The Sun. — 1821-09-14 (London, England)

MORNING CHRONICLE.]  Sir Robert Baker resigned his situation as Chief Magistrate of the Police on Wednesday last ; and Mr. Birnie was yesterday appointed by Lord Sidmouth to succeed him. It is said that the friends of Sir Robert Baker complain very much of the treatment he has received from Government. As we have been every day looking for this event, the news of it did not surprise us. From the rancorous manner in which Sir Robert was assailed by the tools of corruption, it was pretty evident, that he had been  • guilty of an unpardonable offence in the eyes of Ministers. Sir Robert said, on his recent examination, " I allowed the intended line of the procession to be altered, in obedience to a force which, in my opinion, I could not resist, without serious mischief to the soldiers, to the crowd, and to the persons attending in the procession, many of whom were females, who had been shut up for hours in the carriages in a state of alarm." But the' safety of either females or males, was the last subject which, in the opinion of Ministers, he ought then to have considered. The ridicule cast on them by the defeat of their magnanimous scheme to defraud the remains of her late Majesty of the honours intended for them, was, no doubt, of far more importance in their eyes than the lives of the people, and the glory of the triumph which they promised themselves would have been deemed a cheap purchase with the` lives of thousands. The transactions of Manchester indicafed to all authorities, ' in a pretty unequivocal manner, that a regard for the lives of the people was not the most infallible course for obtaining their favour. It required only the tteatment of Sir Robert Baker to remove every shadow of difficulty with respect to this point. On the 16th of August, 1819, a peaceful assembly of men, women, and children, were consigned over to military execution, and five or six hundred persons became its.victims.— The thanks of his Majesty's Ministers were instantly and cheerfully given to the authors of that dreadful day. On the 14th of August,lB2l, a humane Magistrate took compassion on the females and-Others in the funeral procession of the Queen,- and hesitated to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens. That Magistrate, so far from receiving thanks, has been insulted in the grossest manner by all their creatures, and has at length been forced to relinquish his situation. Further observation on this suPject is unnecessary.  [THE TIMESI Our sentiments respecting the verdict of Wednesday last we have already described. That the Coroner should have closed his charge with recommending a verdict of justifiable homicide, would have surprised us considerably more, if, in the course of that charge,he had ever entered fairly upon the law of the question as it affected the destroyer of Honey. But his premises and conclusion were worthy of each other ; for the Ist being inapplicable,the2nd was of necessity absurd. By whom was the first violence offered ? Say it was by the people, in shutting the gates (which we deny as a monstrous misrepresentation) that, we assert, was an offence for which, had there been a peace-officer present, he could only have ordered the Guards to take the offenders into custody,--not to strike at or ride them down. But without the presence of such a civil functionary, the Guardsmen had no right either to take men prisoners or to strike them down. The right of self-defence against personal violence is the only one under which, by the law of England, a soldier in arms is authorized to use those arms, except in execution of the commands of a Magistrate, given to Mtn or to his officer on the pot ; otherwise we live under military law, and at the mercy of the King's forces.  [