The Sun. — 1864-11-17 (London, England)

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.  THE TIMES AND DR. SMETIIURST,—We cannot arnyd should have seized thhi ma ts le )l rf. oSvme re tahguarisnt affect to be in the least surprised shouldbharavoef htihsoouwgnhtopfiitnioton,t an opportunity to publish thevezdict in our columns. What does surprise us, and, indeed, fills us with amazement, is that he should venture to represent lye, our passing allusion to him in connection with Mutwlere'net C:lasnadasth‘ep alike ` ..r lee must presume that Dr. Smethurst understands his own interests better than y,,injurious ll ton elf the Govern. any one else, though we are at a loss to conceive how they can be advanced by obtruding himself on the , public, but we emphatically decline to identify them with those of the Government or of " the peepi,.,, If our remarks were injurious to himself at must have been the fault of the facts, f . or we simply dirs. claimed any intention to question "the justice of the final decision," and confined ourselves to censuring the particular method in which the sentence was reviewed by Sir G. C. Lewis. Dr Smethurst, it is true, demands something more than neutrality and suspension of judgment; he claims the expression of a judgment in his own favour. We take the liberty of informing him that such 3 &aim will never be recognised by us. We find nothing in the Come mon Law which gives a pardon the effect which he ff 0 attributes to it. It makes the ender " a new man," it relieves him from ‘, all. corporal penalties and forfeitures," it gives him a right of action against any one who shall call him felon or traitor, but that is all. It leaves his character where it found it, except so far as it is granted upon proofs of innocence which carry conviction to the public mind. Not only may the i recill.ent of it have been guilty of crimes as odious as the • h one to which it applies; be may have been proved guilty of that very crime in the opinion of the Home Secretary himself, but under circumstances different from those inferred by the jury from evidence. We cannot suppose that the the Lord Chief Baron meant to lay down a doctrine Which would conflict with this in the passages quoted bya Dr y Smethurst—assuming, of course, that the ecorrectly quoted. We have may say that we searchedr our owu law reports for them in vain under the dates specified by Dr Smethurst, and have referred with equal ill success to the pages of the Law Journal. If the words in question were really uttered by the Lord Chief Baron, which we by no means deny, we pre• sume they were used in reference to the case of Mr Hatch; but, whatever their immediate purport, they are far from justifying the construction put upon them by Dr Smethurst. They imply no more than this—which is matter of common notoriety—that a pardoned man must b 0 taken to - have been wrongly convicted—that is, either convicted of a crime which he did not commit, or on inadequate evidence of a crime which he did commit, and that in either case he is thenceforth "innocent" of that crime in the eye of the law. But Dr Smethurst isnot content with mak. ing a demand which we have shown to be exorbi-1 tant. Ho insists on going into the details of his own trial, with a view to show that the jury would have been wrong in convicting him of murder upon any theory whatever. It is doubtless with the same object that ho fortifies himself with the high authqs rity of the German Legal Protection Society, who state explicitly that " the accusation was found to be false," and that " no one ever since doubted that he was wrongfully convicted of the crime of which he was adjudged to death." IVe have not the least wish to undertake the duty which Dr. Smethurst imposes upon us, but we cannot allow him to mislead the public by his own version of the facts. A very short summary of them will suffice for the present purpose. Dr. Smethurst was indic'ed for and convicted of the murder of Miss Bankes, and the ease for the prosecution was directed to show that he administered poison to her with intent to pros duce death. All the evidence with respect to his alleged interest in the lady's death, the execution of her will, and so forth, was adduced in support of that hypothesis, and would lose much of its signifi, canoe on the supposition that he administered poison  Sir George Lewis said—  rITE