Glasgow Courier. — 1847-03-27 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

WEST INDIES.  GUIANA.—The event of the fortnight intervening between the despatch of last mail and that which preceded it, was a public meeting, at which the Governor presided, to promote a subscription for the relief of the starving poor in Scotland and Ireland. The generous feelings of sympathy expressed by the speakers— the sincerity of which has been shown by the activity of the committee and the progress of subscriptions—show that distance only enhances the sense• of British nationality. One passage in the opening address of the Governor is striking enough, when we turn our thoughts back to the anti-emancipation times, when such vehement appeals used to be made to our sympathies for the poor negroes in the West Indies. "While I address myself generally," said his Excellency, "to the present assembly, who require no exciting appeal to their generosity, I do most earnestly call on the Creole labourers of this colony—most of whom have comparative affluence and luxury—to think of the starving labourers of Ireland and Scotland. I call on the labouring population to show their gratitude for the benefits they have received, in due reward for their industry, and to prove that they can feel for their white starving brethren who reside across the Atlantic, and who, whatever may be their industry, cannot obtain food." , The first session of the supreme Criminal Court, under the , system of trial by jury, had ceased. The following candid and honourable testimony to the working of the system is borne by the Royal Gazette, which had been sceptical as to the expediency of introducing it:—" The jurors deserve credit; except, perhaps, in one instance, their verdicts were, according to the popular idea, which we consider to be always right in questions of justice, fair and sensible. In this respect there was a great improvement over the assessors. We own we were among those who had fears that, in this peculiar country,' as we have so often heard it called, the jury system would prove unmanageable, and a failure. We are agreeably disappointed: why should we be ashamed to avow the truth! Our inference is, that if trial by jury has worked so smoothly, so with equal smoothness may work among us other changes framed upon an English model." One drawback the Gazette notices, the extreme prolixity of the proceedings; and sensibly suggests that circuits might, to a considerable extent, remove this disadvantage:—" Surely it would be easier for one judge, with two or three of the clerks of the public buildings, to travel occasionally into Essequibo, than for two or three hundred gentlemen to be constantly dragged up from the country to the public building's in Georgetown, away from their Mourbreird their hutfiness, in order to attend legal trials for two Or three weeks together, as jurors or witnesses." A Coolie had been condemned at the sessions to be hung for the murder of a female of his own nation. The coroner's Inquest on the death of a Coolie, noticed In an extract from the Guiana Times' in our summary of the news received by the preceding mail, had terminated. The jury found that he had died of a disease of the lungs, and of no other cause. From the remarks of the Guiana Times it would appear that some rather discreditable efforts had been made to "get up" • case against the police out of this incident. During the fortnight the weather had been uncertain, though not unfavourable to the planters. A great deal of rain had fallen, but there had been several very hot days. Cultivation was flourbilling as much as could be expected under the restricted supply of labour. The agricultural population were steady and quiet.