The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-04-18 00:00:00

It is not our purpose here to enter into the enquiry
whether justice had been so attempted to be outraged
The verdict of the jury was no doubt " a
true verdict according to the evidence;" there can be
as little doubt fhat all the evidence possible to be pro-
cured, and all the legal (?) ingenuity, to bring that evi-
dence to bear in a conclusive shape upon the case, was
put in requisition; but, although such verdict was that
the accused was " not guilty" of the charge alleged
against him, and attempted to be substantiated by such
an array of police acumen, we are not about to argue
that no prosecution should have been instituted. It
was not, either, that the verdict had been rightly or
wrongfully retirrned—that the evidence of the various
witnesses had been wrongfully or rightfully delivered—
which gave rise to the explosion of sympathy at the
conclusion of the trial ; but, solely, a feeling of satis-
faction that a case had failed, which the public thought
had been improperly, and some would say, unconsti-
tutionally got up, and urged against the prisoner.
How was this case got up, and by whom ? The
parties. suffering through the alleged arson--the in-
surance office—were not the parties moving in the
prosecution. Why was this ? Possibly the insurers
were not possessed of that peculiarly keen scent, which
enables a commissioner of police to trace crime out of
the circumstance, somewhat ordinary, of a trades Man's
having, in these days of scheming and cutting, been
driven to the facilities of the auction-room, to raise the
means of meeting his payments; for this, in fact, is
the only portion of the evidence offered which appears
to us at all to justify the prosecution. These gentle-
men were not of opinion that a case of suspicion pre-
sented itself, sufficiently strong to warrant them in de-
priving of his liberty, even temporarily, an individbal
who, for anything which appears to the contrary, had
incurred suspicion by no previous ill-conduct. They
had no incentive for the display of that exceeding inge-
nuity, which. can string together the disjointed and
trumpery evidence of apple-women and policemen into
a charge sufficiently strong to place human life in jeo-
pardy ; and had the whole matter been left to them, or
to the ordinary working of our criminal law, we may
safely say that there would have been no prosecution at
all ! The case in question, therefore, fell into the
hands of a paid public officer--became, in fact, a police
prosecution throughout—the virtual prosecutor being
the representative of the board of police, and police-
men being the principal witnesses; and it is, as such,
that it was—and we trust that the feeling will not
readily die away from the minds of Englishmen—a
peculiarly distasteful prosecution ; and that its failure
was matter of gratification to the public.
The people of Liverpool, it is plain,—and the people
of England at large, we believe,—are not enamoured
of a practice which, if carried out, would virtually
place the liberty of the subject at the disposal of any
police official whose ambition to distinguish himself
by superior cleverness is in an inverse ratio with his
discretion. A police force unquestionably we must
have, so long as crime exists amongst us ; a force for
the detection of that crime, and the protection of life
and property. We presume, too, that a Commissioner
of Police is a necessary evil; but we must pray that
the duty of a public prosecutor may be removed far,
very far, from the hands of gentlemen exercising the
duties which we conceive to belong to such a character

or not

It will be foUnd, by reference to our news of the
day, that another of the. West India Mail Steam-ships,
the " Solvvay," has been totally wrecked, with a lamen-
table loss of life, on some. sunken rocks about 20 miles

to the westward of Corunna. This is the third ship
of the same line, the destruction of which, with its
attendant calamities in each case, the country has to
deplore ; and, we may truly say,. without impugning
the conduct or character of the commanders of these
vessels or their directors, that, whether in respect of
shipwreck, or disappointment to the public in their
anticipated dispatch and consequent advantages to the
mercantile community connected with our 'West India
colonies, and the neighbouring stations in South Ame-
rica at which they were bound to call, the undertaking
has been singularly unfortunate.
Many valuable lives have, it will be found, been
brought to a premature close by the loss of the Solway.
With none of them had we any personal or other ac-
quaintance, with the exception of her tommander, Mr.
Charles Duncan, who Was well known and highly,
esteemed in this port, and to whose memory we are
painfully called upon to pass a tribute of respect. Mr.
Duncan was the son of the late Mr. Duncan of Holy-
'lead, long a sailing master in the Royal Navy. He
)ecame connected as an officer with the Transatlantic

