The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-23 00:00:00

Standard.office, Ten o'clock.

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT.-YESTERDAY.

N•om the London Standard of last night.)

ARRAIGNMENT OF EDWARD OXFORD FOR HIGH TEEASON,

AND POSTPONEMENT OF THE TRIAL.

This morning, at nine o'clock, Mr. Sergeant Arabin and
Mr. Alderman Lainson took their seats upon the bench,
and were shortly afterwards followed by the Hon. Fox
Malik, M.P., Hon. E. J. Stanley, M.P., Major Anderson,
and in a few minutes the court was filled in every part by a
highly respectable auditory. The arrangements made by
the sheriffs were to-day precisely the same as those which
tended so much to the public convenience during the trial of
the convict Courvoisier last week.

At a quarter-past nine o'clock the prisoner was placed at
the bar to be arraigned on the indictment. He advanced
with a smile to the front of the dock, and manifested great
firmness and self-possession. He was respectably dressed in
a suit of blue, and his general appearance was youthful and
prepossessing. At this time Mr. Sydney Taylor and Mr.
Bodkin, who were retained as counsel for the prisoner, were
in court ; and, on the prisoner being placed at the bar,
Mr. Sydney Taylor rose to make an application for the
•
postponement of the trial, but
Mr. Sergeant Arabin declined to entertain the application,
which, he said must be made to the judges, when they and
the counsel for the prosecution had arrived.
The prisoner was then removed from the bar. In the in-
terval which elapsed from this moment until the arrival of
the judges, several distinguished personages were introduced
by the sheriffs to a seat upon the bench. Amongst others
we noticed the Duke of Brunswick, with his equerry, Baron
Audlow, Lord Colchester, and a numerous body of elegantly
dressed ladies. Mrs. Oxford, the mother of the unfortunate
prisoner, sat in the box usually allotted to jurors in waiting.
She is a good-looking woman, apparently about forty years
of age, and was respectably attired in black.
Precisely at ten minutes before ten o'clock, the Attorney-
General, Sir Frederick Pollock, Mr. Adolphus, and Mr.
Wightman, the counsel for the prosecution, entered the
court and took their places at the counsel's table. The At-
torney-General was accompanied by one of his sons. At
this moment the anxiety of the auditory was intense. Mr.
Maule, the soliictor for the Treasury, had been in court from
its sitting.
At five minutes past 10, the Lord Chief Justice Tindal and
the Right Hon. Mr. Baron Parke were ushered to their
seats on the bench by Mr. Sheriff-Evans, Mr. Sheriff Wheel-
ton, Mr. 'Alderman Thomas Wood, Mr. Alderman Gibbs, and
Messrs. Under Sheriffs France and Jackson.

Proclamation for silence having been made,
Mr. Clark, the Clerk of Arraigns, in obedience to the order
of the Court, directed Mr. Cope to place Edward Oxford at
the Bar. A death-like silence prevailed, and every eye was
turned to the dock.

The prisoner in a few seconds again appeared, and advanced
with a light step and a smile upon his countenance to the
front of the bar.

Lord Chief Justice.—Let the prisoner be called upon to
plead.

Mr•. Sydney Taylor rose and said, that he was instructed
on behalf of the prisoner to make an application to postpone
the trial upon facts set forth upon affidavit.
Lord Chief Justice Tindal.—How can you be heard upon
any motion of that sort until the prisoner has pleaded ? I
presume the trial, and not the arraignment is all that you wish
to postpone. The law requires the prisoner to plead, and he
must plead before an application to postpone the trial is made.
After a short pause,
. .

