The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-23 00:00:00

the ends of justiceshould be f,o defeated. Guilty per-

sons ought not to he thus suffered to escape u;lm a

It deserved the attention of the

mere point of fort)
highest authorities in the state, and, in pat ticuldr, of

the attorney and odic

or-general

The learned baron

made these sU

tenents with much earnest

learned brother rev arked—

"'These r

ers were much

better managed in the time of the advocate for the Ad

miralty. Great cue m

then taken in bringir

ward those cases and they were properly managed
The same care ought to be observed now."

We have not been able to ascertain with whom the

blame rests of the blundering here properly complained
of—whether it is attachable to any of our law-officers
here, or to parties in the crown-office above. We pre-
sume, however, with the latter, to whom copies of the
depositions taken before Mr. Rushton (if not the ori-
ginals, which it'iv, we believe, usual to retain on the
spot) were surely sent. The only remaining conjecture
is, that in the absence of all depositions, the case was
hurried into court, in London, • without any previous
examination of the witnesses at the crown-office, the
indictment being framed merely from the brief. This
appears probable, fidm the remarks made by Mr.
Bodkin, one of the counsel for the crown. But, be
this as it may, the Times introduces his remarks, by
instancing a recent and somewhat similar case, in which
a Captain Partridge—also charged with murder on the
high seas, under the same pretence of maintaining dis-
cipline, and in which the victim was also a foreigner—
as the Times remarks, "from the unintelligible le-
niency of the judge, and the disgraceful fatuity of the
jury, escaped with but three months' imprisonment,
while the present parties got clear off from a technical
variance between the evidence and the indictment"—

and, after diving the principal facts in the latter case,
makes the following eloquent appeal in behalf of all
classes of seamen employed in British ships :

" Cases of crime upon the high seas should, as Baron
Alderson remarked, be regarded with especial care by English
tribunals. Deriving as we do our wealth from our extended
.commerce, and our security from our powerful fleet, and re-
lying for the efficiency of our mighty marine upon the uni-
versal and unhesitating enforcement of the sternest discipline,
we are bound to see that every member of those 10,000
floating commonwealths which issue annually from our ports,
dependent only on their own internal order and resources,
to carry the name, and influence, and products of Great
Britain thousands of miles from the presence of any English
authority, and divided perhaps for months together from all

human communication or assistance,—we are bound to see
that each one of these, in her longest and most distant separ-
ation from the shores of her mother country, shall ever feel
the presence within her of English law, shall never lose the
sense that time and space do not effectually divide her from
that centre of authority which has committed to the com=
mander his almost despotic power, but which will unfailingly
visit upon him and his subordinates any abuse of their great
but necessary responsibility. We above all nations are
eminently bound to the protection of the seamen. On us,
above all nations, it is incumbent to provide that these frag-
ments of our country shall bear with them the protection-of
English law, that a safe and certain appeal shall ever and
everywhere be secured against that dangerous authority which
our interests oblige us to surround with far more than the
ordinary terrors of British justice. 'With every temptation

to tyranny, and every opportunity for evading the proof of
its exercise on the one side, and on'the other the continual
alternative of absolute submission or absolute mutiny, it is a
wonder that we find in British ships so much of forbearance
and steadiness as exists. But the ground of wonder will
rapidly cease if we allow outrages committed under a power
of our own creation and maintenance thus to slip through the
fingers of justice. It matters not who is the delinquent,—
captain, mate, or their rough and unruly instruments,—it
matters little whether the escape is effected by the stupidity
of a jury, the leniency of a judge, the blunder of an attorney,
or the ignorance of a deck of assize. One thing is certain,
that every single example of impunity is at once an encourage-
ment to tyranny and a provocation to mutiny. And the ex-

amples which have hitherto occurred, if not wore mischievous,
have at least a more disgraceful appearance from the fact, that
they are not English sufferers whose fate we have allowed to

pass unavenged."

The sentiments thus .forcibly expressed we have en-
tertained for some time ; and we purpose in a series of
articles to draw attention to the subject of maritime
legislation, not only as affecting all seamen on board
of British ships, and embracing the operations
Merchant Seamen's Act, but with reference to the ge-
neral management of nautical cases involving insurance
and mercantile questions, in which, from the ignorance
in nautical matters of the advocates and other funs

tionaries employed in investigating them, justice is
often jeopardised, and not unfrequently subverted.
We have been led to this opinion by a consideration
of the numerous cases which have, from time to time,
come before our local courts, both sessions and assizes, in
which, this being the second port in the kingdom, they
are of frequent occurrence, and the result in

nand• in-

stances such that (having seme personal knowledge of
sea-faring matters) we have, on occasions not few and
far between, left the respective tribunals with, reluc-
tantly, no very high feelings of respect for the laws in
that respect, and, on many more, for their loose, inde-
finite, and even oppressive administration. We rejoice
that the subject has been taken up by our talented and
influential cotemporary ; and we shall, in the articles
alluded to, submit some remarkable facts, which have
recently fallen within our own observance.

