The Sun.
London, England, 1829-11-17 00:00:00

in 1829 be estimated at 50,060. In 1821 it con

tained 8,726 houses, and perhaps 500 have been
built since, chifly villas to the westward." This
increase of buildings, and of people, caused by
an increasing demand for articles of cutlery, in-
&care any thing rather than a distressed country.
Othur branches Of industry must be thriving as
well as the industry of Sheffield ; for if the de-
mand for . cutlery increases, this proves that the
demand fcr the industry of those who wish for
cutlery increases also. Them are some sensible
observations by Sir Richard on the state of
opinion iu this country at different times. '' In
fifty years of observation, I have seen little
done in Parliament, base and corrupt as it
has been, w hich at the tune the assembled
penp!e would not have done. I heard the pub-
lic voice through the wicked American war, and
through the more wicked French wars, and the
Parliament seemed only to echo the public, voice.
I lived among the friends of peace ; but from
1775 to 1813, the friends cf peace were not the
majority out of Parliament more than in it. This
is a libel on human nature ; but it is true—un-

deniably true. The cause, however, merits
notice ; I believe it arose entirely from the obse-

quiousness of the great and small vulgar (three
in four of every community) to the wishes of
Government and to the votes of corrupt Parlia-
ments. These three in four never think for them-
selves, and follow leaders and authority in un-
suspecting confidence—the thing wanted then, is
fin improved class of Electors and wiser Repre-
sentatives, the reflection of whose wisdom would
enlighten the people, But while the present race
of electors exercise their power, it is a circle of
never-ending errors." —Morning Chronicle.
The investigation of the circumstances con-
nected with the " mysterious death" of Mrs.
Phillips having been apparently abandoned
without any result—the pari,,h, the executors,
and the other parties interested, having endea-
voured to shift from one to initialer the duty and
responsibility of further inquiry, we felt that no-
thing further was likely to be done in this mat-
ter unless the press took it up. We apprehend
that one of the most extraordinary cases of sud-
den and suspicious death that has occurred for
many years would be allowed to pass, like any
other " nine days' wonder" of the newspapers,
into sileoce and oblivion, if the serious attention
pi the Government were not directed tovvards the
antiject through that organ of public opinion
which the late Lord Londonderry called the
" fourth estate of the realm." We led the way,
which other Journals have since followed, in
showing the nectssity of an extraordinary inter-
position of the Secretary of State for the Home
Department, as Minister of Police, to investi•
gate, a,td, if necessary, to bring under the cog-
nizance of criminal justice, this painful and pe-
culiar case. In our comments upon the subject
we ativerted to the want of a public prosecutor,
whcse imperative duty it would be to take the
inquiry and prosecution of all such matters out
pf the hands of all private persons whomsoever,
ats4 to relieve parochial "Dogberries" from any
s..oesessaion with the initiative proceedings of
joatcc, in which they are sometimes igno-
randy ovec.-aetive,and at others as stupidly sui)ine.
It seems, however, that we are in a state ofl
reprobate ignorance on this subject, and an Even-
ing Coternporary, the Standzrd, has with more
zeal than ceremony set about to rebuke and en-
ljanien. us. That Paper tells us that we call for.
she appointment of a public prosecutor, forget-
ting that- there is one already in existence—
Inanely., Sir James Scarlet:, the King's Attor-
vey-General. If the lariter in the Standard
had done us the (tour to read our article with
;as snitch attention as was necessary for candid
s.:ritiesrn, he would hove knOWII that we wanted
;sot to ingraft upon the letter of 64 Constitution
the abstract idea of a public prosecutor--that we
idiait exists,.fictirme juris, already—but an ac-
tual and responsible prosecutor, who would give
more than his name to the owsliincrY of justice
,--whose imperative duty it isse;ol4 he to prose-
cuts' all serious crimes which were not State
of encess—to inquire, collect evidence, cod
.set
the process of justice in ;notion. Every school-
boy knows as well as our containporary that the
King is the nominal prosecutor in all the Courts
of Penal Justice. It would be a thiserable erisis
Toque to say to one calling out for the appoint-
ment of a public prosecutor that suel; a personage
already exists, for the Xing is the public prose-
aaitor. He is so, indeed, in the theory of the law.
'Mu is but the decent homage of the Consti-
tution to the supreme Magistrate, and, except
in cases whore the King':; personal rights or
interests are concerned, has no reality in prac-
tice. So the Attorney-General, as the inone-
diate officer and legalsrepresentative of the Ring,
may be said, next to Majesty, to preside over
the whole criminal justice of the realm. In this
sense the officers of justice in all our Courts are
regarded in law as his deputies—yet in the pro-
secution of all offences, which are not what are
called State offences, or offences. against Penal
Laws, touching the revenues of the Crown, or
in the prosecution of all high and enormous mis-
demeanours, such as seditious libels, blasphemy,
or gross and flagrant public immorality, he is but
the shadowy deputy of a nominal prosecutor. lii
high treason the King is the real as Nve:ll as LC-
minal prosecutor, and there the Attorney-Gel:e-
ral does the work of a real prosecutor, by taking
up the initiative process or justice—examining
the proofs, arranging the evidensa_drew.i„--L„