The Clerk of Arraigns proceeded as follows :—Edward
Oxford, you are indicted, and the indictment states, that you
being a subject of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, did, on
the 10th of June inst., within the jurisdiction of the Central
Criminal Court, being a false traitor to our said Lady the
Queen, maliciously and traitorously compass imagine, and
intend to put our said Lady the Queen to death, and with
B=o wicked treason, on the said 10th of June instant, you
did maliciously and traitorously shoot off a certain pistol
(then held in one of your hands) against the person of our
said Lady the Queen, loaden with gunpowder and one leaden
bullet, with intent thereby maliciously and traitorously to
shoot, kill, assassinate, and put to death our said Lady the
Queen, and thereby you traitorously made a direct attempt
against the life of our said Lady the Queen. Aud the
indictment states that on the same day you did afterwards
maliciously and traitorously shoot off and discharge a certain
other pistol, held in one of your hands, at the person of our
said Lady the Queen, and loaden with gunpowder and one
leaden bullet, with intent thereby maliciously and traitor-
ously to shoot, assassinate, kill, and put to death our said
Lady the Queen, thereby again traitorously making an at-
tempt against the life of our said Lady the Queen. How
say you, Edward Oxford, are you guilty or not guilty ?
The prisoner, in a firm but rather flippant tone, said, Not
Guilty.
The affidavit of the prisoner's attorney was then read. It
set forth that the deponent had been engaged for the prisoner
on the 16th instant, but'that he had lost considerable time
since in ascertaining whether Mr. Humphries, who had been
first engaged to defend the prisoner, had declined to do so.
It then proceeded to allege, that, in consequence of the ab-
sence of many material witnesses, who resided at a distance
from each other and from the place of trial, it was found im-
possible to collect and put together the various proofs neces-
sary for the instruction of counsel to defend the prisoner.
The state of the public mind was also urged as an additional
reason for the postponement of the trial. The greatest part
of Mr. O'Connell's letter was introduced into the affidavit,
which the deponent submitted must have the effect of in-
flaming the minds of the jury prejudicially against the pri-
soner.

Mr. Sydney Taylor again rose, and was about to urge some
observations upon the Court in support of the application.
Lord Chief Justice Tindal.—Had you not better hear the
Attorney-General first, and then you will be able to reply to
his observations ?

Mr. Sydney Taylor acquiesced, and resumed his seat.

The Attorney-General rose and said he should have felt him-
self called upon to oppose the motion if there had been nothing
stated in the affidavit which had just been read, except the
observations upon the present state of the public mind, and
upon the paragraphs reflecting upon the case, which from
time to time had appeared in the public newspapers ; for he
(the Attorney-General) had sdch confidence in an English
jury, that he well knew that the accused would have a fair
and impartial trial at their hands, even if the court was now
at once to proceed with this solemn inquiry and investiga-
tion. He was sure the jury would utterly disregard both
what might have been stated to them, or any of them, in
conversation, or what had appeared in the public newspapers.
He was sure they would look only to the evidence that might
be adduced before them, and would not be influenced by
anything they had either heard or read. But when he found
the professional adviser of the prisoner stating on his oath
that the prisoner's friends had important and material wit-
nesses to bring forward on his behalf, and that he was not
prepared now to bring them forward, God forbid that he
(the Attorney General) should reject this claim, feeling, as
he did, that it was the last importance that the administration
of justice should be acknowledged to be pure and impartial.
He should be extremely sorry if in future times, when this
transaction came to form part of the history of the land, the
records should be enabled to make a charge, that the At-
torney General of the day,should have refused to consent to
an application to postpone the trial when an affidavit had been
read, stating that material witnesses might be brought forward
if time were allowed to show that the party accused was not
amenable to the law, inasmuch as he was not, at the time of
committing the act charged, in a state of mind to make him
answerable to the law for that act. On that ground without
hesitation, he consented to a postponement of the trial. The
next sessions of the Court would be held in about a fortnight,
and he could not but express his earnest hope that in the
meantime no discussion of this case would take place in the
public prints—that there would be no further publication of
letters addressed by the prisoner to the Secretary of State,
and that there would be a general consent to abstain from
everything that could in the remotest degree steel the public
mind against the accused, or create a suspicion upon the
pure administration of justice. With these observations he
at once on the part of the Crown yielded to this application
on behalf of the prisoner.
Lord Chief Justice Tindal.—Mr. Attorney-General, you
have taken a high and most proper course. I beg to express
my entire concurrence in the earnest hope that in the mean-
time. between this period and the trial, the public prints will
observe a profound silence on the subject of this case.
After a short desultory conversation between counsel on
both sides and the court, the trial was fixed to come on on
Thursday, the 9th of July next.
The prisoner,. who throughout the entire proceeding exhi-
bited grea.levi.ty of manner, was then removed from the
bar, a smile still playing upon his countenance. Many of
the distinguished persons present shortly afterwards left the
court.