LOCAL NEWS,

At a meeting of the Board of Guardians of the West
Derby Union, on Tuesday last, very numerously attended,
Mr. Thomas Augustus Granville Dolling, overseer, &c. of
West Derby, was elected by a large majority to the office of
registrar of births and deaths for the West Derby district.

THE WEATHER.—We are still favoured with unst un-
usually mild weather for the seasou. We perceive from a
London Paper of yesterday, that on Tuesday the thermome-
ter, in front of the superintendent's office in the London
Docks, at noon, stood at 57 degrees, a height unprecedented
in December.

TREATY WITH BRAZIL.—TiIe London Times of yesterday
announces, in its City article, that, by letters received from
Brazil on Tuesday, it appears that the treaty with this coun-
try is continued to the 10th of November next. We have
not received any intimation of this, and indeed are without
any information on the subject.

THE WNEILE TESTIMONIAL.—This subject is warmly
taken up in many of the provincial papers which we bare
received. A number of our Irish contemporaries also have
exerted their influence to forward the matter; and they, one
and all, express a fervent hope that it will be of a general
character, and that the memorial will be worthy of the man
and the cause.

HOLIDAY ON THE 26TH INSTANT.—A requisition, most
respectably signed, was presented to his Worship the Mayor,
yesterday, praying him to cause Monday next to be observed
throughout the town as a general holiday, owing to Christ-
mas day falling on the Sunday. We have not heard, from
authority, the nature of the Mayor's reply ; but we have been
informed indirectly that he declined to comply with the re-
quest.

HIGHWAY ROBBERY.—On Wednesday evening last as
Mr. Simcox, of Arrow, near Birkenhead, was driving home
along with his brother in his chaise, he was stopped on the
highway, near Arrow Hall, by nine men, who pulled the
party out of the vehicle, and robbed them of between £9 and
£lO, and a small gold Genoa watch. The police were imme-
diately afterwards informed of the circumstance, but the
thieves have not yet been discovered.

EVERGREENS FOR CHRISTMAS.—Nutnerous complaints
are generally made about this season of the year, of the an-
noying depredations which are committed in our suburban
gardens by a class of mischievous persons who, in their de.
sire to decorate their houses, or perhaps to replenish their
pockets for Christmas, forget the respect which is due to the
property of their neighbours. The bushes of holly, &c., are
frequently torn to pieces in a most shameful manner, and
plants on which a high value is set are irretrievably dis-
figured or injured. We beg to call the attention of the police
to the subject.
THE HINDOSFAN STEAM-SHlP.—Letters from the com-
mander and some of the passengers of this steamer have been
received in town, dated October 22, off the island of Ascen-
sion, advising their arrival there all well. The Hindostan,
after replenishing her stock of fuel there, by taking on board
a quantity of patent fuel from the government stores, would
proceed to her next stage, the Cape of Good Ilope, and
thence to Mauritius, Ceylon, Madras, and Calcutta, steam-
ino• the whole distance from England to India, vid the Cape
of Good Hope. She is expected at Suez, from Calcutta, &c.,
on the 10th of February.

Tits CORPORATION ScHoots.—We trust that, although
the hands of the Government may be bound, the public will
most earnestly maintain the right of the State to instruct the
people in the truths of the Gospel, not diluted or frittered
away in unmeaning or distorted " extracts," but in its per-
fect integrity. " The Bible—the whole Bible," should be
their motto, in the crusade which is urged against a Scrip-
tural educatron by the various sects of Papists, Socinians,
and Infidels, who desire to baniSh the Divine Word from the
national schools. This determination, we have no doubt, is
uppermost in the minds of British Protestants, who are not
misled or corrupted by a fOse liberality; and we rejoice to
say, that in the only instance of a departure from it on this
side of the Channel, the cause of religion has, after a short
period, come triumphant out of the struggle. We allude to
the conduct of the Reformed Corporation of Liverpool, which,
immediately after the passing of the municipal act, had the
temerity to exclude the use of the Bible from the schools un-
der their charge. That pernicious measure, however, has
now been formally reversed, and the Corporation has again
restored the Scriptures to the Schools. This is a most in-
teresting and gratifying result, and is really of national im-
portance. The Liverpool Corporation deserve the gratitude
of the whole country for their inestimable conduct ; but they
have the far higher reward of knowing that they have acted
in accordance with the duty they owe to the eternal interests
of their fellow-men.—Edinburgh Standard.—[Our contem-
porary is slightly in error. The effort to restore the Scrip-
tures to the schools was successful twelve months ago; and
the triumph to which the Edinburgh Standard alludes was
the rejection of a motion which had for its object the giving
a merely secular education to Roman Catholic children.]