The Sun. — 1840-06-26 (London, England)

EVENING EDITION.  (From the Times.) It would be difficult to imagine greater skill or temper than the Noble Member for North Lancashire has exhibited during the guidance of his measure through a reeky and sinuous channel to its present anchorage in the predominating favour of the House. The. roadstead may be an exposed one, but there is good holding ground at bottom. Lord John Russell has obviously felt i.is own condition with regard to this measure to be mere precarieus every day, and has therefore relaxed in the sternness of his original hostility. At first he could scarcely measure the heat of his expressions. He cannot without diffilculty now inflame them up to party pitch. Nur can we refrain from congratulating the Nobl: i'di. nister for the Colonies, on this his approximation at least towards a spirit of justice and impartiality upon a subject of such transcendent importance. What lie, a member of the house of Russell, a member, and a distinguished one, of the aristocracy and statesmanry of Great Britain, could or can ever gain for himself or his ne•liiuenntryfaboytiopnl,ayiwngnosinoto otnhley hands s i sot of add natn apduvreprossee ansodemarst to be—first, to tear away from IrelancL the crown of England, and next to subjugate it under the triple crown of Rome, and this, too, in the name of civil and religious liberty I—what Lord John Russell could gain for his country, or his own character, by pandering to a project like ibis, we declare before Heaven our faculties do net enable us to conceive. Yet with all this is intimately blended the resistance to Lord Stanley's measure. (From the Morning Herald.) The Old Bailey Bench bids fair to beeethe a fashionable lounge, and the languor and eu'l ceremony of morning tails are likely to give place to the more exciteable visits to the felons of Newgate—to the more stirring orations of a criminal court. .The morning concert is positively put in dart ger by the superior attractions of the morning trial—music gives way to murder; and the strains of Rubini and Lablache, with the wonderful fingering of a Liszt are eschewed for the withering denuncia•ions of Adolphus or Bodkin, and the professional sophistry of Charles Phillips. We know no greater, no more melancholy evidence of the spirit of the times—of a spirit insatiate in its cravings for coarse excitement—than was presented by the array of female rank that—would we could say it I—graced the trial of the murderer Courvoisier I We ask, is the delicacy, the tenderness of the female mind enhanced by a familiarity with such scenes? Is it for woman to forego. even for a moment, the native sanctity of her nature, and voluntarily to associate herself with men convened for a most loathsome, though most necessary, investigation ? with men, who, however, indurated by practice, bronzed by custom, are yet accessible to the deepest emotion, when taxed to their last melancholy duty? Is it for female tenderness to make a fashion of the bench, where the gray-headed Judge weeps as he dooms his fellow-man ? Is the Court of Death to become the place of bon ton? Is beauty to sit with opera•glass to her dry ryes, scrutinising the felon face of the arraigned murderer with the same collected glance bestowed on the circle of a theatre? Surely the proper sphere of woman is a far different place —her duties of a purer and more sacred nature. Monday week, it is said, is fixed for the execution of the murderer of Lord Russell. On that day, the hangman—instructed by the wisdom of the times—will give a practical leeuro on the sacredness of human life, by taking life. Movdsy week will be a holiday, a fete day, to all the licence of the metropolis—the Old Bailey will be crowded with its thousands, gathering to see a show, rot to take a warning. The schoolmaster will give lessons from the gallows, and, verily, a British populace will be instructed.