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

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MITTS

teliO'SAL

TUESDAY EVENING,
'ormed, for the second time, with

ntments

OR, 7W

WOLF Opp

the new Fairl,fExtrim
SLEEPING BEAUTY PF THE

To conc

With N

Opera, car-

;ariza, ealled the
WOOD.

Decorations,

ed last night with the most en-

IRON MANSION FOR AN AFRIJ AN KING.
JIHE Public are respectfully informed e above BU I LD-
st of the kind ever buil will he OPENED
..t ON on FaIDAY next, tv.r 21st instant, when
11 . open ' • a few days, pre, ous to shipment.
N.B.—t ranca from Papiciise-street.

PECT

it will remain open h

Admission, ls. each
Charities.

Proceeds to be given to the Public

Just Published,

/11-1 TOUCH FOR ME THY ARP AGAIN.
kft Ballad, composed by GEORGE H. HOMSON.
DER ABENDFALTER WALZE , for the Piano-forte.
Composed by THEODORE LICHTENuRG.
The above may be had at all the principal Music Shops in
Liverpool, Manchester, and Dublin, and from Mr. THOM-
SON, Pi ofessor of Music, 47, Bedford-street North.

EDUCATION IN FRANCE.
THE Reverend GEORGE STOKES, wlin is about to
Remove to DIEPPE, France, will be prepared to re-
ceive into his Family there, after the Ist May, a limited
Number of YOUNG GENTLEMEN, t e EDUCATED
under his personal superintendence.
Mr. STOKES'S Residence is spacio , suitable, and de-

tacked ; distant from Dieppe abotit a rite and a half, on the
Paris road, and commanding an extensive prospect of the
town, the sea, the forest, and beautiful valley of Argues,
and the surrounding country.
Mr. STOKES refers to the Rev. T. Tattershall, D.D.,
Shaw-street ; the Rev. Fielding Ould, M.A., Soho-street ;
Thomas Sands, Esq., Mosley-hill ; or Mr. Wareing Webb,
Bookseller, Castle-street, where terms, testimonials, &c.

may he had.
N.B.—The journey from London to Dieppe, via Brighton,
_ .

.led in less than twelve hours.
street, Liverpool, April 7, 1943

;0, Brownlo

ITi/rONS. GUILLAUME BEAUMONT, Professor of
171 the FRENCH, ITALIAN, SPANISH, and,GER-
MAN LANGUAGES, having made, arrangements with
Mr. WRENSHALL, Professor of .11usic, to succeed Mr.
FABIUS LEA, begs to announce that bi receives PUPILS at
the Music Academy, Islington-squab, and also at his Resi-
dence, No. 6, Clarence-street.
Ladies' Classes meet at Mr. Wrenshall's Music Academy,
Islington-square, Monday and Thursday, at Eleven A.m.;
at Mons. Reauraont's Residence, -Wednesday and Saturday,

at Eleven A.M

Classes for Gentleman at Mons. Beanmont's Residence in
the Evening. Single Pupils and Schools attended.

TO MERCHANTS, BROKERS, AND OTHERS

The largely increased and most respectable circulation
which the Tuesday's Edition of the LIVERPOOL

STANDARD has now obiained amongst -the mercantile
body in Manchester affords its proprietors the gratify-
ing poWer of urging this, amongst the other. undeniable

Maims which it possesses, upon_the favor of that portion
If the mercantile community of Liverpodl who desire to
riny their advertisements before the notice of buyers in

most of

not the Eriagen

such a union pawed

1
‘- by the concurrence of these gentlemen in a common
the 18th instant, ,
New struggle for a purely Irish object, undertaken in com 7
I pliance with a general burst of feeling from Ireland ?"

the grievance

A contr

.ct, 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 same 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 "hailed with loud applause
by the spectators, and that the officers of the court en-
deavoured in vain, for a few moments, to curb this mani-
festation of feeling. As soon as the crowd outside
learned the verdict, they also cheered." W 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, swunusual—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.
It is not our purpose here to enter into the enquiry
whether justice had been so attempted to be outraged
or not. The verdict of the jury was no doubt " a
true verdict according to the evidence;" there can be
as little doubt that 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. lt.
was not, either, that the verdfct had been rightly br
wrongfully returned—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 tradesman'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 individual
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 rfmceive-to belong to such a character.

It will be found, by reference to our news of the
day, that another of. the West India Mail Steam-ships,
the " Solway," 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 hound 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 commander, 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-
head, long a sailing master in the Royal Nayy. He
became connected as an officer with the Transatlantic
Steam=ships of this .port from nearly 'the commence-
ment of their running, having served successively in
he "Liverpool," in the "Acadia," and in the "Piesi-
ient,"—which last vessel he left along with Captain
Fayrer, ntivi of the " Forth," West India mail-ship,
He added to the skill and bravery, all. the generosity
)f the true British seaman, and was beloved both by
Officers .and crew. He was an admirable swimmer,

&pared himself to serve the lives of others

when in danger. In 1828, when a very young man,
he rendered great assistance in saving the crews of two
brigs in Holyhead Bay. In company with another
volunteer, while he was with the " Liverpool," he
saved the life of a man who had fallen overboard
in the Atlantic in a gale of wind, and regained the
vessel, with his prize, at imminent peril. In the
summer of 1841, at midnight, he jumped over-
board in Kingston harbour from the " President"
steam-ship (also Capt. Fayrer,) and saved a man and a
boy from a watery grave. The writer of this was on
board at the time. The passengers and officers on
board immediately afterwards presented him with a
silver snuff-box, with a suitable inscription ; and, on
the representation of a friend (for he was too modest
to make any personal application,) the gold medal of
the Shipwreck and Humane Society of this town was
awarded to him. On a subsequent occasion he endea-
voured, while with the " President," to save the life
of a man who had fallen in the night into the Coburg
Dock, where the ship was lying, hut unhappily with-
out his usual success. He was appointed to the com-
mand of the " Solway" soon after her leaving Glasgow
for Southampton, and successfully navigated that ves-
sel until the unfortunate accident which terminated his
mortal career ; with reference to himself, and to those
who perished with him, so emphatically impresses the
sacred truth that—" in the midst of life we are in
death." Mr. Duncan, who had scarcely approached
the middle age, has left a young widow to lament his
loss.