country, would, it was foreseen, gratify the
rapacity of the faction in the event of its attaining
to power, by increasing the patronage of the
Crown ; while during the period of its exclusion,
abuse: of Magistrates served to gratify its spleen.
This substitution would gratify also the disposi-
tion to tyranny, which the faction, whenever it
has been in possession of power, has constantly
evinced, by placing a large proportion of the
people of. England at the mercy of its hired
agents. This substitution would further gratify
the pride of the faction and consolidate its power
by enabling it to proviCle, at the expence of the
nation, for the swarm of third rate lawyers,
English, Irish and Scotch, who are the most
active .and zealous of its adherents. The people
of England have sense enough to know when the
Whig and Radical faction strives to cast obloquy
upon the ancient magistracy of the land, that
what it really expresses is neither more nor less
than its earnest desire to perpetuate its own pos-
session of power, and to secure for the Govern-
ment in its hands new means of rapacity and ty-
ranny. The Englishman who can witness with-
out disgust these daily attempts to discredit the
unpaid magistrates of the country as a body, is
prepared of course to acquiesce in the appoint-
ment of the briefless barrister of all religions and
of none, who would inevitably, in present cir-
cumstances, be their well paid successorss.--•
Morning Post.
We adverted yesterday to Chief Justice Best's
definition of the Liberty of the Press. We
shall nowt- advert, as a subject intimately con-
nected with it, to his definition of libel. " The
press," says the Judge, " may publish the truth,
the whole truth; and nothing but the truth."
" Whatever," adds the same decisive authority,
" tends to bring a man into ridieule, is a libel. ',
We lay these two definitions alongside of one
another, and. we find it impossible to make them
fit. The one seems not only different from but
contradictory of the other. In nine cases out of
ten relating to ridiculous persons, we do not
know how to hold them up to ridicule, more
effectually than by telling the whole truth. We
are, therefore, we repeat, at a loss to find out
how the dictum of Sir W. Best on the one point,
and his dictum on the other, arc to be recon-
ciled. It is unnecessary to enter into any cri-
ticism of the case out of which these remarks of
Sir William's arose. The party prosecuting is
so little known that we cannot, were we willing,
raise him to cOnsequence, and the action was, of
all the trumpery actions which have been tried
even at the Common Pleas, perhaps the most in-
significant. It is, however, of some importance
to consider the condition in which a publisher
or writer may be placed by the application of the
maxims on which it is reasonable to suppose Sir
William intends to act in future. It is a•very
simple affair to say what is physical truth.
Any Reporter, whose hearing is tolerably
accurate and whose judgment is moderately
clear, may tell what words, or at least what mean-
ing, a prosecutor, a defendant, a witness, or a
Judge, expressed on any given case. But when
a Reporter or Editor asserts, that any of these
personages spoke like a fool or a wise man, it is
by no means a matter to be determined with
facility, though the truth in that case must lie on
the one side or the other, on which side it hap-
pens to lie. Unfortunately most of the truths
promulgated by the Press, for which it is after-
wards called on to account, in Banco Regis, be-
long to the latter class. If the Chief Justice
had at once laid an embargo on all reasoning, b)
stating that nothing but facts were to, be pub-
lished, • the rule might have been susceptible of
easy application. But we would go a step far-
ther. Why should the expression of the truth
not be accompanied by an expression
n
.of the
feelings which it naturally produces ? Why is
ofthe u
purpose
e of
gtrruattliifyiug
desiirdalbel e
curiosity,
? Notsurely
or of adding to the stock
of unemployed
know-
ledge. It is not the
wish,
nor is the aim of him