The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-06-19 00:00:00

4
ta.

CUNT aM PO .?ARY PRESS.

The proceedings on the Ipswich petition last Monday
night, which ended in the undiscriminating transfer to
.Isitrafgate of several. parties, respecting the manifest a-
riety in whose shades of guilt there was, with the excep-
tion of Mr. D. O'Connell, not a shadow of difference.
in :h. opinions of a gonleman, brought out a new and
valuable specimen, if not a rare one, of the faculty of
the aforesaid learned member for Dublin, in the matter
of dealing with truth. Colonel Percival,' in reply to
the member fur Dunlin, who had expressed himself with
what some persons conceived to be unaccountable bitter-
nesS respecting a young barrister, once a nupil of Mr.
Kelly,. late member for Ipswich, and now,, it seems, ac-
cording to. Mr. O'Connell, to be treated as " a disgrace
to his profession."—Cultatel Percival, we say, had turned
tbe•tables on the agitator, by referring to the case of a
Hudson, an Irish barrister, who had lately, under
theO'conneli patronage, seen appointed in lieu of Mr.
Greene, confidential law•adviser to the government of
Ireland;. or, in other words, " attorney-general's devil."
Now, Colonel Percival affirmed that this Mr. Hudson had
been charged by the,Dublin election committee, of which
Mr. R. Gorton, member for Cricklade, was chairman
in the year 1831, and had been reported indeed to the
house by Mr. R. Gordon himself, as having been the
chief agent in the commission ofbribery at that election
(the hon. colonel quoted the words from the Mirror of
Pailianient), the hon. chairman adding several strong
remarks upon the enormity of the crime, and the neces-
sity of visiting it with condign punishment. But then
comes the pinch. Colonel Percival asks, is the man thus
stigmatized by the committee of the House of Commons
a fit-person to be promoted by his majesty's government,
as Mr. Hudson has been, to a place of high confidence
and honour ? If Mr. Dasent and Mr. O'Malley be un-
worthy of any future association with the English bar, is
professional honour comparatively at so low an ebb in
Ireland, that a barrister who would bore be for ever dis-
graced. for having been a wholesale dealer in bribery,
shall there•be- preferred before all his professional breth-
ren, and made 'the chosen Mentor of the, viceroy and his
officers? The mere direct statement of such a case would
of course make a strong impression on those who heard
it.; Mr. Daniel O'Connell accordingly found it indispen-
sable to get up, and as back-stairs bottleholder to the
Irish-department, pull his protege out of the mire. By
way. of-screening at once Mr. Hudson and the patronage
to which he owes hia.elevatlon, the learned member in-
formed the house (we quote from the parliamentary:re-
port of Monday evening), that a prosecution for bribety
being direCted by the committee, " billsavere sent up to
the grand.jgry fur the city of Dublin, persons far from
favourable to Mr. Hudson, who yet ignored the bill."
All which was.not put by the learned member as a matter
of hearsay or belief, or admitting of any sort of question
but a downright matter of fact. •
To this, Colonel Percival a man of known veracity
and honour, simply replied, that "be had never heard of
such a, bill of indictment to that hour," a declaration,
which was met by a yell of incredulity from individuals,
none of whom thought proper to come forward and con-
fess to having given it utterance. Colonel Percival ap-
pealed to his hon. friend Mr. Jackson, M.P. for Bandon-
bridge, who was a barrister resident in Dublin at the
time, and who must have been cognizant of 'so remark-
able a proceeding against a brother lawyer as that which
the member for Dublin had represented to be a circum-
stance within his own positive knowledge. Mr. Jackson,
however, declared ontright, that although a barrister,
and living " in Dublin at the time, he had never heard
of a bill of indictment against Mr. Hudson being ignored,
and he protested it would surprise him much if such a
thing could have happened without his knowledge." Mr.
O'Connell made a counter appeal to a noble lord who
had then been Secretary fur Ireland, to know whether
directions had not been given to institute a prosecution
against Mr. Hudson; but that noble lord remained mute.
Sir E. Knatchbull, as honest a man as any in England,
exclaimed upon this, that Mr. O'Connell was now speak-
ing of the prosecution. of Mr. Hudson as a thing of which
he had no certain knowledge—" as a thing doubtful, to
say the least." Mr. O'Connell next talked of hav-
ing been present in the Four Courts when Mr. Hud,
son was congratulated by his friends on the bills hav-
ing been thrown out. The inexorable Sir E. Knatclibull
again reminded the learned manceuvrer that be was not
abiding by what he first set out with. The. Hon. Mr.
O'Connell "still remembered the congratulations, but
never heard more of the bills :" Mr. Shaw did nut be-
lieve that any bills had ever been preferred against Mr.
Hudson, and he stated that the attorney-general for Ire-
hnd laboured under the same want of belief. The Hon.
Mr. O'Connell softened to " the being still under an
impression' of having heard Mr. Hudson receive the
congratulations of his friends." 'An impression! Mr.
Jackson once more negatived the bills of indictment
against Mr. Hud-son, and thus it ended.—Murphy--
Murphy. of Killarney—your case stands not alone.—
Times.

LONDON LAW REPORT.

KING'S BENCH, MONDAY.