Steam-ships of this port from nearly the commence-
ment of their running, having served successively in
the "Liverpool," in the "Acadia," and in the "Presi-
dent,"—which last vessel he left .along with Captain
Fayrer, now of the " Forth," West India mail-ship.
He added to the skill and bravery, all the generosity
of the true British seaman, and was beloved both by
officers and crew. He was an admirable swimmer,

Escombe—is not the existence of such a union proved
by the concurrence of these gentlemen in a common
struggle for a purely Irish object, undertaken in com-
pliance with a general burst of feeling from Ireland ?"
Now what is the grievance ? A contract, for the
supply of mail coaches for the Irish post-office, thrown
open, (as for years it has been), to the public of Great
Britain and Ireland, has been given to a non-Irish con-
tractor. The sane contract has for years past been
enjoyed by Mr. Purcell, of Dublin, who has been all
this time perfectly at liberty to enjoy any English con-
tract, and has tried for many ! But because an Eng-
lish, or rather a Scotch contractor is willing this year

to perform the requirements of government—a united
government of a united,kingdom—for some ten thousand
pounds less, we have Conservatives even, in Ireland, so
absurd as to protest against his being permitted to do
so, and apparently ready to swell the O'Connell cry of
" Repeal of the Union!" Surely this is very much
too bad !

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Eng-
lish people, in all ages, has been a love of justice,
combined with an utter detestation of inquisitorial
practices in the administration of the laws. In no
country are life, property, social order, and morality,
looked upon as more sacred than in this ; in no coun-
try is the criminal, who has violated their security,
looked upon with less of sympathy; and yet, much as
we may abhor the crime, and spurn at him who has
committed it, we are not ready to allow punishment to
be inflicted except upon conviction, by means of evi-
dence the most undoubted, and after the most strict
observance of every regulation which the law has pro-
vided. To the most atrocious offender we accord, or
wish to accord, fair play—an open trial, in the face of
his fellow-countrymen ; and we do believe that, such
is the extent to which this love of impartial justice is
carried by the vast mass of the people, that the escape
from punishment of a criminal, whose crime had been
almost universally acknowledged, would be received,
and is received, with less of dissatisfaction than would
attend his conviction by means of the straining of one
of those salutary forms, with which the constitution
'has hedged round the liberty of the subject.
To what, except the existence of such a feeling, and
an impression that it had been outraged, are we to at-
tribute a scene which occurred in our Criminal Court
last week, on the occasion of the acquittal of a young
man named Henry, who had been arraigned for the
crime of arson ? We are informed that the verdict of
" not guilty," returned by the jury after only " a few
minutes consideration," was "hailedtcith loud applause
by the spectators, and that the officers of the court en-
deavoured in vain, fora few moments, to curb this mani-
festation of feeling. As soon as the crowd outside
learned the verdict, they also cheered." (.9 Manifestly,
there was nothing, in the nature of the crime or the
station of the criminal, to excite so extraordinary a dis-
play of popular sympathy. There is nothing in the
crime of ARSON to excite any other feeling than de-
testation against the party found practising it ; and
the accused, HENRY, was comparatively an obscure
young man. Yet his acquittal was " hailed with loud
applause," both in court and by the crowd outside,—
by persons alike detesting the crime imputed, and un-
acquainted with the person accused ! The only ground,
therefore, upon which we can account for a circum-
stance, so unusual--whether we look at the solidity of
the English character, .or at the grave decorum which
ordinarily pervades the proceedings of a British court
of justice,—is the existence of some impression, upon
the mind of the public, that justice was in some way
outraged in the person of the unknown individual in
question.