The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-11 00:00:00

THE SENTENCES.

This morning the Court was opened at nine o'clock.
Baron ALDERSON passed sentence on the prisoners
convicted yesterday in this Court.
The prisoners being placed at the bar,
Baron ALDERSON, addressing them, said they had
all been judged by a Jury of their own country, and
found guilty of different crimes against the public
peace. All of them were sad examples of the mis-
fortunes into which evil counsel led young men.
Many of them, he perceived, were very young, and
appeared very ignorant, and they were now abiding
the punishment of the law for the violent outrages
they had committed against the peace of the country.
The prisoner William Cartwright had been convicted
of a conspiracy to prevent all others from working.
Although the prisoner was himself at perfect liberty
not to work, if he chose to abide the consequences of
idleness, he had no right to force others to the condi-
tion—the miserable condition—of idleness. Some of
them appeared to think that the rich were idle. This
was not the case. They worked, but their labour
was of a different description from that of the pri-
soners. The Judges who now sat in these Courts had
a great deal of labour to perform, and they belonged
to the labouring classes, though they worked in a dif-
ferent way from the people in the condition of the
prisoners; who, if they cultivated their talents, might
themselves rise to any situation, provided the Consti-
tution of this country were allowed to remain free.
But the prisoners were desirous of tyrannising
over the whole country. They went about and
said to men, " You shall not work." What
was that but tyranny ? This was what the pri-
soners James Turner, John Drubble, and Isaac
Drubble had done. Though the Jury had re-
commended the two Drubbles to mercy, he should
feel it his duty to subject them to the same punish-
ment as the rest. The prisoner James • Gosling was
a farmer's. servant. What, then, had he to do with
the outbreak ? Had he been a manufacturing la-
bourer, and fancied he. might, by the course he pur•
sued, raise :his wages, there would then have ap-
peared some ground for his conduct ; and, though he
would have been still culpable,' he might have been
object of some degree ,of compassion. But the
prisoner was not injured by the prices given far
manufacturing labour, and yet he joined a body of
other persons for the pur ose of stopping that labour
with which lie had not ing o alliterefore the-7
Court could net help thinking that he was.actuated
by some general or political motives. The prisoner
Joseph Done had been convicted of an attempt to
stop the railway communication •of this country,
and had .so acted from political motives,, and in
order to prevent one class of her •Majesty's
subjects, who were desirous of putting an end
to those disturbances, from proceeding to the
assistance of another class. He should, there-
fore, pass upon all the prisoners the same sentence ;
and he trusted that during the term of their im- '
prisonmerit they would properly reflect on their past
conduct, and persuade others in the same situation. as
themselves to avoid in future those who, for their own
purposes, misled them, and who, finding that they
could not rise by honest means, endeavoured to raise
themselves into 'consequence and notoriety by pander-
ing to the worst passions, working upon the grossest
ignorance, and cheating the dupes who were so foolish
as to listen to them. The sentence upon the prisoners
before-mentioned was, that each of them be imprisoned
in the gaol at Chester for the space of one year. The
prisoners Michael Morris, Charles Harrop, Samuel
Shepley, and Samuel Gosling, had been guilty of an-
other and a very serious offence. It was proposed by
certain Magistrates that some of those persons whom
he had described as misleading ignorant people for
their own private purposes, should be made to answer
for their offence, and a warrant was issued for the
apprehension of one of those parties called delegates—
persons who spoke, but did not. act—who advised
others to commit violence, but ran away from danger
themselves—the most contemptible, and, at the
same time, the most wicked class of in-
dividuals. It was such persons that they
chose to give assistance to, and whom they
sought to rescue from the custody of the constables,
in order that they might not be made answer-
able for their conduct ; and at the same time they
committed a grievous and violent outrage against the
constables acting under the orders of the Magistrates.
What society could exist, if persons charged with
offences were prevented from being brought to—he
would not say say punishment—but to trial even ?
Why should any man, high or low, rich or poor, if
charged with an offence, nit be brought before a
court of justice, which represented the Sovereign and
the whole community, and administered justice for
the whole country ? Yet the prisoners had stood in
the way, and had said that this man, whom the con-
stables went to apprehend, should have impunity,
whatever charges might be brought against him !
But they Would find that the law was too strong for
them. The man they attempted to rescue was after-
wards taken, and probably at the present moment was
abiding in another court the consequences of-his con-
duct. The sentence upon them was, that they be
each imprisoned for the space of eighteen months.
He trusted, that during their imprisonment they
would reflect on these things. For them, as a set of
most unfortunate dupes, he felt sincere pity ; but
it was necessary that the law should take its course,
in order that others might be protected; for
those who instigated them he had no other feeling
but abhorrence and contempt. The prisoner Joseph
Taylor had been convicted of attending an unlawful
assembly, and the prisoners William Smith, James
Kershaw, and William Martin, of attending the same
unlawful assembly, and also of having forcibly stopped
the Peak-forest Canal-works, by damaging one of the
locks, which was felony by law. Of that felony Taylor
had not been convicted, because he was not present at the
act, though no one could doubt that what he had said
at the meeting operated as an instigation to the of-
fence. The prisoner Taylor was one of those persons
who led others on to commit offences, and therefore he
could not regard Taylor's offence as less than ;he
others, though theirs was felony and Taylor's misde-
meanour. It was impossible for the prisoner Taylor
to say how many crimes might have flowed from his
misconduct at the meeting he had attended. It was
not only the human, but the Divine law, which the
prisoners had violated, and it was because they had
not had instruction in these matters that their mis-
conduct had brought them into their present situation.
It behoved those who had to give instruction in reli-
gious matters, as well as in general education, to con-
sider these things. The sentence upon Joseph Taylor
was that he be imprisoned 15 months in Chester gaol,
and upon William Smith, James Kershaw, and Wm.
Martin, that they be imprisoned in the house of Cor-
rection at Knutsford for 12 months, and kept to hard
labour.