Star. — 1819-10-06 (London, England)

CORONER.—.-I am determined not to allow either you or Ne-Times to take any notes. Mr. Asnwoarn, after expressing his approbation of the order issued by the Coroner, to prevent the publication of the evidence taken upon this Inquest, pursued his argument :—Great pains had, he observed, been taken to saddle all the injuries resulting from the dispersion of the Meeting of the 16th of August upon the Manchester Yeomanry, as if that Corps alone interfered to produce the dispersion. But he could state, from his own personal knowledge, that there were several military bodies on the field, engaged in dispersing the Meeting, as well as the Corps alluded to. He did not, however, think that the conduct of that Corps, or of the several bodies with which it co-operated, could properly be brought into discussion before that Court, unless the person who gave John Lees the blow, that blow to which his death was attributed, were actually identified. Some individual or individuals must, he contended, be pointed out as the assailant or assailants of the deceased, and so a distinct charge established, before evidence could be gone into with respect to aiding and abetting the attack. For it could not follow, that because the Magistrates ordered a military force to disperse the Meeting alluded to, that any act done besides the object of that dispersion, which he maintained to be quite a legal object, could be said to implicate the whole body acting in pursuance of the orders of the Manchester Magistracy. How, for instance, could lie legally hold or rationally maintain, that military men scattered throughout the wide area of Saint Peter's-field, should be deemed responsible for every unauthorized or violent act done imme• dtately near the hustings, where John Lees was stated to have received his mortal wound ? The idea was, indeed, quite preposterous, and yet that appeared to be the idea of the Learned Gentleman on the other side, when he urged his very broad doctrine with respect to principals and accessaries in murder. The Learned Gentleman was, however, egregiously mistaken in his views of the law. For a body of persons, engaged in the pursuit of one common object, could never fairly or legally be held answerable for what any one or more of that body might happen to do, independently of that object. Therefore, it could never be maintained, that because the Manchester Yeomanry were, along with other military bodies, engaged in accomplishing the object of dispersing the Meeting at St. Peter's-field, that they, or any part of them, were to be implicated in the crime of taking away the life of John Lees, which was the subject under investigation, except the individual or individuals who actually attacked -the deceased, or those who were immediately present aiding or abetting that attack. No evidence, then, %vac, in 'his opinion, admissible upon this inquiry, which did not directly apply to the individuals engaged in that attack ; and as to the admissibility of evidence, of that he thought the Coroner was the sole and exclusive judge. to guard, then, against the intrusion of irrelevant and inadmissible evidence, as well as to save the time of the Court, he recommended that before any witness was, in future, brought forward for examination, a written statement should be laid before the Coroner, of the points which the witness proposed to prove. Mr. HARMER observed, that although the Learned Gentleman had spoken for above an hour, he had not quoted a single case in support of his view of the law with respect to principals in murder. The Learned Gentleman had gratuitously stated that the Magis