Mr. Justice PARK has fair...
The Times, 1824-01-05T00:00:00

hlr. JustiCe PARK has fairly entitled himself to a large proportion of that feeling vwhich is the oplposite of envy, for a doctrine which he has of late exhibited more than common alacrity in delivering formally from the bench. 'eeallude to an expedient of that conscientious Judge, for advancing, the ends of justice by suppressing testimony given on oatb, and affording in place of it an unlimited circulation to loose and unauthorized statements, against individuals eharged before Magistrates or Coroners with criminal offences. It is now a matter of notoriety, that anew m-urder has been perpetrated on a poor man in Hertford- shire. A Coroner's inquest was assembled last Saturday, and is still sitting bv adjournment at Shenley-hill, to in- vestigate the facts connected with this deplorable proceed- ing. Before the business of the inquest was gone into, tbe Coroner alddressed some observations to the auditory, which will be found reported in another place. This gentleman prudently confined himself to a protest, which he left to the public to consider in what light it pleased them, against the publication of evidence taken before his jury, previous to the trial of lhe party who might be implicated for his life. The Hertfordshire Coroner, however, it is well worth observing, lid not feel himself secure in the positive dictum of the Judge to whom we have adverted: on the contrary,he declared in express terms, that accorling to the best opinion he could form, " the Coroner's was an " open court," and being such, he could not undertake to exclude any person from it. Well, then, the public are to be admitted-the public therefore are to hear the evidence: yet no man is to print or read one syllable of that of which every man is authorized to hear the whole ! Now, by what form or variety of cunning, can grossness like this be made plausible to a civilized Gommunity ? The excuse is, that prejudice ought to be prevented. lWhy, then, universal silence until the next assizes must be enjoined by law to all who have been present at the inquest. Nay, si- lence is not enough. No auditor of the evidence before that inquest, can venture to recollect a wor(d of what the witnesses have spoken, without committing a moral out- rage upon Justice PArt('s principle; for no man of all that tuieience can deterinine wliether lie may not he summnoned to serve upon the petty jury, whose business it is at last to try the supposed murdlerer; and so the recording power of the human memory becomes chargeable with that same "high misdemeanour" whieh a learnied Justice imputes to the artificial record of the press, tvhose only crimne is, that it furnishes a faithful transcript of the evidence. But the testimony taken before the Coroner creates prejusdice! What, then, does the verdict of bis Jury ? Must that. too, ne kept secret ?-the warrant for the seizure of the person fotund gilty be kept secret ?-his imprisonment secret?- Ihis name unknown? All these follow as corollaries fi-om the first proposition : and to finish the edifice, some future sage will recommend the extension of this happly principle of secrecy to all our judicial proceedings. Mr. N7EwcoNIE, a respectable Magistrate, " was friendly to the publicatiosi of correct reports." If so, if he fears only inaccurate, exaggerated, garbled, mystedious, agitating, lying tales, let the worthy Magistrate depend uipon it that -such poisons have no imaginiable antidote but in the public journals.