The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-03-25 00:00:00

TRIAL BY JURY A MOCKERY.

( From the Dublin Evening Mail.)
The best illustrations (in all things but jokes) are
practical. From an argument a sophist may escape, but
a fact admits of no controversy. The new petit jury
system has been the theme of much digcussion—the cau-
tious condemning the innovation on established and ap-
proved practice—the liberal and enlightened taking a
popular view, and displaying the abstract equity of the
proceedings. Nothing but a fair trial could decide the
question, and that trial we-believe it has now fully had,
and awaits a verdict from an impartial public. We beg
most earnestly the attention of our readers to the report
of a trial had at the Queen's County Assizes, which
have just come to a close. The case was the murder of
the late Mr. William Carter, a tenant of Lord Mary-
borough's, who was butchered in the open day, for some
offence against the agrarian code of the Whitefeet. After
a trial—on which, it is not too much to say, the indict-
ment was as satisfactorily proved against the traversers
as it is possible to conceive, and on which the judge's
charge left neither fact nor law capable of doubt—the
jury could not be brought to agree—they were dismissed
at the verge of the county ; and the pr►soners, though
they still remain in custody for future trial, have escaped
the present vengeance of the laws, and been enabled
openly to laugh at their prosecutors and judges.
It is by no means difficult to account for this result.
The constitution of the jury ensured it. On that panel
sat a person—hut we had better give the account in the
words of the provincial local journal, which, of course, is
better aquainted with the fact than ourselves :

" Of that number," says the Leinster Express, "the person
best entitled to congratulate himself and the public, was one
(a small farmer upon the Ossory estate,) who in the commence-
ment of the mob disturbances and agrarian outrages of the
Queen's County, was himself convicted at the Summer As-
sizes, 1829, before Chief Justice Bushe, of a desperate riot in
conjunction with a mob at the fair of Rathdowney, where a la-
mentable homicide took place, whose own sentence of twelve
months' imprisonment so well qualified the crown to estimate
the value of the jurors, and the latter equally to calculate the
benefits which his con federates in outrage might derive from the
modern and more popular conduct of its officers."
It may well be asked, why the right of challenge which
the crown possesses, such a person was suffered to re-
main on the panel ? The solution of this problem con-
veys, perhaps, the greatestcharge that has yet been made
against Lotd Mulgrave's administration, and shews the
utter folly of expecting peace, order, or the supremacy
of law, so long as that nobleman remains in -office, or
the system which lie administers is suffbred to prevail.
We quote once more from the journal already cited, both
for the fact and the inferences so conclusively drawn from
it :

" It is perfectly notorious that the crown withholds its chal-
lenges by tin express order from authority. Nor are those of-
ficers to blame, whose previous execution of their duty, and
and ample experience in this county, have so well qualified for
its performance. By withholding challenge, the crown assists
the prisoner in making that selection from the inverted panel,
which may hest suit his objects, and thus practically multiplies,
to a fatal extent, that right of challenge which the humanity of
the law has preserved to him : by this course the very principle
of justice is perverted into a protective shield for the murderer,
whilst his associates in crime, are armed with her sword and
encouraged by her voice."
- -

The "people"—the emphatic people—" the finest pea-
santry on the face of the earth—Sir John Davis's lovers
of equal and impartial justice, formed a procession to
grace the murderer's triumph, and the petit jury's apo-
theosis, from the Court-house to the verge of the county ;
and the prisoners exultingly laughed at (prematurely,
we hope) this signal defeat of law and justice.