the indictinetd, and taking esj- eeial care that.
neither through a hick of zeal or industry
there shall be a failure of justice. In cases of
enormous misdemeanours, such as we have de-
scribed, this officer has the privilege of supersed-
ing die functions of the Grand Inquest by filing ex
?if:xi° infornnoions, which put a person in-
:or iced against to answer the charge in the same
manner that a one bill of indictment does. This
is the power created and limited by immemorial
usage, and a similar power in sonic cases was'
possessed by tn. Master of the Crown Office,
now so far restrained by the Act of Parliament
that he cannot file an ex-oSicio ieformation
without the express consent of the Court.—
Theis is the' Master of the Crown Office also
a public prosecutor, but not such a prosecu-
tor as the country wants. The King's Ser-
jeant might also be said to be a public
prosecutor, if any inference, with regard to the
powers of the Attorney-General, were to be
drawn from the proclamation made before crimi-
nal trials, now a mere formula, which says " If
any person can inform my Lords the King's Jus-
tices, the King's Attorney-General, or the
King's Sergeant, of any treasons, murders, felo-
nies, &c., let him come fbrth, and he shall be
heard." Now, if this proclamation showed that
the Attorney-General was formerly considered
in law not only as the nominal but real prosecu-
tor, in murders and other felonies, it would
show the same as the Judges on the Bench, and
the King's Sergeant. But the characters of
Judge and prosecutor arc incompatible, and
therefore this formula, by proving too much,
proves nothing. The fact is it is a mere fiction,
like .asking a convicted felon what he has to say
why he should not have judgment to die accord-
ing to law—it being well known that nothing he
can say will avail to prevent the sentence passing
against him. So if, taking the above proclama-
tion in a literal sense, a man of plain and simple
onderstanding, who knew nothing of fictions of
law any more than of fictions of poetry, were to
come forth and tell the Attorney-General of
' some murder committed, or suspected to have
been committed, and which no parish-officer, no
relation, no executor, no anybody else, seemed
willing to iequire into and prosecute! what
would be the Attorney-General's answer ? He
would say, " If you wish to prosecute, employ
your attorney, or go to my deputy—the Clerk of
Arraigns at the Old Bailey (or other officer, as
the case might be)—he will draw the indict-
ment ; and if the Jury return a true bill, and you
wish me to conduct the case in Court, let your
attorney leave the brief and the fee with my
c'erk." But our contemporary says, " The
Attorney-General is bound by his oath of office
to take care that the penal justice of the country
be administered as far as comes within his know-
ledge ; and, if it be shown to lion that, without
his interference in the Finchley case, there is
danger sif a failure of justice, his oath of office
compels him to interpose." Now, his interposi-
tion would be just of that nature that we have
described. It would not relieve the real prose-
cutor of either trouble, responsibility, or expense.
However patriotic and disinterested the inten-
tioa of such person may be, he can only ap-
proach the Attorney-General as he would the
King's Serjeant, or any other Counsel, through
the thorny intricacy of the labyrinth of the law,
with all the anxious responsibility of a situation
in which he may lose his labour, and accumulate
• bills of costs on his devoted head. Let us apply
this principle to the Fincliley case. There the
parish officers, the executors, and others, de-
cline to take proceedings, because they dread the
expense, and do not wish to incur the responsi-
bility, being apprehensive, perhaps in the event
of being defeated, of getting involved in an ac-
tion for a malicious prosecution. Fearing that
this disinclination to pursue the matter any fur-
ther would end in a failure of justice, we ex-
pressed our regret that there was not a public
prosecutor who would relieve the parties from
time trouble, responsibility, and expense of a
prosecution. Our contemporary meets this by
idol ming the world that there is a public pro-
secutor, whose duty it is not to relieve the par-
ties in question from either the trouble, re-
sponsibility, or expense, of clearing up this
case by a legal inquiry. We spoke of an
intelligent and responsible prosecutor, who
would have the power to commit, now in-
trotted to Justices of the Peace, or, at
least, whose duty it would be to make pre-
liminary inquiries, and shape the evidence, if
there were evidence of an inculpatory nature,
for the committing Magistrate. The remedy
proposed by our contemporary conveys more of a
bitter sarcasm on the state of the law, with re-
spect to public prosecutions, than useful evidence.
In truth, if the law attached such duties as those
which the ()Mee of public prosecutor implies to
the office of Attorney-General, it would be phy-
sically impossible for that officer to execute them.
We know there is one act of authority which
the Attorney-General has sometimes, though
very rarely, exercised, that ought to belong only
to one who was really a public prosecutor, and
that is the entering of a nolle proscqui in a cri-
' minal case where the interests of the Crown are
not concerned, and the real prosecutor is a pri-
vate person. There arc sonic instances of the
lexercise of this power in modern times, but none
I whatever of the Attorney-General interfring in
the way we require a public prosecutor to. do, for
the purpose of clearing away the mystery of a
auspicious case of sudden death, aid preventing
a failure of justice. It was therefore we
suggested that the death of Mrs. Phillips was a
proper case for the interference of the Secretary
of State for the Home Department, in his cha-
racter of Minister of Police. It is a case so
peetare as to require and justify such an extra-
ordinary mode of proceeding ; and if, on iayesti-
e nstien it should be ascertained that the death
was not the result of accident, not that a peo-
batilc cause of prosecution against sonic person or
persons aroae on the evidence, then, if the Go-
vernment chose to employ the Attorney-Gene-
eat; so much the better ; it could not be in abler
hands ; bot we must not confound a Counsel
making the most of his case for the party that
emplo/s him with a public prosecutor, whose
only tioty it would be to satisfy the demands of
impartial jostice,—Morning Rerald.
It would appear from the accounts w:deli reach
us, through the medium of the provincial papers,
front ditTei.ent parts of the country, that, what
with the demand from abroad for cotton yarn, to
be afterwards manufactured into cotton cloth, and
the demand usual at this season of the year for
woollen goods and winter clothing generally,
there has been a partial revival of employmeot
and huainess in the manufactories and principal
market-towns ; and we have much pleasure in
giving publicity to the fact : for dreadful indeed
Would be die state of time working classes, were
they, at this season of the year, to find themselves
destitute of employment. We have been unable,
however, to discover any thi»g in these state-
iments of our cotemporaries, to shake, in the