THE K tree v. RoalNsore.—The defendant had been convicted
some time ago of publishing a libel reflecting on General Dar-
ling, formerly Governor of New South Wales. He was now
brought up to receive judgment.
Mr. Justice Littledale, as senior puisne judge, passed sen-
tence on the defendant. He observed that the defendant had
been an officer for a period of twenty-five years in his Majesty's
service, and had served in different parts of the globe with to-
pour and credit to himself; and he was called upon to recei%e
the judgment of the court, having published a libel. The libel
itself might be divided into two parts; the first was written by
the defendant himself, and chiefly related to the punishment rif
two soldiers, named Sadds and Thompson, who; it was stated,
had been punished in an unjustifiable manner, by having irons
of unusual size and weights put on their persons; to charging
General Darling with having, by oppressive conduct, driven
other individuals to commit suicide. It referred also to obser-
vatione upon the opiniuns of Mr. Wentworth, who had threatened
to bring forward an impeachment against General Darling.
The second part of the libel consisted of letters pii'ulished by
Mr. Had, the editor of The Sydney Monitor, and republished
by the defendant in this country; it was iu the shapeof a letter,
commenting upon a letter of General Darling to Mr., Hume,
which had reference to proceedings in the House of Commons,
and upon a pamphlet General Darling's brother had published
in this country. The principal charge against General Darling-
was, that he had ordered the two soldiers, Sadds and Thoinpson,
to be punished with too much rigour. Now, looking at. the
affidavits, the-court found some facts admitted on both sides.
It appeared that those two soldiers, on their regiment being or-
dered to proceed to the East Indies, determined nut to proceed
there, and for the purpose of securing that object committed a
petty larceny, for which they were tried and sentenced to seven
years' transportation. The governor considered their offence,
in endeavouring to avoid service in the East Indies, a very se-
rious one, and ordered that they should, be taken out of the
hands of the civil power, and transferred to the military. Gen.
Darling, in doing su, had only executed a power with which as
governor of the colony he was entrusted; and be accordingly
commuted the sentence of the civil court from transportation to
a sentence that they should work, on the public roads in irons
for the period of seven years. It appeared that Sadds at that
time was very ill,—that lie died after having endured only five
- days' punishment; but there was no positive proof that Sadds
had died from the effects of the punishment, or that his death
was occasioned by it. General Darling had entered fully into
the proceedings and circumstances attending that courtmartial,
and had assigned, as his reason for taking those two !addles s out
of the hands of the civil power, that the state of the military
then in the colony had induced him to do so; and had also
compelled him to inflict the severe sentence upon them. The
learned judge concluded by sentencing the defendant to fuur
months' iinprisunment in the Marshalsea prison. •
THE KING r. THE PROPRIETORS OF THE " ALBION" NEWS-
PAPER.—The Attorney-General stated that he was instructed
to move fur a criminal information against the proprietors,
printers, and publishers of the Albion and Star newspaper, fur a
libel upon Lord Viscount Palmerston. He need nut state that
it was not an attack on the noble lord in his public capacity : he
being a minister and a public man, was perfectly willing that
his conduct should be canvassed with the utmost freedom, and
any remarks, of the gi eatest severity, made ; but when an attack
was made on his private honour, representing him to be guilty
of misconduct for which he ought to be impeached,—which would
disgrace himself and the governineut and the country to which
he belonged, then it became his imperative duty to come for-
ward, and the, oulyquestiOu was whether their lordships would
not be of opinion that Lord Pahnerston had shown too much
forbearance. On the Bth of June this paragraph appeared as a
leading article :—" A great deal of conversation is going on at
the west end of the town relative to an alleged discovery of a
noble lord's connexion with certe in recent stock-jobbing speCu-
lations. It is affirmed that on investigating the affairs of one of
the ,persons in the city who could nut meet his engagements on
last settling-day at the Foreign Stuck Exchange, it turned out
one of his empluyers, on whose account there was a deficiency
to the amount of £:30,000, was, of all persons in the kingdom,
the last who ought to have been concerned in foreign stock
speculations, (' the noble lord,' said the Attorney-General,
' being his Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.')
We trust, for the honour of the country and its government,
that the rumours afloat will turn out to be without foundation.
In the'mean time, we can scarcely refrain from noticing a sub-
ject exciting so much the interest of official men and those in
any way connected with theni. Not long since we had to copy,
from a morning contemporary, remarks on the bait policy of
employing needy men in situations of high official importance
and responsibility. There were, we believe, very few at the
time who had any doubt as to the name and position of the in-
dividual pointed at. It will be curious if events have already
occurred sufficient to prove how much reason there was for the
remark. He would now proceed to the affidavit of Lord Pal-
merston, who stated, that on the Bth of June he was holding the
(ate of his Majesty's principal Secretary of State for Foreign
and that he still performed that duty; that he believed
he Was the party alluded to in this paragraph by the name of a
" noble lord," and the words, " the last man who ought to have
been connected with foreign stocks ; that he had never been
connected with or concerned in any stock-jobbing transactions,
that he had never. personally or by agent, bought or sold or
been possessed of foreign stock, and that the whole was un-
true, and intended to do him injury as a minister of the crown.
That was the denial, and it Was impossible for the English lim-
e:nage to supply words more complete. The affidavit then Kent
on to state, that as soon as the deponent had seen the publica-
tion, he instructed his solicitors to institute legal proceei;ings,
unless the imputation was protracted; but that he believed Mr.
Boucher, wbo was the acting man, had refuse'd to insert any
such withdrawal. He (the Attorney-General) had the affidavit
of Mr. Lumley, the solicitor, who stated that he wrote to the
office of the paper a letter. saying that he was desired by Lord
Paltherston to address Mr. Boucher, as the printer of the paper.
and to' ask whether the attivle'in question was or was not ad-
mitied to apply to his lordship, as it was the universal opinion
that' he was tile party to whom it alluded; and he also begged
to riler them to the party from whom the information had been
received. In reply to this. Mr. Beecher wrote a letteestating,
that he Legged to inform Mr. Lumley that the intention of the
paper was to representto their country readers the conversation
of the town, and to do so without giving offence to any indi-